Listening

Do you listen to people? Do you feel people listen to you? Listening is one of the hallmarks of a healthy relationship. It is part of the communication process and the Bible has quite a lot of things to say about it.

The idea for this blog post came about as most of them usually do, from my experiential observations during the past week. What I seemed to keep running into recently was a lack of people being able to listen to what others had to say. I found myself wondering what it was all about. 

One such story regarded a certain young lady who is contemplating leaving her job. She is an IT specialist who is at the end of her rope dealing with insensitive coworkers. It seems that frustration abounds in the field of IT. Programmers and computer support staff often complaint of the unrealistic expectations and lack of communication skills that they face every day. 

The users, whether they be a business concern, academic institution or government agency, are more interested in dictating their demands to computer support staff rather than listening to any input that the computer specialist may have to offer. How interesting, a whole career field where not being listened to is the standard. This is widely known and widely accepted. 

Then there is Emmanuelle*. Emmanuelle is feeling that her husband just does not listen. Strangely enough Marco*her husband feels as if she is the one who is not listening. Just who is telling the truth? They are in a difficult situation since her mother had to move in with the couple. This new circumstance has again shown how they are not a team whenever they have a crisis.

Watching those two talk at each other and not listening has become a sport for me. My neck cranes to and fro as if I am viewing a tennis match. Either that or, it is like when I find myself slowing down when there is a police action on the side of the road. I am not sure which one it is. 

All I can say is that it is mesmerizing. 🎶Everyone keeps talking at me, I don’t hear a word they say, only the echo of my mind 🎶. That is not a bible verse. It is however, a verse from a 1969 American song which won a Grammy award, entitled Everybody’s talkin. It perfectly encapsulates many of the communications that I witnessed recently.

I also had my own personal experience of people not listening. I recently was invited to a soirée in Westchester County, New York. I was introduced to several new people that evening. A strange thing happened to me at the event. Every single person that I met spent their time with me just talking about themselves. After they heard my name, that was enough about me. They proceeded to use their time with me to make sure that I got to know them a lot better.

Did you hear that, make sure that I got to know them better. I pretty quickly learned everything including one person had a pilots license and was formerly a secret service agent. Another person, was fluent in ten languages including Urdu. How interesting, I exclaimed. I can see that saying just the one thing that I was able to interject into his monologue annoyed him. However, clearly he was able to forgive me because I pointed out how interesting he was. Plus, I didn’t prattle on about my own silly life.

In the not so distant past, manners were serious business. People looked carefully at things such as conversational skills as indicative of moral character. Etiquette, the art of manners, was even taught in all the best schools. But, that is all gone and what has replaced it is a sort of every man for himself  conversational philosophy

Every cultures’ set of manners emanate from what their belief system is. Today’s manners are no different. The philosophy behind the manners of today is narcissism, that is the worship of self. This is the opposite of what it means to be a Christian. 

The people and stories I encountered served to illustrate how people are unable to interact with others well. People are too wrapped up in their own life. They are living for themselves. Other people only come into play as a tool to make them feel good or not feel good. Mostly, other people get in the way. People are very busy starring in their own show. Does that surprise you? The selfie culture exemplifies this principle. As does the phony facades that people posit on social media. If you believe all of that, I have some New York bridges fo sell you!

The Bible leads us towards the art of listening. It begins with listening to God’s message. Psalm 46 verse 10 says, Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. Listening requires quieting our hearts and our minds. This allows us to focus. Trying to multi-task? This will not help you to grow close to God or to people. Focusing on too many things is frequently not fully focusing on any of them. 

Why we should listen more:

Listen to learn. Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance-Proverbs 1:5. 

Listening is serving. Part of the Christian walk concerns serving others. Sometimes, people just need some one to listen. Just listening to someone is a wonderful way to serve them and to show that you care. Don’t we all need that sometime? Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ-Galatians 6:2. Listening is one way to carry someone’s burden and to fulfill the law of Jesus Christ.

Listening is part of the signs of a mature believer in Christ. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath- James 1:19. Many problems in the family, in the office or at school could be averted if one merely followed this advice from the book of James. 

Listening averts disaster. But whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster- Proverbs 1:33. In this case I think the inference is that we don’t just listen to godly wisdom but, that we actually chose to obey God as well. You may have heard the expression, look before you leap. I think it should be: look at GOD before you leap! 

Listening is the opposite of narcissism. A fool takes not pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion-Proverbs 18:2. If one bible verse summarizes my observation this week it is this one. People are so full of themselves that they really don’t seek to have a broader understanding of their job, their life or their relationships. The Bible calls that being foolish. 

* the names are changed to protect privacy.

A Little Monkey Business

I was friends with Trayvon’s* mother. She was one of the best friends that I ever had. No one understood me the way she did. She and I shared the stories of our lives. I trusted her with some of the more painful chapters of my life and she did the same with me. We found common ground, and healing together. I felt loved and accepted by her.

