Listening

Listening is one of the most powerful things we can do. It's also one of the hardest things to do, partly because its intimacy leads to responsibility and partly because it requires us to set aside what we have to say.

I see the power and the difficulty of listening at work all the time. People on two sides of some issue lock horns, hearing only what they say themselves. Sometimes a third party can come along and find a way through the impasse just by listening to what both sides are really saying.

I'm slowly learning to do this with my kids too, to listen not just to their words or their attitudes but to the hurt or fear or concern (however silly it seems to an adult) behind them. It's difficult because I have to think of them rather than myself, to set aside my own hurt at what they have said to me in order to listen to their heart, and to believe that what they have to say is at least as important as what I have to say. It is, of course, powerful for those same reasons.

This understanding of the power of listening is behind the StoryCorps project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to listening to, and recording, what everyday people all over the country have to say. These stories can be heard on public radio, read in a book called Listening Is an Act of Love, and will be archived in the Library of Congress. StoryCorps has declared November 28, the day after Thanksgiving, the National Day of Listening, an opportunity for us all to take time to listen to the people around us, to remind them, and ourselves, that everyone matters enough to be heard and remembered.

So, if you can tear yourself away from the after-Thanksgiving sales for a little while (who has money to spend anyway, right?), take some time to listen to someone, whether a grandparent, a child, a neighbor, or the person taking your order at a restaurant. Who knows? When you give the gift of listening, you just might walk away with an unexpected gift yourself.

Heaven and Hell

I stumbled across this on an internet forum:

A big, burly samurai comes to a Zen master and says,"Tell me the nature of heaven and hell."

The Zen master looks him in the face and says,"Why should I tell a scruffy, disgusting, miserable slob like you? A worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything?"

Consumed by rage, the samurai draws his sword and
raises it to cut off the master's head. The Zen master says, "That's hell."
Instantly, the samurai understands that he has just created his own hell- black and hot, filled with hatred, self-protection, anger, and resentment. He sees that he was so deep in hell that he was ready to kill someone. Tears fill his eyes as he puts his palms together to bow in gratitude for this insight.
The Zen Master says, "That's heaven."

If you like Blue Man Group...

...you might enjoy this very creative video of three high school students performing on their PVC pipe instrument!

Smallness

I thought Felicity's comment on my last post about gorillas in the Congo deserved a whole post. Felicity said, "I was also strangely encouraged by that story when I saw it this morning! I felt small (in a good way)." Feeling small--now there's something we don't usually celebrate!

I know I've posted about this before, but I think one of the tragedies of modern life is that we've insulated ourselves enough from the "wildness" of the world that we've forgotten how small we are. And, yes, I'm just as bad as anyone in this area, maybe worse (just ask my wife). I think I may have linked to the post on Living Small about bear season on a previous blog, but this story (and Felicity's comment) made me think of it again. Here's a quote from the author about her response to an encounter with a grizzly near her home in Montana:

Although I won’t be heading up Suce Creek alone for another month or so, until the bears’ food supplies have started to kick in in the high country, knowing that the bears are here is one of the reasons I choose to live in this part of the world. I like living among people who know we’re not the top of the food chain, and who are working so hard to keep it that way. My encounter with the bear last year, while terrifying, was deeply thrilling. That’s the paradox — it’s those things that scare the wee out of us that keep us sane, that keep us in touch with what’s real. The world is real — its not actually in our heads — and sometimes it takes a big old bear standing uphill and woofing at us to remind us of that.

Perhaps a combination of fear and the basic hubris of humanity, the outsized view of our own importance, lies behind a lot of our difficulty with seeing how small we are. Maybe this author is right: we need big grizzly bears and great white sharks and man-eating tigers to remind us that we are not quite so mighty as we like to think. These predators (along with tiny viruses and massive natural disasters) certainly make me feel tiny!

I think another reason western culture in particular is uncomfortable with human smallness may come directly from the way a largely christian society has understood god's blessing to humankind in Genesis 1:28. Here's the New American Standard version of this verse:

God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

Notice the language used: subdue, rule. It's the kind of language that produced the crusades, colonialism, and slavery. More recently, we have carried on that tradition by wiping out animal and plant habitats and generally shooting ourselves in the foot environmentally speaking. Ever been on a cruise? Did you know many if not most of those ships still dump all of their waste at sea? Who cares? The ocean's big, right? We're the rulers; it's all here for us, right?

I don't pretend to understand the original languages, but I like Eugene Peterson's more nuanced version of this in the Message:

God spoke: "Let us make human beings in our image, make them
reflecting our nature
So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea,
the birds in the air, the cattle,
And, yes, Earth itself,
and every animal that moves on the face of Earth."
God created human beings;
he created them godlike,
Reflecting God's nature.
He created them male and female.
God blessed them:
"Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!
Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,
for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth."

Wow. "Be responsible for..." That's so different! Or is it? Doesn't a good leader truly see themselves as the servant of those they lead? Why do we get this so wrong when we consider the world we are a part of? How did we go from "be responsible for" to "use up"?

