The uncommon hospitality of listening
There is a point in the movie Patch Adams where Patch and Carin are talking about Patch’s epiphany about how medicine should work. Carin expresses her distrust in Patch’s positive outlook on medicine, because people hurt people. Patch’s response always gets me, he asks her “and who hurt you?”. In most of our society this conversation would not have ended that way. It would have been arguments over the view of humans – if they are generally good or not. But Patch listens to what Carin is saying and is able to hear her pain between the words what the issue is for her and respond to what is being said. We live in a world that is geared to make noise and to be heard, but is quickly losing the skill of listening.
“Talkative people, for example, are rated as smarter, better-looking, more interesting, and more desirable as friends. Velocity of speech counts as well as volume: we rank fast talkers as more competent and likable than slow ones. The same dynamics apply in groups, where research shows that the voluble are considered smarter than the reticent – even though there’s zero correlation between the gift of gab and good ideas.”i
This tendency to favor the talkative is exacerbated when you consider how many of us listen only long enough to start the process of thinking what we are going to say next or how this is going to play on social media or should we take a picture or a video or … or … or … ad infinitum.
Our brains are structured in such a way as to allow us to both listen and process a response simultaneously. When listening to music, for example, our brains hear the music while processing the response of us tapping our toes in rhythm with the music (note this means your brain is actually parsing the music in real time to find the beat) and in many cases we are having an emotional response to the music as well.ii This ability to multitask should allow us to listen and process a verbal response at the same time, but it seems that most of us have not trained ourselves to actively listen while formulating a response.
The under-training of our listening skills has made it so that when a person takes the time to truly listen it is a gift given to the speaker. Hospitality is the act of making space for the other and in this regard taking the time to actively listen is in fact an act of hospitality.
The extroverted idealiii leads us to believe that we must respond quickly or we will seem unintelligent or worse yet detached from the conversation. The hospitality of listening means that we take the time to fully understand what is being said and only then process the appropriate response, which may actually be non-verbal.
Hospitality is inevitably an intimate practice. Whether we are letting people into our homes or feeding the homeless or giving aid to the infirmed we are providing a space in our lives to allow the other to find ontological value. In the moment of hospitality we are intimately connected to the person we are providing space to exist. In actively listening we are allowing the fullness of that person’s ideas to exist without interruption and we are intimately connected to them in that moment.
On several occasions I have had friends ask why I, an incredibly shy guy, like to preach. More often than not I respond joking that it is the only time I get to talk for twenty minutes without being interrupted. As much as I am joking in my response, it is funny only because it is true. Though if I am honest, I am pretty terrible at active listening myself. So much of my self understanding is tied up in how I respond to people that all too often I do not listen as actively as I should. Active listening is definitely a skill that I am learning, one that I think will be worth the work.
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About the Author
Sean Dean
An expat of the great state of Maine where the lobster is cheap and the winters are brutal I've settled in as a web developer in Tacoma, Washington. As a foster-adoptive parent of 3 beautiful boys, I have deep questions about the American church's response to the public health crisis that is our foster system.6 responses to “The uncommon hospitality of listening”
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First of all, I am sitting in a coffee shop, listening to a techno trance mix (It’s what I listen to in order to stay on task) and as I was reading your post, I was literally tapping my feet to the beat. So thanks for making me nerd out on that for a second.
Secondly, I am so intrigued by your insights from Rowntree. I have been dwelling since this summer on hospitality and creating hospitable space in my life. We’ve started opening our home to folks in our church, and I am using this program to really open up hospitable spaces in my work. As you read Rowntree, what inspired you to make the connections between studying and hospitable active listening? And I’m okay with a 20minute preaching session 🙂
Thanks Karen. I was reading through the chapter in Roundtree on listening and it occurred to me how often I’ve been in a lecture but couldn’t remember a thing because I had been distracted by something else. At some point I stopped bringing my laptop to lectures and meetings because it’s too distracting. With my laptop I’m not able to be present fully and provide my best responses. All of that coalesced in this idea of listening as hospitality.
I really appreciate this Sean. I think that many aspects of hospitality have been lost in our fast-paced culture and the more we can name the various angles, the more hope we have of reclaiming the practice in a more incarnational way. As an extrovert, I try to strategically have my back to a crowded room when I’m talking with someone so I won’t be distracted by the excitement of what is going on around me. While introverts struggle to speak without being interrupted, as an extrovert I struggle to have people listen long enough to recognize I have depth. I wonder if there something to be said for studying as an act of hospitality? Where we are hosting the non-present speakers in our books? Where we can actively host the voices of the marginalized by reading their work? Where else might we extend the concept of hospitality within our present task?
Our youngest son has a pretty extreme case of ADHD, so when he’s studying in class he has to put on sound dampening ear muffs in order to not be distracted. I’m considering taking up this practice myself in order to better apply myself to what I’m reading. Yes, I think studying can be a type of hospitality. I love the idea of being hospitable to marginalized voices in studying their work.
Hospitality is such a big topic, there’s part of me that wonders if all of Christianity is a type of hospitality. I think that anytime we make space for the other we are acting hospitable toward them whether that is fully listening to them, giving our full attention to their writing, or providing a meal.
Sean, you made a great connection to the importance of listening and how it influences our learning whether in a classroom lecture or relationship. Active listening is certainly a needed virtue in our culture. I have learned more about it through my husband sharing his education in evidence based coaching. I have seen a significant change in him through growing in this skill set and it has encouraged me to do the same.
Sean, your Patch Adam reference in this blog was a unique play on the art of active listening. Also, your connection with hospitality and active listening is quite intriguing. I studied the art of active listening for a counseling program, yet it never crossed my mind that they are working simultaneously. Thanks for the nugget of wisdom.