To Listen is to Love and to Learn
by: Karen Stiller
The most important thing I learned about being a journalist, I learned being a minister’s wife.
I saw early on that a good gift I could offer was my attention to someone with a story. I didn’t earn the role of good listener, it was assigned to me by the assumptions people had that I wanted to hear and that I truly cared, because I was the minister’s wife. I had to try to live up to who they thought I already was.
I grew into my ears.
In church halls, over tea and lemon squares (if I was lucky), I learned to ask the first question, and then the follow up.
I learned that a pause does not mean the story has been fully told. There is more to come – maybe even the best – if I can just wait a moment or two.
I learned to use my eyes to warm and not rush, and to never interrupt, unless there is a fire. Reckless interrupting is such a cold thing to do, cutting someone off as if we were in traffic, racing.
This I know to be true: there are many people with stories to tell and there are fewer people to listen well.
“The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together, one of the most beautiful books ever. Bonhoeffer calls this the “obligation of listening.”
Listening is one of the ways we can love one another well, like Jesus told us to. I agree with Bonhoeffer that listening is an obligation, but it also a gift to us, the listeners.
Listening is giving and hearing is receiving. Both bless. This is why good listening is a secret weapon as well as a movement of the heart: in listening, we learn. I learn less when I’m talking and teaching. I already know what I know. I ask, listen, and that’s when I learn.
When I interview for the Faith Today podcast and magazine, I learn all I can before. I do all the good homework. But the most important thing when I’m in the work, is what I learned to do in church halls everywhere, and that is to listen. I set aside my carefully planned questions, literally, and try to be fully present in the conversation. I resist telling my own stories, posing as clever, or filling up space with me. I listen hard. I pay attention to what they say so I can ask the next best question. I also listen to our producer who might text me, This is getting long, or We need to move to something positive… I listen to him too. After, I am tired.
Sometimes, if I’m moderating a dialogue between atheists and Christians, and the evening flows like a river, I am amazed we are creating a conversation that has never happened in quite this way before, and it is like a miracle to me. Before we began, I was so nervous I hoped for a hurricane or some other cancellation-provoking natural calamity. But there we are, in our chairs, listening to each other.
To listen is to learn and to love.
But here is something else that is true, for me and I hope for you. I don’t like to be cut off in traffic. I will honk my horn. Listening is different from being quiet. I listen well, and I also stand in my space more fully than ever. When it’s my time, I will speak. And so should you, always. And I hope people listen out of respect, for the sake of love, and to learn.
Karen Stiller is the author of The Minister’s Wife: a memoir of faith, doubt, friendship, loneliness, forgiveness and more (Tyndale House, 2020), host of the Faith Today podcast, and a senior editor of Faith Today magazine. www.karenstiller.com