Ministry

January 10, 2010

The Eleventh Commandment Reverend Don Vaughn-Foerster

Do you ever talk back to your radio or television set?  Sometimes I do.  I even talk back to my computer on those occasions when it tells me a “fatal error” has occurred and I don’t know what to do about it.  And sometimes on radio or TV something especially over-boastful or blatant is said that makes me respond.  Political speeches and congressional hearings, especially, affect me that way.  In fact, if I don’t watch myself I’m liable to carry on a running dialogue with those so-called information technology gadgets, half–way expecting that my comments are being heard at the other end.  But, as we all know, the TV and radio have no means as yet of letting me interrupt the monologue they constantly pour forth. 

In a sobering way, this characteristic of radio and TV (and to Sender Only email) can be applied to many people, too – people who normally function only as “senders” in encounter with others; people who hardly ever seem to “receive” from anyone else.  But what is useful in a radio set is a hindrance in human relations.  Admittedly, there are some people who we might wish were more like radios (as the old joke goes) in that they had an on-off switch in the middle of their foreheads that we could reach over and flip whenever we wanted the floor.  But this wouldn’t really remove their most irritating habit – the habit of never hearing messages we send them.  Such people, like TV sets, only need an audience, never a partner, while they run their verbal marathon.  Sometimes I get the feeling email works much the same way, although the reply/reply all buttons give us a chance at least to respond – and perhaps to get into more trouble than we expect, since we cannot see how our response is being received.  

If such a mono-directional communication on the part of others were only irritating, perhaps it could be tolerated without too many qualms.  After all, each person has every right to be who he or she most genuinely is, and to be this way without undue interference from others.  However, the characteristic of always talking and never hearing is not just irritating, it is insidious.  It is at the root of many of the problems of living together that we encounter every day.  It is a sign of an underlying, uncaring opaqueness toward other people, an opaqueness that seals off one person from another and prevents open, honest interchanges from occurring.  This is one of the ways that guarantees that misconceptions and suspicions that have been mutually held in the past will continue to exist in the future.  One is led to suspect that, if people would get past their opaqueness and hear one another, many of the imperfections of our lives together could be at least dealt with a lot better, if not done away with completely. 

But hearing is a difficult art.  We usually think that it only involves paying attention to the words another person has to say and checking these words for coherence, logic, and verifiability.  Or, at the very least, we think it only involves being appropriately quiet with the appearance of concern on our faces as the other person is speaking.  Furthermore, few of us ever doubt that we hear what is actually going on around us, although we may only be half-listening in a superficial way.  When we really listen, we’re, sometimes, quite surprised.  We may even learn how out of touch with reality we have been, and how beyond logic and proofs the whole process of communication actually is.  We may learn what Walt Whitman meant when, in his “Song of Myself”, he drops this profound remark:  “Logic and sermons never convince.  The damp of night drives deeper into my soul.”  We may learn that actually to hear is to experience the other person, not simply to let their messages run through our heads. 

Many years ago, while I was still a lay leader in a UU fellowship, I knew a woman who was quite sure that she could hear other people.  She was a woman of great abilities and persuasive powers.  She could hear a problem described, analyze it, and, often, prescribe an appropriate solution.  People respected this capacity in her.  But she never did really seem to hear anyone else’s ideas about themselves.  She especially never heard her son.  Her son tried to tell her how her understanding of his abilities and her aspirations for him did not fit his aspirations and his understanding of himself. 

This young man struggled into his late teens trying to get his message through to his mother.  For a while he did his best to please her, but he ended doing his worst to hurt her.  It was tragic that, by the time she realized this, the son had long forgotten what it was he had been trying to tell her and all either of them had left was a sick relationship – misery for her and institutionalization for him. 

Of course this is an extreme case of poor listening and emotional opaqueness toward others.  And there may be other psychological diagnoses that apply.  But we are all familiar with other examples, such as the inevitable divorce that comes about when one partner refuses to hear as valid the complaints of the other, or such as the person who wanders from job to job because he hears only the instructions he wants to follow. 

Also, there is a familiar, less tragic but still frustrating, phenomenon known as the discussion group which ceases to be a discussion and becomes the occasion for platform statements by some of its most outspoken members.  It’s an unusual group of people who can long endure actually listening to each other making platform statements. 

Another phenomenon, which occurs too frequently even among us so-called open-minded liberals, is the single-minded leader; the leader who is so convinced of the correctness of his or her views that anything that questions these views is disregarded or automatically declared erroneous.  Such persons go opaquely on their way, leading others in a direction others do not want to go until these others simply disappear or become mere reflections of the leader. 

As to why we can be this way, I don’t really have much of an answer.  For centuries there has been a theological suspicion that people are deaf to one another because the whole human race once turned (or perennially turns) a deaf ear to its Creator.  Now, I don’t buy this notion in its usual orthodox rendition with serpents and apples and gardens and conniving female prototype.  But I do suspect there is a rebellious self concern within most of us that resents any kind of infringement from outside ourselves. 

There is, also, what we might call an evolutionary factor that hinders our genuine listening to one another.  “Man is in the making still” is something of a white Anglo Sexist proverb that appeared in one of our UU hymns.  One big reason for our difficulty in having full and effective communications between ourselves may, simply, be that we haven’t evolved to our full potential stature as communicating beings.  It may be that we fail in ideal speaking and hearing because at this point in the history of our species we are not fully able to live up to the full potential of our human faculties. 

