There's a story of the Trappist monastery in which the monks had taken a vow of "perpetual silence." One of them, after 5 years of observing the rule, finally broke the silence one evening at supper to say, "I don't like the way they fix the potatoes around here." Five more years of silence elapsed, and then another monk, sitting across the table, said, "I like the way they fix the potatoes around here." Five more years went by without a word being spoken, and then a third monk said, "I can't stand all this bickering." Just like the typical Unitarian Universalist church. This is a sermon about listening.
"Do you hear what I hear?" That is the refrain of a popular holiday song, but, taken literally, is sobering indeed. What we mostly hear today is the endless canned music of the season, the deafening roar of Hollywood's holiday blockbuster movies, or the hucksters - political and commercial - vying for our attention.
There are, of course, other, lovelier sounds: the beauty of a congregation singing carols, the hushed whispers of children as they hear the rustle of package-wrapping, the familiar voices of loved ones returning for the holidays.
Ours is a noisy culture. One might even say it is stridently noisy. The evidence is clear. I wonder when people learned that it was all right to share the sounds of one's stereo with all within a block's radius. I wonder who invented the notion that commercials had to be at a decibel level doubling the entertainment presumably provided. I wonder who decided that musically - louder is better. I wonder who decided that silence was not politically correct.
Take these observations: "Listen! A cell phone is chirping. Answer it quickly, before someone else does.. . . The pager interrupts lectures, sermons, second acts, and funerals. Everywhere a new song begins before the last one ends, as though to guard us against even the potential of silence."[1]
We are in the middle of a global communications network which "encroaches on the old world of direct experience, of authentic, unadorned events with their particular, unadorned sounds." We are experiencing a "brave new cacophony,"[2] victims of "aural refuge."[3] Silence to escape all this, is a commodity. Humanity has learned to "pave the world with sound."[4]
"Modern life with its din of canned music and commercial entreaty, trains us not to attend but to tune out. There is much to hear, but little worth listening to."[5]
In short, listening has become a lost art. So overwhelmed are we by the noise of a raucous pop culture we are in danger of losing the capacity to hear the music of the spheres, the subtle cosmic sounds, the inner music that stirs at our deepest levels, the impassioned and colorful language of our fellow pilgrims.
And so my prescription for this onslaught of noise - as we prepare for the new millennium - is to refine our capacity to listen. It may be our saving grace. I became fascinated with this possibility when I read Unitarian Universalist poet John Holmes' 1956 Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard University, "The Eleventh Commandment." It turns out the eleventh commandment is "Listen!" Leave it to the poets to upset familiar and comfortable habits.
As an older friend remarked many years ago, "Three years to learn how to speak and a lifetime to learn how to listen."[6] My default mode is to talk; listening requires extra effort. I suspect most Unitarian Universalists are more speakers than listeners.
We would hardly see ourselves in the tradition of Christianity's desert fathers whose mode was silent contemplation. It was said of Abbot Agatho that for three years "he carried a stone in his mouth until he learned to be silent."[7] No, our mode is that of the ancient Greek orator Demosthenes, who carried pebbles in his mouth, not to practice silence, but to improve his capacity for speech.
Another story from the tradition of the desert fathers has immediate applicability in this house of worship. Sometimes we are so intensely engaged in worship we may drift into unconsciousness and take advantage of the opportunity for what I call spiritual rest. It seems "some old men came to Abba Poemen and said to him, 'When we see brothers dozing at (worship), shall we rouse them so that they will be watchful?' Abba Poemen said to them, 'For my part when I see a brother who is dozing, I put his head on my knees and let him rest.'"[8]
Of course, many among us are professional listeners - I among them. In fact, the most important thing I have learned about counseling in nearly 40 years of ministry is to listen well. That is not as easy as it may seem. It is hard work, and more than once I have felt drowsy listening to a troubled congregant - not because I was disinterested in his or her story - but because it is simply very hard work. I do not know how those who counsel in 50-minute segments all day long do it. Talking is so much easier.
Such therapeutic listening requires paying attention to the attitude of the body as much as to the words; it demands listening with what has been called "the third ear," listening to the whole person, peeling off layers of words as we seek to discern what is really being said and why; it insists we note not only words actually spoken but thoughts and feelings intended, but not articulated. One listens not only analytically - trying to understand the pattern of a life story - but empathetically - genuinely caring how that story unfolds and where it is going.
It is harder and harder to get away from noise so that one can really listen to something significant. Paradoxically, noise makes it very hard to listen. Robert Frost used to tell about his problem as a college student. He was awaiting admittance to a student fraternity and was told confidentially that only one factor was delaying his entry: the fact that he took long walks in the woods by himself. He had been "caught red-handed engaging in solitude."[9]
Now, I love people and I love to be with people - much of the time. But there are moments when I want my solitude. Why? Not only because I prepare these sermons sequestered in my church office or home study, but because I need time and space to listen to the voice within. What is that voice within? "Silence," Herman Melville wrote only five years before withdrawing from writing more or less for good, "is the only Voice of our God."[10]
I once thought I heard the voice of God quite distinctly - as a teenager I was confident I was directly wired into the Great Cosmic Brain. I am not so confident now that what I hear of that deep inner voice is God - or simply my psyche functioning at its best.
