13 The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’ 14 With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: ‘You will indeed listen but never understand, and you will indeed look but never perceive.
15 For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes, so that they might not look with their eyes, and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn – and I would heal them.’ 16 “But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. 17 Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it and to hear what you hear but did not hear it. (Mathew 13: 13–17, NRSV)
Teachers of communication tell us that many people do not communicate, they just take turns talking. This suggests that people do not listen while others are talking. Well, in many situations, it’s difficult to concentrate and listen well – to give full attention to the speaker, to hear the words spoken, and to be able to absorb what is being said. The reasons are many. For one thing, preoccupied with a desire to dismantle whatever the speaker says, we constantly make mental preparation of responses to issues while someone is speaking. For another, bored and attention dissipated, we just drift off to something else away from what the speaker is saying. We bring up three points for discussion in this regard.
[1] Without silence there can be no listening
Throughout the ages, spiritual writers urge three things upon us as being vital to our spiritual life and journey: listening to the Holy, listening to others, and listening to ourselves. Deep listening can both move and change us. But to be able to truly listen in all these places requires both courage and vulnerability.
Br. David Steindl-Rast, OSB reminds us, “without silence there can be no listening.” Silence is the space in which words are heard. The Hebrew sage Solomon ibn Gabiol likewise says, “The beginning of wisdom is silence. The second stage is listening.” We do not hear silence, but it is that by which we do hear. To enter the house of wisdom and start to truly listen, we need to first cultivate an interior silence. With interior silence, we are better able to feel and value the silence that surrounds everything else.
It’s all about listening if we are to notice, listen to and connect with the movement and breath of the Holy in our own stories, feelings and experiences in all of life. The American theologian Frederick Buechner puts it well:
- ‘Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments and life itself is grace.’
[2] What the Parable of the Sower exposes
Christian writers have discovered that there is a basic context that nurtures and develops the practice of listening as a sacred art. Three qualities in particular are held to be essential to this deep listening context.
- The first is silence. Silence creates the space for listening to God and time to explore our relationship to the source and ground of our existence. In turn, the practice of silent-listening to God nurtures our capacity to listen to others as well.
- The second is reflection. Reflection gives access to listening to the soft and gentle voice of God and our inner conscience. The practice of pausing before responding to a situation, question, or comment creates time for better wisdom to reveal itself. This slowing down nurtures patience while it helps possible avoidance of regrettable rush decisions.
- The third is presence. Presence is the consciousness of communion, of connecting at the heart level. The practice of keeping conscious and giving full attention to little mundane, ordinary activities not only helps to build an ability to be in the present moment with another, but to grow faith and warm hearts as well. And because of that, being aware of communion can also re-kindle gratitude – that precious but often lapsed sense – which always brings us to the presence of the divinity.
These three qualities of deep listening work together to create and promote the art of listening. They enhance our awareness and transform our relationships with God as the very source of our existence, with our own self, and with others.
Just as listening stands at the root of this spirituality, the familiar story of the Parable of the Sower leads us to the different ways as to how we listen or fail to listen to the Word of God. In Mark 4:3, Jesus strikingly precedes the telling of the parable with a sonorous call: “Listen!” Why did he do that? Because we are all too often preoccupied with our own plots to really listen to God’s vision brought by Jesus. If he is the sower, and his words are good seeds, we are more often than not rather poor soil! So the parable which appears in all three Synoptic Gospels points out that in response to the Word of God, we behave variously as a trodden path, a rocky ground, a bed of thorns, and a rich soil. They expose what weakens our ability to listen.
- The rare “rich soil” signifies those who listen closely, receive the Word well, and bear fruit.
- “A bush of thorns” refers to those who may listen, but who also render attention and cave in to daily troubles and temptations so that, while the Word may grow, the thorns in lives soon choke off the fruit.
- The “rocky ground” also points to poor listeners who give up on the Word when life gets hard. The Word as seeds may grow at first, but they ultimately die off when crises strike.
- Yet the worst image of all is “the trodden path”, for the earth is so hardened that the seed that falls on it cannot even grow. It cannot sink in. In sum, people of the trodden path just do not listen. Their path resists cultivation, provides no nourishment whatsoever because, as Isaiah put it, heart has become calloused, ears turned hard of hearing, and eyes are closed.
Sadly, this well-trodden “path” is becoming more and more prevalent in our day and age when many struggle with actually listening. We may hear, but we do not listen. We often have much to do, places to go to and things to occupy our attention. As a result, it can be difficult for many people to actually receive the Word of God into their hearts where it can grow.
St Mark’s Gospel has a distinct emphasis on the outsider-insider divide. When everyone hears the parable, only an insider listens to it, or produces fruits. And yet, in real life, outsider-insider compartments are by no means water-tight. Just because someone is baptized is no guarantee that they fit into Mark’s category of “insiders”. The same is true of the Jews when we realize how different the “nationalist” or “Zionist” or “secularized” Jews are from those who are truly religiously inclined.
[3] And what the current Israeli and Ukraine wars expose
We are living in very dangerous times. The United States’ desire to hamper the rise of other superpowers accelerates tension around the globe. The US-instigated Ukraine war and the US-complicit genocide in Gaza are illustrative of the dangers before us. It does not stop there, of course. As the US works on drawing Iran into the conflict, Israel threatens to escalate tensions with Hezbollah in Lebanon which will then draw Tehran into making a step that would allow the US to bomb Iran. And the US-led New Cold War against China (simply because China is doing well and developing very fast), using Taiwan as the lever, will raise international conflicts to another level. This of course is “good news” for the US military industrial complex as they celebrate record arms-sales while the world burns.
We need leaders who practise a whole range of skills and virtues, not least sober minds, wisdom, patience, a spirit of non-violence and so on. But above all, to prevent the arc of conflict in the Middle East and elsewhere around the globe to spiral precariously, what is needed is a capacity in the political leaders in those countries to listen to old wisdom embedded in the ancient texts of their culture and civilization.
At this time, however, the “Zionist” Jews are so politicized that, when it comes to their Israeli “national interests” as they understand them, they can bracket off all that Yahweh had taught them in the books of the Old Testament. In their well trodden path, they cannot listen to God; they simply do not listen at all. Even after the ICJ has handed down an interim ruling on the genocide case against them coupled with serious rebuke, the Netanyahu war cabinet vows to carry on business as usual – a systematic ethnic cleansing in Gaza with military assistance from the US. This is currently causing one of the biggest atrocities and the direst crises in the world. In their treatment of the Palestinians, the Zionist Jews have become “worse than animals” which they accuse the Palestinians of being. They blatantly abuse human rights; their inhuman actions stun the world and the ICJ. One would expect a people of such a tragic history as the Holocaust to have hearts of gold in the treatment of others. And yet, by now they have been treading a protracted journey of doling out mimetic violence on the Palestinians, oppressing them in every inhuman way imaginable. These Jewish Zionists no longer listen to the Word of their God. They are their own god. This relentless determination to refuse to listen will forever leave them mired in an endless cycle of violence. Peace will forever elude them.
As Christians, we heed what Pope Francis implores, that “war itself is a denial of humanity.” Listen to this Vicar of Christ:
- “The memory and condemnation of that horrible extermination of millions of Jewish people and people of other faiths, which occurred in the first half of the last century, helps everyone to not forget that the logic of hatred and violence can never be justified, because they deny our very humanity.”
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, February 2024. All rights reserved.
To comment, email jeffangiegoh@gmail.com.