Dear Members and Friends,
Are you looking for a place to belong and to seek meaning here at UU Westport? Given our monthly theme is Deep Listening, I want to lift up the significance of participating in “deep listening” groups. I am grateful to Sari Bodi, Dorothy Rich, and Randy Burnham for their thoughtful sharing this past Sunday to this theme–and the thirteen people who expressed interest in participating in either a Soul Matters theme-based group or another deep listening small group.
Here at UU Westport, we have women’s groups, men’s groups, social justice teams, service groups, affinity groups like the hiking group and movie group, all of which provide opportunities to get to know others.
For twenty years, this congregation has also offered “covenant” or intentional listening groups that are specifically held for the sake of learning how to share and listen openly, where members meet monthly, get to know one another’s stories, and literally listen one another into greater insights. They have the name “covenant” groups because the covenant includes letting the facilitator know if you are going to miss and any other agreements that the group would like to hold to.
Six years ago, the Soul Matters small group program began with monthly themes, monthly themes that can be engaged in our children and throughout the congregation. While several small groups from the earlier model continue as well, what’s important to me is that this opportunity is open to all who would benefit, both newcomers and long-timers alike. Whether groups use the Soul Matters curriculum or not is not as important to me as whether everyone who would benefit from meeting monthly with others has the opportunity to do so.
This is a good time for new Soul Matters groups and other deep listening groups to begin and/or welcome new members. If this is something you would like to explore, I invite you to do one of two things:
- First, let me know by responding to this email or filling out the link that will be in SOUNDINGS. I’m curious whether you would like 1) to meet in person or online, 2) which weekdays, evenings, or weekends are best for you.
- Second, drop in on a small group format using the Soul Matters themes that I will host on a monthly basis. I want as many people who are curious or interested to get a taste of what this kind of meeting is like. I will schedule this drop-in group at a time that works for as many of you who respond as possible.
I may facilitate more than one group, with one that will be online. Ultimately, it’s not the location that matters, it’s the connection that matters. It’s a funny thing, for some people, talking with people online allows for deeper sharing. While for others, meeting in person is far more meaningful. If enough of you are interested, I’m committed to creating new groups, some online and others in person.
Below are a few of my favorite passages/poems on the topic of open or deep listening. During the coming weeks that promise to hold a lot of anxiety and uncertainty, may you find times to listen for the small, still voice within, whether in your private spiritual practice or in the spiritual practice of intentionally listening and sharing with others.
Warmly,
Alan
“Has my heart gone to sleep?” by Antonia Machado
Have the beehives of my dreams
stopped working, the waterwheel
of the mind run dry,
scoops turning empty,
only shadow inside?
No, my heart is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
Not asleep, not dreaming—
its eyes are opened wide
watching distant signals, listening
on the rim of vast silence.
Howard Thurman, from Meditations of the Heart
How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by!
The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic;
Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences,
While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull.
The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives?— what are the motives that order our days?
What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go?
Over and over the questions beat in upon the waiting moment.
As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes
of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind—
A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear.
It moves directly to the core of our being.
Our questions are answered, our spirits refreshed,
and we move back into the traffic of our daily round
With the peace of the Eternal in our step.
How good it is to center down!
“Ring of Support” taken from Sheltered in the Heart by Gunilla Norris
How much we long to be understood. Fundamentally … understanding … is a profound spaciousness that grants another person the chance to be known from their own perspective and revealed in their history, their joys, their sorrows, their struggles and strengths. When we really understand one another that way it is like making a beautiful ring of support. The jewel of the Self is given a setting in which to be held and seen.
“Generous Listening” taken from Becoming Wise by Krista Tippett
Generous listening is powered by curiosity, a virtue we can invite and nurture in ourselves to render it instinctive. It involves a kind of vulnerability—willingness to be surprised, to let go of assumptions and take in ambiguity. The listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other, and patiently summons one’s own best self and one’s own best words and questions.
Generous listening in fact yields better questions. It’s not true what they taught us in school; there is such a thing as a bad question. In American life, we trade mostly in answers–competing answers–and in questions that corner, incite, or entertain. In journalism we have a love affair with the “tough” question, which is often an assumption masked as an inquiry and looking for a fight…My only measure of the strength of a question now is in the honesty and eloquence it elicits.
If I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned this: a question is a powerful thing, a mighty use of words. Questions elicit answers in their likeness. Answers mirror the questions they rise, or fall, to meet. So while a simple question can be precisely what’s needed to drive to the heart of the matter, it’s hard to meet a simplistic question with anything but a simplistic answer. It’s hard to transcend a combative question. But it’s hard to resist a generous question. We all have it in us to formulate questions that invite honesty, dignity, and revelation. There is something redemptive and life-giving about asking a better question.
