Porch #129 * Listening Life Book Club .2
how to be a bad listener
Hey Friends ~
Welcome back to The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction Online Book Club!
Grab your dog-eared, underlined, highlighted copy of Adam McHugh's The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction and let's get this week’s conversation going! The discussion remains open for as long as you have something to say. And if you're not reading the book, no problem. There’s plenty of room at the table and we want to hear your voice.
Catch up or review here - Listening Life Book Club .1 It looks like we're all in very good company, yes? Adam's hit a raw nerve that's begging to be healed.
CHAPTER 4 - LISTENING TO SCRIPTURE
'Our goal is more than intellectual understanding. We work, pray and wait for understanding, but we do not treat it as the ultimate prize. If we seek more of the Bible, then we must bring more of ourselves to it. The "tools" that we use in interpretation are expanded: we do not require just a concordance and a Bible dictionary but humility, surrender, trust, hope. Along with our minds and our reasoning abilities, we bring our hearts, dreams and imaginations, and all the light and dark parts of our personalities. If we submit the deepest parts of ourselves to our listening, we have reason to believe that God will reveal deep parts of himself to us.'
CHAPTER 5 - LISTENING TO CREATION
'Something else drove me out into the wilderness: exhaustion. If you think you get tired of hearing your pastor preach, then imagine how tired your pastor gets of hearing himself preach. Being a pastor is a noble calling, yes, but it can also be a soul-draining one. On some days the bride of Christ seems more like the bride of Frankenstein. I know that human beings are the pinnacle of creation and that our fullest experiences with creation involve community. Feeling closer to God in nature than in church is an authentic feeling but not ultimately full biblical spirituality. Yet there is something healing about retreating into nature when the church has worn you out.'
CHAPTER 6 - LISTENING TO OTHERS
Let's head right over to page 139 to focus on one of the book's highlights - How to Be a Bad Listener. Adam writes, 'Let's be honest: there is some bad listening going on out there. The bigger problem may be that it's masquerading as good listening. Some people believe they are good listeners when they are not, and other people sometimes wrongly label others as good listeners. Here are a few of the usual suspects in the ongoing case of bad listening:
the one-up
the sleight of hand
the inspector
the reroute
the projector
the interrogation
the password
the hijack
the mechanic
the bone of contention
the deflector
the boomerang question’
When you're done laughing at the sheer absurdity of it all, which of these twelve culprits do you find to be most irritating? And which of these transgressors might you have unwittingly morphed into along the way?
'If you are using your silence to dwell on what is happening internally - to listen to your own inner monologue, to come up with more questions, to form a critique or a rebuttal, to prepare your own story or to otherwise focus less on what the other person is communicating and more on your thoughts about what the other person is communicating - then you are not listening well.'
What’s your biggest takeaway this week? Is there a prompting or an invitation in there for you?
Linda
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Hey Linda, thanks bunches for sharing The Listening Life Book Club with Sweet Tea & Friend this month.
This quote spoke to me: If we submit the deepest parts of ourselves to our listening, we have reason to believe that God will reveal deep parts of himself to us.
I want that!