Barbara Kingsolver, one of my favorite authors, wrote a bestselling novel called The Poisonwood Bible about an American family's misguided missionary adventure in the Congo during the 1950's. Her fictional family definitely went there to subdue and rule. One of the daughters of this family grows up to study parasitology (which she experienced firsthand in the Congo!) and tells how she comes to terms with what she learns:

As a teenager reading African parasitology books in the medical library, I was boggled by the array of creatures equipped to take root upon a human body. I'm boggled still, but with a finer appreciation for the partnership. Back then I was still a bit appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microbes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting for the dollies. We and our vermin all blossomed together out of the same humid soil in the Great Rift Valley, and so far no one is really winning. Five million years is a long partnership. If you could for a moment rise up out of your own beloved skin and appraise ant, human, and virus as equally resourceful beings, you might admire the accord they have all struck in Africa.

Regardless of what you think about creation, evolution, or original sin, there is just a lot about this world that does not seem to be here for our benefit. I suspect this is what the writer of Genesis was getting at when he wrote down the story of the garden of Eden. This god sees not only human suffering, but knows when a sparrow falls. It makes me feel small, but it also makes me feel part of something big.

Some good news for once

Sometimes listening to the news can be quite depressing (OK, most of the time listening to the news can be quite depressing), so an occasional bit of good news is always welcome. I read this morning about a recent survey that found an undiscovered population of western lowland gorillas in the Congo which meant a dramatic increase in the total estimated numbers remaining. How often do you get to hear that?

I know some people won't understand why this report makes me happy given all the awful things happening in that part of the world (gorillas are just animals, aren't they?), but I felt a tremendous lift of my spirits. There is still great danger of extinction for most primates across the world, but one has a little better chance than we thought. It is a triumph of life in a world where we humans tend to forget (or ignore) how interconnected all of life is.

Rain

Well, we didn't get twenty inches of rain like south Texas, but we have gotten enough in the last few days that dams on ponds and lakes are in danger, basements are flooding, and roads are closed all over northeast Missouri. One of the little towns I pass through on my way to work appeared to be on a hill in a large lake. When I reached Kirksville, the highway patrol had a roadblock setup and sent me back down the road to find another way into town due to flood fears.

I would say I have about a 50-50 shot of being able to get home from work tonight. Ugh.

Pooh, the sage

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "What's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully.

"It's the same thing," he said.

--from Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne

Maturity

"Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults."

--Peter De Vries

Chicken soup for the Luddite soul

Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.

--Swiss playwright Max Frisch

Audacity's Reward

A few weeks ago, Amy had a two-day class in Jefferson City for her position as a breast-feeding peer counselor at the health department. I tagged along for a mini-vacation. While there, one of the things I had the chance to do was visit the Missouri capitol for the first time. I admired the solid construction, the attractive statues and decorations, the elegant interior (one of the nicest public restrooms I've seen!), and visited the museum that fills the central hall. From all of this, I came away with three strong impressions: the beauty of the capitol building, the predominance of weapons and war in the museum, and the shame of the legacy of slavery in Missouri.

In particular, I was struck immediately by the juxtaposition of violence and slavery in the museum. The most common exhibits were guns, uniforms, models of ships and cannons, and other remembrances of the war and death, from battles with Native Americans, the horror of the Civil War, and the immense machinery of the World Wars. The most moving exhibit, on the other hand, was easily the room that was filled with both written and oral accounts from former slaves of their everyday lives, a room which I left blinking back tears and filled with horror at man's ability to hate. Could it be that there is some relationship between a culture that has so embraced violence and a culture that found it possible to justify the atrocity of slavery?

I happen to live in a small, rural community with almost no ethnic minorities. As recently as eight or nine years ago, I had neighbors who referred to all black people using the "n-word." Rumor has it that many people in town opposed bringing in new industry (there really isn't any "old" industry) because they didn't want "those damn Mexicans" coming in to work the factory. My older son came home from school last year with stories of his teacher talking about "the black people trying to take over our country who should all go back to Africa where they belong." Amy and I were livid when we heard this and spoke to the teacher. It turned out that the teacher said nothing of the sort, and that he heard it from some students in his class (who doubtless heard this from their parents). We were relieved...sort of.

All of this makes me by turns sad and angry and ashamed. It also makes me worry a bit since our youngest son, adopted from Kazakhstan, has dark skin and Asian features. This may not be the easiest town for him to grow up in. In general I'm somewhat of a pacifist, but the mindless hate that sometimes rears its head here brings me as close to considering violence as anything., and yes, I see the irony in that. Of course, most of the people of this town are welcoming and more tolerant; but even some of them unconsciously use language that is demeaning to minorities without realizing it.

Considering the legacy of hate that lingers so stubbornly in our hearts sometimes makes me almost despair. Amy had a conversation with someone in our area last fall who said they thought the country might be ready to have a woman president, but surely not a black man. Last night, Barack Obama leaped the first hurdle to prove them wrong, and I felt a swell of pride. Whatever you think of Mr. Obama or his politics, I agree with the post my brother-in-law wrote: I am thankful to be alive to see this happen. I am thrilled by the thought that we can rise above our past, that we can make our hearts bigger than they were, that we can say no to bigotry and hatred.

Barack Obama is just a man, with all of the failures and frailties common to our species. He is not the savior of America, and I don't expect him to make everything turn out right if he wins. Even so, I am immensely proud of him. He has managed to overcome the race barrier that is part of our nation's shame, and he did it not through recrimination and anger, but through reconciliation and hope.

Good for him.