Holy Listening

Tommy Dillon

Some of my fondest memories from childhood are of sitting with my grandmother Keet at her table in the kitchen of her Tulsa home. There was always something good to eat—pound cake with homemade butter or tomatoes from my grandfather's garden-- but even more special was a quality of attentiveness that she possessed. As she listened to my chatting about this and that, she acted as if being with me were the most important thing she could be doing at the time. She taught me that listening is an act of love.

Such responsiveness is rare in our culture where we talk too much and listen too little. We all know how minimizing it is to try to share something with someone who is half-distracted, too busy or just waiting until they can get their point out. Contrastingly, how affirming it is to be with one who attends fully and respectfully to what we are saying.

The healing dimensions of being listened to are significant. Those suffering from loss or recovering from woundedness need to tell their story again and again, re-entering it, piecing together the fragments of memory. In the sacred presence of a witness, a companion who truly listens, isolation is diminished and connection to the human community is restored. Often it’s not really as much what we say in such times as a quality of caring presence. Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen suggests, “Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually, you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.”

The Rule of St. Benedict suggests that prayer is “listening with the ear of the heart.” He means, of course, listening for the still, small voice of God. But I believe that it is also true that we pray with one another when we hear a person’s story as sacred, when we hear with the ear of our heart.