The Authenticity of Listening/ Steve Hamilton

I have become convinced that one of the most sacred callings we have as human beings is the call to listen.  By this of course, I mean deep listening to God, but my emphasis lately in the here-and-now is concerning other people.  I am talking about listening to people with significant regard to who they are and what they are saying.  To me, listening has become a treasured, sacred engagement, because it seems to make people feel significant and it also seems to empower them; yet in a culture of hype that "super-sizes" most everything and pumps up the volume to get your attention (or just distract you), we tend to denigrate deep listening; but I feel like it is one of the most powerful and empowering things we can do with one another.
 
It's been my experience - both in a spiritual direction sort of context, but equally in the broader contexts of my life - that when we listen to people, they feel loved.  They feel loved whether they are labeled (or label themselves) atheists, theists, agnostics...it seems to be a fairly broad human reaction.  Also, when I really listen so that they know they are being heard, I don't feel like I need to have the answer to anything (or even a rebuttal) but by merely listening and responding appropriately (sympathetic hand on their shoulder or taking their hand or eye contact or little non-verbal gestures like that both physical and just in my own demeanor), people respond that they feel loved.
 

Now listening might not come naturally to us, especially given the cultural norms I mentioned.  We may need to train ourselves with counter-cultural disciplines like 'sustained attention' and use skills like active listening.  We have talked somewhat about authenticity here previously.  Listening is about being present to people, and in being present to others, mysteriously we become more present to them and more absent to ourselves.  When this happens - when we truly listen, when we are truly present to others - people can almost touch the genuine authenticity in it; I often find that when I deeply listen, I come out of myself, or I forget myself and am absorbed with the other, and perhaps this is what scripture refers to as being other-centered, preferring others.  Again, I think perhaps in our present North American context and society we struggle with truly listening, because we "act" like we are listening [and the truth is people can typically sense that we aren't listening at all] but we are merely formulating our next thought or argument in our head and waiting for a pause as our opportune moment to spill out what I am thinking...meanwhile, the opportunity for real listening, the opportunity for genuineness, dissipates.
 
I feel lately that I want more and more of this kind of genuineness in my life because this strikes me as fairly useful when encountering the others in my great secular place, in this deeper blue ocean.  So, how do we do more of this?  Three recommendations:
 

• Just Do It: Begin to listen to people...it's that simple



• One book for exploring this: Holy Listening by Margaret Guenther



• Another book for further exploring this: Sacred Companions by David Benner