Deep thoughts by Derek! Take what blesses you…leave the rest.

Why listen well now? Excerpts from an interview I was doing this week on what I’ve learned from counseling people during these recent days: (just raw notes, if they bore you, read something else, or take which parts touch your hearts!)

 Been counseling lots in the wake and transition of these elections, refugee crisis, and many other global shakings we are all in the midst of, as a human family, and wrote down some observations so far…they are long, and might be boring to some, but still felt like sharing some insights I’ve had so far during all this global tumult going on. Really a crisis in interpretation, among other things. And I’d like to put forth that we interpret well, by listening well-that is, in Love. Felt like just putting some raw notes and observations out there as we go, to keep the real conversation going, as so much of what we see seems inchoate or hard to interpret these days. Loving listening, still matters to me, and seems to bear the best long term fruit. So here are some thoughts, i’ve been having.

The value of interviews now as a model of civil and loving conversations with one another!

 I love interviews as a format. I met the american Bill Moyers, a writer and interviewer, and his wife in Paris once-if you don’t know his work, he made most of the psychologist and religious thinkers of the previous generation known to the public, back in the day. When I met him, he listened really well to me. Listening well contains healing, and is a developable and needed gift now!

 On the same trip, i talked a man off a bridge, which may have been more important. He came off the bridge, after he felt someone concerned with his specific sufferings. He felt heard. That stuck with me—how listening well, can save lives.

  I also have always liked the interviewer Charlie Rose (an american interviewer)—there are some of his interviews which reveal the identities of those he is interviewing. But more importantly, he makes a safe space for people to share, even when he clearly doesn’t agree with them. I still appreciate that gift of empathy-“listening with and into another”, allowing a safe room for another to show up. People need that. All of us do regardless of our levels of impact.

 Reading a book now with the great german film maker and thinker Wim Wenders called “Inventing Peace”. Over half of it is in interview format. Still really learn the most from overhearing people just talking, and being themselves. The unformed or instantaneous thesis or hypothesis, we are still forming, and becoming…I think interviews and biographies are my favorite formats of learning and knowing. Intimate interviews reveal the soul. People gifted with good listening. I value good listeners. It helps us all become who we are. Let’s listen well to one another.

It’s a good time for good listeners. To become better ministers of reconciliation between races, genders, generations, and “classes” of people (although i believe we all are granted class as humans not based on outer wealth or appearance).

I’ve been thinking lots also lately of you have to contextualize your own suffering in global suffering to have any type or decent way of interpreting things. I would say if you just contextualize women or racial rights, for instance, just within the confines of your own country or nation’s history, you miss the big human story picture. What in us, wants to value others in terms of gender or ethicity etc. These seem like basic needed ways now; you have to at least take things back to the garden and the nature of human depravity, and the particular patterns of sin we inherited, as a starting point to look at human rights, for instance. The nature and ways of rebellion are in the human heart, and fortunately are able to be weeded out, if we start with ourselves.

I also think people will increasingly look to artist and cultural interpreters, interviewers, and comedians to interpret things in this season. We’ve seen this during the whole election process, in this particular country, when much of the media fell apart, or has moved in confusion and defense, but the comedians and actors, have offered some of the most honest talk about what is happening.

We saw it even a few nights ago with Meryl Streep, though i know what she said is controversial, and I won’t go into politics here—people took note, and I think are looking to artist and cultural interpreters, to speak the truth. This platform for honest discourse, will increase. As could the church’s and faith community’s voices, if it spoke well-in unison- and from the heart, and modeled a spirit of ecumenism, and kindness, now. Not just towards the “stranger” but towards one another. Having a unified spirit and voice, and real heart of love, and tone of love. And the heart’s ear, which it has access to, but needs to use now.

 I also think it is very important to re-contextualize conversations in authentic relationship! Real relational conversations generate authentic frames of interpretation. We come up with new ways of naming the issues, when we are being real with one another. This happens interpersonally, as well as between groups. There are so many fabricated categories of conversation, we have to create new ways of naming humanities heart issues now.

 This is huge, so that we don’t find ourselves moving in prefabricated frames of discourse, as one thinker put it. We actually need to be encountering the persons we are with, and have and create together, a unique language system to converse in; one which comes out of loving encounter with other. I thou—not I-it, in Martin Buber’s language.  This lets us collaborate together in naming, and this is a creative process which brings healing and transformation to both parties involved. When we really have encounters with one another’s deeper hearts, we are both changed! So this type of depth dialogue in Love is essential now!

  For example, just last night talking with my african friend. He said you are white man, I am black. I was thrown in jails lots of times not for being black, but for being human. We started there, and things went deeper. He did not see himself as a black man, or a minority (he had been delivered from that small category). He saw himself as a human, who like all of us, has struggles weaknesses, sin nature etc, and has tried to learn to love his brother.

 By the end of our talk, both of us had a deeper understanding of one another’s struggles. And neither of us, saw the other as a category of human, but rather as a real person. We were able to honor one another’s stories and personhood. That’s a huge success these days! We had to share lots of our story. I told him about being perceived as Jewish, about having an african half brother, about having Cherokee blood etc; he told me many things about his parent’s mixed racial marriage, and how he was perceived growing up.

 That’s the type of conversations we need to be having now. We need to be heart listening well to one another daily now. It overcomes more than racism, more than women and gay rights and all the other poorly framed issues of our day—which are often human identity issues in the end-it let’s us be family together as people.

 You rarely see this in the media, but it most often happens in interviews. To have non-projective relationships with people is to see them beyond my own categories of perception which i put on them; i have to actually listen and encounter them in His Love. This is most basic, especially when dealing with those you highly disagree with. Basic conflict management is needed in our times. And you can see this modeled with the best interviewers.

Along with this, we are taught in scriptures, that God’s spirit is where the greatest suffering is. So we move towards that place with others, to meet the One who is intimate with their and our sufferings. Not away from it. I think often we assume our own suffering is the greatest. Not so, according to the book.

Anyway, here are some things I’ve learned from my favorite interviewers: simple but i hope helpful…

 Find common ground. Don’t live in or appeal to the other’s or your own fear as a foundation for the conversation (the worst of daily tv), live proactively in love. Try to model what you believe in practical daily ways. Kindness is an action this season, and starts in the heart, and can be seen in your eyes. Try to listen well—that is in the tone of love. Have authentic ways of addressing and framing the issues which concern you. This allows for real dialogue about the underlying issues. Love especially those you firmly disagree with. And try to find that one area where you do agree as humans and amplify it as you talk. Go very basic with people’s concerns, discerning not just their thought or emotion, but their heart. What really concerns them about this issue. Start there.

 Sometimes you have to agree to disagree on topics, but you can still treat one another with real dignity and respect, regardless of gender, race or economic status. These are some basics, I’m practicing and trying remember in seasons of trauma, crisis and change. How to treat the human family stuff! Great potential now for mutual refinement through caring dialogue with one another. Let’s do at least that, for one another.

 Last night, that long talk with my african american friend, who had so much forgiveness in his heart, challenged me to be a better person. That’s what good listening can bring to us. And that is how it heals and blesses both people. Love your neighbor, partially means listening well in our times. I’m trying to. Hope you do too, this season friends. Let’s listen our ways into Love this season, and mutual positive change.