The source of the inner voice is a hot topic in religious and psychological circles. One of the most provocative theories I have heard has to do with the origins of consciousness. It has been suggested that some of the ancient philosophical prophets, Homer for instance, believed the ideas rattling around in their brains were not their thoughts at all, but the urgent voice of the Muse.
The Hebrew prophets of ancient Israel believed that Yahweh had whispered in their ears. What they heard and related was not their own inner voice of conscience, but the voice of their God. They had no concept of personal consciousness - that I, the individual, can have thoughts of my own. Thus, time and again, we hear the prophets concluding some spiritual or ethical pronouncement with the refrain, "Thus saith the Lord." As my Bible professor so colorfully put it, the prophets believed they were "mouthpieces for God."[11]
It is one of the great breakthroughs in human evolution that now we can believe that the loftiest ethical/spiritual ideals are creations of the human mind and heart. That is one of the key elements of the Unitarian Universalist faith. I believe the voice of God is really the voice of the human being at its best.
What does it mean to listen? There is an old folk tale from the Christian tradition about the saintly Brother Bruno, who was at prayer one night when he found his concentration interrupted by the loud croaking of a bullfrog. He kept trying to ignore the noise, but the harder he tried to concentrate the more annoying the sound became.
Finally he leaned out of his window and shouted, "Quiet! I'm at my prayers!" Instantly there was complete silence, as the bullfrog and every other creature obeyed his command. Brother Bruno settled back into prayer, but now he found himself even more deeply disturbed by a nagging doubt: Why would God create the bullfrog and its rasping voice unless there was something pleasing in the sound? Could it be that Bruno's own prayer sounded, to God's ears, like the arrogant croaking of another sort of frog?
Bruno could not push away this uneasiness, and so he finally leaned out his window again and gave the command, "Sing!" The throaty croak of the bullfrog again filled the air, along with all the other creatures that had fallen silent. Brother Bruno listened carefully to the sound, and to his amazement he discovered that it was beautiful. Once he no longer resisted it as noise, the joyful concert actually enriched the peacefulness of the night. With that discovery, Bruno understood for the first time in his life what it really meant to pray.[12]
Contemplative listening is not problem-solving, but more like prayer. Life is a problem to be solved, to be sure, but it is also a mystery to be entered, plumbed, lived. Spiritual listening helps us embrace life in all its ambiguity, ambivalence, paradox, failure.
Whether or not praying is our spiritual choice, we would do well to concentrate on listening - deep listening - especially in this season when we might hear angel voices - if not the mythical angels of the Jesus' birth - then words of wisdom from the prophets of the human spirit - words of compassion from our neighbors, songs of beauty from humanity's musical artists.
Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard said of his efforts at the contemplative life: "In proportion as I became more and more earnest in prayer, I had less and less to say, and in the end I became quite silent."[13]
Poet Adrienne Rich writes,
"A lifetime is too narrow to understand it all
Beginning with the huge rockshelves
That underlie all that life.
But there comes a time
(perhaps this is one of them)
when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die;
when we have to pull back
from the incantations
the rhythms we've moved to thoughtlessly,
and disenthrall ourselves,
bestow ourselves to silence,
or a severer listening."[14]
But it is hard to listen in a multi-tasking culture. There are too many voices vying for our attention. The volume has been turned up too high. There are too many things to do, and so we try to do several of them at once. How many times have I caught myself, in a long, phone conversation, flicking my computer keys to bring up the next task. How many times when on the phone I try to type just a few more words that I don't want to forget. How often, when engaged in dialogue bordering on debate, do I fail to listen as I prepare to speak.
Language is one of the great inventions of humankind. The Tower of Babel story in Genesis revealed just how important speech is to the human species, even though we have developed too many languages to count. Language is one of the distinctive characteristics of human beings - probably more important than the prehensile thumb, walking upright, even making tools. It is the way we understand and express our humanity.
But as my late colleague Jacob Trapp reminded us,
"If it is language that makes us human, one half of language is to listen.
Silence can exist without speech, but speech cannot live without silence.
Listen to the speech of others. Listen even more to their silence.
To pray is to listen to the revelations of nature, to the meaning of events.
To listen to music is to listen also to silence,
and to find the stillness deepened and enriched."[15]
And so, this holiday and holy day season may we remember that one-half of language is to listen.
While we are so tempted to speak, let us choose our times and our words carefully, as if those words were much fine gold.
Let us go out under the December sky and listen for celestial music beneath all the hubbub of the busy city and the frantic season.
Let us practice silent listening - alone and in the great congregation - receptive to what might come if only we empty ourselves of the noise that prevents its reception in us. Let us remember that while life is in part a problem to be solved, it is also a mystery to be lived if we will only listen to its voice.
As John Holmes concludes his poem:
"So Moses brought the eleventh commandment down,
Knowing his will stir, his blood hasten
That the word be said aloud, the word be known,
That on it all men might take hold and fasten
On it, and hear it in all tongues: Listen.
He lifted the tablets up before them saying
The word that gave them all words: Listen."[16]
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