Everyone loved Georgia* and grieved her untimely death due to breast cancer. Her mother’s heart implored me and others to look out for her son Trayvon after she was gone. She was very concerned that Trayvon’s lifestyle would lead him towards a diagnosis of diabetes. Many in her family were afflicted with this ailment.

It was her dying wish that I help encourage him to stay healthy. It was because of this that I got to know Trayvon better over the years. Trayvon had inherited many of his mother’s good qualities. He is sunny and sociable. A real people person. He loves his friends deeply and always goes the extra mile for them, just as his mother had. He has a heart of gold!

Then there is that other side of him. Just like his mother Georgia, Trayvon is street smart. But, sometimes just like his mother, that street smart crosses the line into street life. Trayvon has been working from home since the virus hit New York. He works for a large medical facility in New York City. Recently, he learned that he would be required to go back to the in-person work environment this fall. 

He is not happy about this news at all. I wasn’t sure why though. So, on a recent telephone call I explored that question with him. He told me that he really liked working from home. He felt that working from home had not hindered or compromised his ability to perform his job one bit. Was he saving money? Of course he was.Taking the subway from the Bronx to midtown Manhattan and paying for those high priced Manhattan lunches are a killer. Plus, it had been awesome not having to see his boss everyday who, he has a long-standing feud with.

But, this Westchester Christian Housewife had to delve a little bit further. Trayvon, I asked, do you feel safe from the virus and the crime as you contemplate a return to work? Having moonlighted over the years as a club bouncer, he quickly took umbrage at my suggestion that he might not be able to handle himself in the current lawlessness that has overtaken the city.

Further, I wanted to expose the deep spiritual underpinnings of the current dilemmas now gripping the planet. Just where was Trayvon spiritually, physically and emotionally after a year of virus management? Where are we? 

As I probed to get a deeper understanding of just what Trayvon’s current mindset was, I discovered A Little Monkey Business going on. Trayvon let me know that he was fully vaccinated and had just come back from a trip to Virginia. He had sadly lost a friend to the Wuhan virus and had commuted by plane to attend his funeral.

Feeling heady after getting his jab, even got him to thinking that he wanted to catch that huge post-pandemic box office hit, A Quite Place Part 2 in theaters now. Hey Trayvon, said I, are you ready to return  to a movie theater to catch that flick or would you prefer to wait for it to be available for at-home viewing? No, Trayvon said, I think that I am ready to go out to a theater.

Well, why aren’t you ready to go back to the office then? Rather than answer my question he told me that he had made an appointment with a therapist. He is planning to tell the doctor that he is depressed because of all that has happened and that he is not yet ready to go back to work. Well, are you depressed Trayvon? Trayvon was not interested in answering any of my questions directly but, rather disposed to beating around the bush.

He just keep repeating that, he didn’t want to go back to work. Do you think that you can convince the therapist that you are not mentally able to go back to work Trayvon? I don’t know but I will try, was his reply. I wondered if Trayvon was playing with fire. Mightn’t there be some unintended consequences to his actions? What if he gets fired from his job? What if the doctor wants to put him on psychiatric medicine? What if he gets labeled mentally unstable? What if the Bible is true when it tells us not to lie?

He seemed to think that the end justifies the means. Meaning that because he liked working from home if he could do A Little Monkey Businesses to make that happen then it was worth it. I learned that if the hustle lasted six months or a year, it would be worth it to him. Maybe, it could last even longer, and that would be even better. 

But, what about the truth? When faced with a difficult situation, Pontius Pilate the Roman official who held Jesus’s earthly existence in his hands, questioned the meaning of truth. It was during his tenure as the Roman prelate of Judaea that he was asked to decide the fate of Jesus as he went on trial for sedition. He wanted a political solution that would placate the Jewish leaders and not upset the administration in Rome. 

When Jesus indicated that He had come to testify to the truth. Pilate was not interested in it. He was only interested in what would work for him. He showed himself to be morally relativistic. In this way of thinking a person can just shift their beliefs to suit the situation. The Trayvon that I know has a high level of moral integrity. 

I have seen him serve until it hurt him. I know that he has always worked hard for a living, often working two jobs in order to make ends meet. But, every once in a while, it seems like something else takes over. It might be that he is in and out of Christianity. Here one minute and gone the next. 

His mother Georgia was a church going Baptist. His sister is a born again Christian. Trayvon has mixed feelings. He was off when his born again sister treated him badly. He was on when he recently dated a believer. Maybe his ethics reflect that. Whatever the reason may be I found myself in a ticklish situation when he spoke to me about trying to manufacture an excuse to circumvent going back to his office. 

* the names are changed to protect identities.