Listening as an act of charity and faith

Listening seems like a simple and easy process. Sound travels, reaches our ears, and gets processed in our brain. But we know listening is a lot more complex than it sounds. It's harder than we think. It is especially more challenging to do today. 

We’re drowning in noise that includes a cacophony of voices all trying frenziedly to be heard. In a world described by author Susan Cain as “a world that cannot stop talking,” there are so many voices trying to be heard but very few people listening. There is an increasing imbalance in the listening-talking equation where the talking side far outweighs the listening side. In a two-way conversation, listening is the half that requires greater effort and humility. Theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, once said that “people forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.”

Today, it’s so much easier to just plug our ears with earbuds to listen to digital soundtracks rather than live human voices. How many of us can find the time to just sit down and listen to our neighbor, our peers, or even our loved ones? Our calendars are full and when someone wants to hang out and talk, it often must be scheduled. Most of us have turned to social media searching for someone to listen. How often do we find ourselves in the same room as another and yet not hear each other? Our phones can often get us sucked in. Physically, our body is present in one room but our mind is roaming in cyberspace somewhere. That makes listening a lot more difficult, almost always impossible. 

Paul Tillich, one of the most important Christian theologians of the last century, wrote:

“The first duty of love is to listen.” 

Listening is an act of faith, charity, and generosity. And as we know, nothing about any of that is easy.

But in a time of divisiveness and discord, listening might just be what we need to bridge the divide, to rebalance the dialogue equilibrium, and to remind us of our connectedness and our humanity.

May the act of praying to God teach us how to listen to our neighbors. Prayer for me is incomplete without listening to God. We're taught from childhood to say our prayers and so that outweighs the emphasis on the listening part of prayer. Let us not forget that in conversation and prayer, listening is an important first duty. 

"The beginning of prayer is silence. If we really want to pray we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks." - Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta