An Urgent Need to Learn How to Listen
by Suzanne M. Lewis
It's natural that this facebook post should kick up some irritation and dissent. My friend, David Mills, shared the post with this comment: “By the Catholic poet Clare McCallan. A good example of the way 1) the world is too much with us, so much so that we have no idea how much it's with us; and 2) we have images of the normal and normative that we've gotten entirely from our culture that we never think to question unless someone gets right in our face with it.”
Many people who commented on his post seemed offended by McCallan’s point of view. They claimed not to know what she was speaking about (which to their mind means it must be untrue). Many of the people who reacted to David’s post were older men, who do not inhabit her particular “zone” of the Church, nor her particular region of the internet; nonetheless, they reacted as though they were better authorities on her subject of critique than she herself. Some women felt that just because they themselves did not imagine a thin blonde when they did the thought experiment, the entire premise of the post was in error. Some dismissed McCallan on the grounds that proposing a thought experiment is offensive.
This defensive reaction is interesting. I don't belong to the subculture that McCallan refers to, and thus I did not think that I was being invited to see my own attitudes expressed by her characterization. This didn't lead me to believe that she is wrong or that I am somehow "in the clear" when it comes to the charge of entertaining stereotypes and other attitudes that could stand in the way of living out my faith in the most catholic way possible. Maybe I am much more used to being an outsider (having grown up an ex-pat for so long that being "ex" has actually become my "pat"), and thus I am able to "listen in" on other people's conversations without feeling personally implicated by every claim I overhear.
Isn't it interesting that this is how this young woman experiences being young, female, and Christian in this particular era? My first reaction when I read her critique was to want to invite her to a corner of the Church that I inhabit, a place that feels much freer, more open, and much more diverse than what she has experienced. I certainly don't doubt the veracity of her claim, though. Why should I? I haven't lived her experience.
But I also want to take her seriously and follow wherever her provocation leads, for me. So even if I don't see what she sees when I imagine what she asks, I do see something – and this can be instructive to me in the same ways that the stereotypes she has encountered have revealed to her a flaw in the collective faith life of the Church.
Whatever it is we "see" when we are invited to conjure up a representative image, is necessarily partial and will reflect something of the limitations of our own experience. There is only one method for overcoming these limitations and it is: listening. Paying attention. Granting respect and reverence to another's perspective. Always being poised to be able to learn from those with a different point of view.
The Festival of Friendship has become, for myself and my friends, a “School of Listening.” We don’t think of it as a “platform” where we can amplify voices we agree with. In fact, we often invite speakers and presenters from very different traditions and experiences. We want to step beyond the narrow confines of the comfort zones and categories into which the contemporary American expression of Catholicism can seem to be riven. In fact, we long to enter into and engage with the entire, catholic cosmos so we can encounter any and every good and loving aspect that can be found in creative human expression. We join our voices to St. Paul’s and urge one another to “test everything, keep what is good.” We invite you to embark on an adventure of discovery with us. You’ll thank us later ;)
