Listen

June 1981
Lakeland

[Editor’s note: this sermon is available on MP3, not as given at the time, but as read into a recorder by CJW several years later. Contact editor if interested.]

Have there been times in your life when you have said, “I wish I’d listened to her or him or to my mother or to my father” ? We learn at an early age to talk, but seldom to listen.

In this period when we will not be gathering here for services for awhile, I’m suggesting to you and me that we listen to many voices. William James once wrote that the world to the new-born infant is a buzzing, blooming confusion. Then in the process of becoming human, we develop filters to screen out, to focus on one sound at a time.

Listening seems to have been a constant part of the mythology and history of religions. There is the well-known legend of the prophet Elijah (1st Kings 19-9 ff) where the prophet, trying to escape from Queen Jezebel, went into the wilderness and to a cave on Mt. Horeb. He heard strong wind, and an earthquake shook the mountain and shattered rocks, then a fire. But he could not discern the voice of Yahveh in this storm and fury. Then came the still, small voice. Out of that experience, Elijah regained courage enough to go back and continue his struggles against the corrupt rulers, Ahab and Jezebel.

Joan of Arc listened to her voices rather than the authority of the church and state. She was executed for that, but had saved her nation.

I am not saying that if we listen, we will hear supernatural voices. But we might hear natural wonders and human fears and hopes.

There is a story about two men walking around a crowded city sidewalk. Suddenly one of them remarked, “Listen to the lovely voice of that cricket.” But his friend could not hear the sound. He asked his friend how he could detect the sound of a cricket amid the roar of traffic and the sounds of people. The first man, a zoologist, had trained himself to hear the sounds of nature – yet he did not explain this. He simply dropped a half-dollar onto the sidewalk, whereupon a dozen people began to look about them. “We hear,” he said, “what we listen for.”

One of John Dewey’s famous educational maxims is that “we learn by doing.” Few people today would argue with that. But also, we learn by listening. Every one of us is aware that we tune in, tune out conversations, sometimes making a desperate effort to catch up and fill in the spaces where we tuned out. That’s human enough. But there is a need to guard against such filtering out another person’s cries for help which might be concealed in verbose or confused conversation.

Anyone who had attempted to counsel two persons who are at odds, a [married] couple, for example, is aware how much anguish is caused by failure to listen. Two people, each of whom may be hurting and confused, but their words are launched like parallel arrows – never meeting. We seem to be driven more often than not to more talking and less listening.

Norbert Weiner once wrote, “speech is a joint game between the talker and the listener against the forces of confusion.”

Listen! Do you know the John Holmes poem, “The Eleventh Commandment?” [CJW note: TRAPP p. 78]

Some of you are aware that one of the adult program series of the UUA deals with listening – how to listen. More than 30 agencies of the Federal Government have had listening training.

Some years ago, the psychologist Carl Rogers based his method of therapy on listening. In order to make sure he had listened and heard accurately, he would repeat in different words what he had heard his client say. The reality of the client knowing that he/she had been heard, understood, was in itself a healing process for troubled minds and fractured emotions.

So, Listen. As I have been thinking for a couple of weeks of the services this morning, I have tried to block out the obvious from time to time and listen to sounds I usually do not hear so well. Instead of the radio or tape player, I listened to the turbulent water in the dish-washer, the hiss of the tea-kettle, the whisper of the breeze, the thrumming sound of the blessed rain on the roof, the surly matter of distant thunder, the slippery squeak of my bare feet on wet grass, the mystic melody of lapping water on the shores of the lake, the snick of the axe clearing wood.

Perhaps you might comment, “so what.” But as I brought into primary listening those sounds which are usually background, there came home to me, keenly, the order and beauty of the universe – the world and its multi-scale notes, harmonies, and percussions.

[CJW note: Simon and Garfunkel – sang about it, “The Sound of Silence” - signal for tape]

There is healing and fellowship when we listen to one another as I*Thou (not I*it). There can be restoration of the human spirit when we respond to the sounds of earth, sea, sky, women, men, children.

One thing more: in our world of international suspicions and misunderstandings, we need to listen for the voices which are advocates of reason, announcers of fact, prophets whose priorities are humane, who sing a song of human fellowship the world over. We need to listen for those voices for there are also the war chants born of fear and greed, the dissonances of narrow self-interest.

How many times have you said, or heard, “Listen to reason.” That’s a still small voice amid the emotions sparked by the anxieties of our day. But reason is a voice that if heard might make us more aware of what is and what might be.

May I repeat: Norbert Weiner once wrote, “speech is a joint game between the talker and the listener against the forces of confusion.”

In one of the regions of Polynesia, the statues of their gods were found sitting in a circle. Each of the god-figures had a hand cupped to his ear, as though to say, “Go on, I’m listening to you.”

I do not know if the god or the gods listen or not, but we humans have the capacity to listen, and when we do, our understanding and caring for our fellow woman and man will be a joy to us and a source of strength for them.

We have the senses to hear the voices of the sky, sea, and land. There is a healing for us and perception in us too deep for adequate expression. Perhaps e.e. cummings glimpsed this poetically (and I’ll close with this) (p. 22, MODERN RELIGIOUS POEMS) ....

Addendum:

The Moldau – Smetana, from the record jacket:

A symphonic poem describes the great river from its source in two springs in a Bohemian forest, “one warm and gushing, the other cold and peaceful.” They join and run through the forest to become a gentle river flowing through the peaceful valleys. Now the river grows into a mighty torrent, while nearby the sounds of hunters and a wedding feast are heard. Now it plunges through the St. John Rapids, foaming and fierce, finally to end as the broad placid waters that flow through Prague.