Trying to listen

Thursday, June 12

Conversations seem to come unexpectedly. A few days ago I sat at a lunch counter, expecting that to be a good place to connect, but people were just in a hurry to eat their lunch and go. I sat in a pub on an early week evening, and all around me were couples intent only on each other. I try to be patient, and wait.

"Don't hurry," God says. "Slow down."

I wander around town, not in my collar. I slip into a small shoe store looking for a better solution to in-town walking, my hiking socks and shoes feeling so totally hot and restrictive (and already having dumped back home the hiking sandals that couldn't stand up to the hard roads). I'm looking for foot relief . . . and it is there that I find conversation. "Be patient," God whispers. "It's not going to look like you planned for it to look!" I hang around the shoe store, talking between other customers, watching as the shop owner takes care of those who come in after me. I pray for the mother of one of the customers (please pray for Joanne as she dies). I marvel at how unlikely it seemed to me - I go shopping and find the connections.

I take advantage of the community dinner, and eat and talk with a woman who has lost her job, and goes from community dinner to community dinner. She won't talk about herself much, about her hunger for God or where she finds God. But she will share it in another way - she shares it through the eyes of her teenage daughter. They quit going to church. I listen, and try to not speak. Try to not be defensive. "All the church talked about," she reported, sharing what her daughter complained about the church, "was money, money, money. Give, give, give." I bit my tongue and didn't talk about 'stewardship.' Didn't defend. I tried to listen with my heart to this woman without a job. Without money for dinner.

The community dinner ended and we helped clean tables, while we continued to talk. We stood outside on the sidewalk while they locked up the building, and continued to talk.

She just wanted to be heard.

I keep thinking I'll hear from people like the young hiker I befriended back in North Conway who had never even been in a church before. I keep thinking I'll be listening to people like the one that called the church office and asked, "How do I come to church?" I tried to give her driving directions. She stopped me. She knew where the building was, but she didn't know what to expect when she opened the door. "Where do I go? What will I see? What should I wear? What do I need to bring with me? How will I know what to do????"

I haven't met them yet. But I have met person after person who has come . . . who has walked through the doors of one church or another . . . and has found the church wanting. Not welcoming to them. Not welcoming to their kids.

I want to defend us! I want to point out that we are just people- that we are not perfected in God yet, but struggling together. That we fail. In fact, many of us are there because we know how much we fail, and what a help it can be to journey together and watch out for each other. And we know how much we each need forgiveness.

But I'm trying to still just listen. So I don't say much (well, except for the conversation initiated with me in the park yesterday afternoon as I got into Milford after a 14 mile walk - too hot to be wearing my collar. Two young men in white shirts, and ties, and LDS name tags and their Book of Mormon .. . . I'm not sure they were quite expecting what they got when they approached the sweaty woman in shorts and tank top, sitting in the grass leaning on her backpack! We did have a great talk together. But I suspect I did more talking than listening during that one!)

I sat at the Mexican Cantina. It was quiet with just one other person at the bar with me. He looked at my pack. "What's that all about?" I tried a new opening line: "I'm on a spiritual pilgrimage across New Hampshire. I'm looking for God. Have you seen him lately?"

He looked at me for a minute. For another minute (well, it did seem like that long).

"Can't say that I have. But I have seen some strange things . . . " and I heard about his travels - learning to drive a grain combine, hiring on for a pony roundup and learning to swing a rope, being part of a rattlesnake roundup with prizes to the person who catches the largest rattlesnake.

Today I'm in my collar, and found that it opened up conversation with the waittress at the lunch counter. She welled up, but fought back the tears, as she talked about how she felt like she somehow lost out when she was a child and wasn't taken to church. The seemingly "perfect" family next door went every week, and in her child-eyed view of the world, she was sure that was why they were so 'perfect.' Her grandmother insisted that they found God everywhere, so didn't need to go to church . . . But she still didn't sound like it ever convinced her.

But it mattered that I listened.

In seminary they taught me how to preach. Maybe we all simply need to get better at listening.