And then there is the Freudian notion of the Unconscious that indicates we are pushed by our instincts, desires, and hungers so that we do not hear what our neuroses find uncomfortable.  This is quite like a story I heard about some folks who were new to boating.  They couldn’t get their brand new 22 foot boat going.  It was sluggish, no matter how much power they applied.  After about an hour of trying to make it go, they putt-putted it into a marina, where a topside check revealed that everything was in perfect working order.  Then a marina guy jumped in the water to check underneath.  He came up almost choking with laughter.  Under the boat, still strapped securely in place, was the trailer. 

Now, recent decades have seen a turning away from Freud, but people still drag along subterranean – or should I say submarine-er – baggage that slows them down and keeps them from recognizing their own true motivations.  And if you don’t recognize what you’re dragging along with you below the water line, you surely can’t be very quick to pick up where you are, who you are with, and what it all means. 

Take your choice of any (or all) of these or of whatever else you think may be reasons for us often to be opaque and slow to take a responsive attitude toward each other.  The fact remains: we will forever be divided and divisive until we can bring ourselves to hear accurately and fully and to speak honestly and genuinely with one another.  True community requires full communication.  Until we achieve this, we will litter our world with wars and disagreements and tragically broken personal lives that could be avoided were we able really to hear and understand one another.  Perhaps that’s why a Garfield cartoon has some truth to it.  Garfield walks past Jon, his master, and says hello.  Then, immediately, he says goodbye.  After which he thinks to himself that avoiding the stuff between “hello/goodbye” is the key to a good relationship. 

The saving grace in all this is the often ignored fact that we do know a lot to do about this situation.  There is no reason for us to get “hung up” on speculations about why all this came about, although theological suspicions, the incompleteness of humanity, and the Unconscious certainly have parts to play.  We have had good advice for centuries on what to do.  We have made some evolutionary advances.  The modern poet, John Holmes (who, by the way was a Unitarian,) in his poem, “The Eleventh Commandment,” especially, points to what to do.  He reminds us that speaking alone is not enough; also required is a radically alert listening that most of us really can shake off our sleepiness and bemusement to attain.  Holmes, in mid 20^th century patriarchal English, said, “Man, if he means to live, shall hold his whole mind at ready awake.”  And, looking beyond his pre-feminist use of language, we must agree.  It follows that anyone speaking to us simply can’t be heard in the full context of his or her thought if we don’t give full attention.  And our attention is ours to give. 

Along with Holmes, a whole host of others (down to and including modern communications engineers, sociologists, and psychologists) have pointed out that we have the power to be honest and open with each other.  We can speak genuinely, sensibly, and coherently.  We really can listen to one another if we will.  Many competent people have warned us that we should not only be quiet, not only examine the words we hear for their logic and proofs, but that we should be open to the speaker – that we should affirm the reality and presence of the person who speaks, affirm that person’s worth as a valid human speaker, and experience the full context of what is going on; that is, we should see posture and behavior and try to feel what they feel.  We are assured that we can participate in whole communication.  Furthermore, we know deep within ourselves that to do this doesn’t require any great theoretical knowledge of what steps in the communication process may be or of why things can become distorted. 

The thing that is required of us is actually a volitional act, a matter of will.  We must decide to hear more than the logic or the proofs or the words themselves.  We must try to hear meaning and to receive it – to let our yea be yea and our nay be nay, as runs the ancient advice.  We must really listen.  If we do this, our own speech will be improved for, having truly heard another person, we will come to know what it means to be heard. 

Many years ago, before ever I was in theological school, Gordon Allport, known as the father of positive, health-oriented psychology, made the most telling observation on what it takes to listen, to hear one another.  Allport pointed out that our innate “will-to-self-disclosure” is necessary for us to perceive the other person.  By this he meant that the reason the other person may not hear us may lie within, not them, but us.  Allport said we must stand aside from efforts to impress others, efforts to put on an act for them in order to hide our true thoughts and feelings.  Otherwise, we will not see them as ­they are.  That is, it is our own refusal to speak truly ourselves that makes it difficult to hear what others are trying to tell us.  He observes that our capacity to hear and to be heard lies in our capacity to be honest and open.  The one of us who first breaks the circle of self-concealment and self-misrepresentation is the one who stimulates true communication and takes the first step toward true community.  To turn it around:  our own hearing improves as we become more genuine in what we say.  This is an act that lies within the capacity of each person here. 

And so, this is my suggestion this morning.  We can quit being loudspeakers that swim like fish in a sea of misunderstanding.  We can enter into genuine give-and-take.  A mother can hear her son, a husband his wife, a leader his or her co-workers – if they are willing to disclose themselves to the others.  We must be willing to stake our “reputations” on what we really are and not on how we prefer to be known.  People see through us more often than we realize anyway, so the risk is not as great as we might imagine.  If we decide to, we can overcome our non-hearing, our uncaring opaqueness toward others.  If we decide to do so we can move toward a genuine openness with one another – toward a transparency of self that does not thrust itself upon others but simply allows what we are to be unconcealed, unhidden from the other’s glance.  If we do this then, even in the act of speaking, our hearing will improve and the other person will be more likely to enter into honest dialogue and community with us.