I hear it often, “Are you listening?”
Being with another person we often sense that the person is pleading, “Please listen.”
As much as anything else, people need to be listened to. Nothing enhances our feelings of worth more than being listened to? When you listen to me you say, “I value you. You are important. I will hear and receive what you say.”
When you really listen to a person, listen with ears and a heart that hears, it becomes revelation, and the Spirit comes alive in the relationship. Martin Buber, a great Jewish thinker, spent his life seeking to share with others the importance of relations between “I and Thou.” For the clue to this meaning, he referred to the role of Spirit. “Spirit is not in the I but between the I and Thou.” That’s a sentence with a world of meaning. The Spirit is known in relationships – Buber would say only in relationships.
Perhaps not only, but certainly that is the primary mode and place of revelation of the Spirit—in relationship. So, when I listen, the gap between me and the person to whom I listen is bridged. A sensitivity comes that is not my own. I feel the pain, the frustrations, the anguish—sometimes feeling these and identifying a problem even when the other is not actually sharing the problem or these feelings. I listen in love and the miracle of I/Thou takes place, the sharing moves to the deep and intimate levels where the person and I really live. The Spirit opens doors, hearts and effects change.
The miraculous thing is that I do not have to have an answer for the person with whom I am sharing. In my listening I become the answer. Have you had that experience? If something specific is needed the Spirit reveals the “answer” in the listening relationship.
Are you listening?