"Listening to Understand"

So…

Have you ever been in a conversation where it is very hard to figure out what exactly is going on? And I don’t just mean with your spouse!

But someone is telling a story and you can’t make heads or tails of it.

Now for those of you who only use debit cards and not cash, it turns out coins, those funny round metal things some people carry actually have two sides called heads (like President Lincoln on a penny) and tails.

And if you flip it like they do before a football game on TV to decide who gets the ball first, it will come up either heads or tails, right? So…

If in a situation you “can’t make heads or tails of it” you are confused and don’t really know how to respond.

Especially, if you are listening to respond.

Which in reality is the way most of us listen!

We listen to another person in order to figure out how to respond. As information comes in, we start comparing it to what we already know, what we have already experienced, what sounds to us like we are joining in on the conversation.

And for the most part that is fine. 

It’s what we often call “small talk”, a bit of a repartee, a back and forth that is polite and connective, that kind of supplies a bit of oil to the moving part of social interaction.

But…

There is another kind of listening.

It’ one we don’t use nearly as often, and rarely in casual conversation. 

It is listening to understand.

Now some of you may be familiar with it, because you have learned about it in your training as a counselor, or as a Stephen Minister, or perhaps in a counseling session where someone pointed out that you or the other person was listening just to respond… not to understand.

We do actually use it in some situations, but I don’t think we always see it for what it is.

When we are learning a skill for example, we listen carefully because we want to understand! 

We want to find out the steps to do an oil change. We want to understand how to grill that steak the way dad always did or does.

We want to figure out how to speak enough French to convince that French-Canadian girl to like us. 

We want to play that musical figure in the piece so that when our solo comes up in the band concert, we nail it.
I love going to get my blood taken at Crystal Run. 

I always tell the poor phlebotomist or whomever gets “stuck” with me that I am a “hard stick”.

That is that actually finding a vein they can use in either of my elbows is likely to be a lost cause. 

And it is especially fun when the tag on the vampire says “student”. 

This last time, the student gave up quick. 

I point out that in order to learn you have to stick people like me. And then said, “you gave it a good try”!

Then the head person with four tags on gave it a go. Nope! No way!

Finally, a butterfly in the back of my hand, at my suggestion, worked. T

hen, because I am who I am, I pointed out that I could take care of the required urine sample they needed.

My assumption, my hope always is that each vampire has listened to understand in those phlebotomy classes!

Because when we listen to understand it leads to being able to do something different and better. Make a fist, slap the skin on the spot, get a hot compress to help the blood rush to that spot and make it more visible.

But, let’s be clear, in relationships as opposed to tasks…
When the emotional stakes are high - we sometimes don’t.

We head into explanations, or a defense of our actions, as opposed to listening to understand what the other is trying to tell us about how they feel or even what they have discovered, learned, or know.

So, when the disciples headed to the town of Emmaus encounter Jesus on the road, and he says to them, “Why can't you understand? How can you be so slow to believe all that the prophets said?” 

What he is really asking those disciples is why they aren’t listening to understand.

Why don’t they understand that the scriptures talked all about Jesus? 

How could they not understand that Jesus’ death and resurrection was always what God’s plan was, how it fulfilled the intent of God, how it was what the stories all pointed to.

He essentially asked them to start listening to understand. And then he began to teach them.

We as a community of faith are asked each and every Sunday, and for that matter every day, to do the same. To stop listening to respond - and start listening to understand. 

To linger over the word, to ask questions, to put off doing something (what we do when what we hear makes us uncomfortable) and instead make sure we understand what we are to do, be, and feel!

Do you know the number one marker of a person who is listening to understand? 

They ask questions. 

They are curious. 

They want to know.

Just like those disciples, as their hearts and minds began to understand!

Who said after Jesus left them, “When he talked with us along the road and explained the Scriptures to us, didn't it warm our hearts?” 

Because they understood!

How about you?

Amen.