Several months ago now, as you might remember, MCJC helped to bring the remarkable Leah Green to the Coast to teach a weekend workshop on Compassionate Listening. Compassionate Listening, as you may know, is a process by which people simply listen -- without judgment, without fixing or correcting or concluding. Leah brings compassionate listeners to extremely difficult settings, to Israel and Palestine among other places where listening is scarce. But she and others also do their intentional listening in settings closer to home, in places of local conflict and also in their own personal lives. She doesn't listen with an intention that things will change, but they often do. A lot happens when a person is really listened to. Sometimes even a person with a very strong agenda will, when attended to carefully, become more candid. Sometimes that person will even hear herself differently, see his own position with more nuance and flexibility. Not always by any means. But sometimes.
I was one of the lucky people to take Leah's training. We did various exercises, pairing and tripling up to listen to each other, to look in each other's eyes, to ask each other questions. Many, maybe most, of the people in the group were people I know and love, and it was a pleasure to listen to them. I thought it was pretty easy, actually, at the time. Some people from the group decided to keep meeting, to practice the listening skills we were introduced to, and, quite frankly, I really didn't think I needed that much additional practice. But out of some kind of happenstance I went to one of those meetings. Here even more than in the larger training, these were my friends and beloveds. The spirit couldn't have been sweeter or less confrontational. One person at a time spoke her heart about some matter or other, and then we practiced asking her questions. The idea was to make inquiries in a way that would open the speaker up still further, help her to delve more deeply into her own experiences, thoughts and feelings than she had on her own. As all of you know, I love to ask questions. I could hardly wait to dive in. I spoke right up.
I don't remember what the speaker's topic was, nor do I recall my question. But I remember that I was a little bit proud of it before I spoke. I thought that my line of questioning brought things together that maybe no one else had quite noticed. I remember my tone of voice -- excited, probably leaning a bit forward, trying to sound casual, trying to hold back the full force of my probing curiosity, but actually sort of wanting it to be recognized, cocking my head, looking intently. I recall being a bit disappointed that my well-crafted question didn't elicit much from the person speaking. Shortly afterwards someone else asked something much simpler which actually seemed more helpful. And I well remember afterwards, when we had all finished, the original speaker reflecting back, oh so kindly, that my question had sounded a bit brusque, had put her a tiny bit on her guard. Not overwhelmingly, but enough that she had felt a bit closed down rather than opened up as I might have wished. It was all in good spirit, and I wasn't devastated or anything. But that little experience really got me thinking and thinking. It is so amazingly difficult to be tender enough with other people's soft selves. Even in this laboratory of gentle inquiry, when there was really nothing controversial on the table at all, when there was all the support in the world, when we were studying techniques for listening with compassion, it was still hard to be kind enough and open-hearted enough to let another person share her heart.
That little experience, even more than the big training, has stayed with me. I have thought and thought about how often I am scared or hurt -- often just a little bit, barely at the threshold of consciousness -- by things that people say to me. I have thought about how afraid I am to be criticized, how much I am troubled and threatened by disagreement and conflict. I have noticed how often I worry that people are thinking something negative and not saying it. And I worry just as much that they will say it. I have noted that I am particularly anxious when I know that people see things differently than I do, and sometimes I go to great lengths to make sure that our points of difference are avoided. I do this because I am afraid that if we disagree openly, if we argue, the other person won't think well of me. And somehow this is a dreadful prospect to me.
And then I think, probably just about everybody feels this way. We all probably walk around braced to some degree against other people's criticisms and judgments and anger and disappointment. We all probably flinch a hundred times a day when little arrows come at us. We're all probably scared to some extent when there is disagreement. We are all probably more tender than we look.
I don't think I very often plan to hurt people. I more often than not just get excited, want to prove something, think I have the right answer, feel a bit impatient, want to preempt disagreement, want to get something finished, dammit, have someplace else I need to be, have talked about this all too much already, feel riled up, don't like what the other person is saying, don't want a big mess, want my own way, am tired, am bored, am touchy or most often just plain forget that other people are as vulnerable and easily injured as I am.
Lately I've been thinking more generally about conversation. I spend a fair amount of time, like most of us, visiting, schmoozing, chatting, and sometimes having some serious conversation. It's a part of life I love. Sometimes I ask myself, what am I looking for in talking with others? We're talking about the power being out, about how our various relatives are faring, about politics or travels or whatever. We're sharing how we feel, confiding difficulties, extending comfort. Why any of this? The kabbalists say that every human being (and indeed every created thing) has a spark of the divine within. Usually I imagine that spark as something hot and bright. But that little bit of divine breath might just as well be something very soft and open and transparent, something tender. I think that in conversation I am usually seeking to connect with that soft, pure center in the person I am speaking with. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes I do things to make it pretty certain that this connection won't happen.
As I'm writing this, I'm thinking about some of the conflicts in our local community, particularly the uproar these days in and around our schools. I know that plans are afoot to bring some compassionate listening to all involved. I think this is wonderful, and I look forward very much to being part of that process, whatever it turns out to be. And I'd like to think more personally as well about how I speak and listen, the ways that other people open up and close down in my company. I realize that there is more to listening well than not shouting or punching people, that there are subtleties, that it is an art -- and, like any art, one can always practice and get better.
I hope that 2003 brings a gentler spirit to us all.
© 2003 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Updated 11/24/2002 (rge)