Nurturing hope: Christian pastoral care in the twenty-first century, chapter 9

In this chapter, I am writing about listening skills for pastoral care, and the story of this strange incident in a hospital room may seem to have little to do with listening. In Life Together, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, "Our love for others is learning to listen to them."' Love enables us to come into situations with expectancy.

The chaplain my mother encountered, as soon as he heard "communion," engaged with his own theological convictions and priorities about communion, rather than paying attention to the people in that hospital room. His behavior provides a negative illustration for what I view as the background commitment for good listening skills: noticing and being receptive to what’s going on in a situation or in a person' life.

Being receptive requires a kind of holy curiosity that enables us to wonder what God is doing in a situation before—​and after—​we arrive. Being receptive helps us slow down a bit and pay attention to what’s already happening in the lives of the people we encounter, their thoughts, feelings, concerns, passions, and desires.

Love motivates us to work on improving our ability to listen. In order to listen well, we have to want to listen. In order to want to listen, we have to expect that something is worth listening to, that something real and significant is happening in the lives of the people we encounter. This expectant stance is what I view as being receptive.

Fortunately, communication scholars all agree that listening skills can be learned. A little effort goes a long way in helping us listen better. That effort may take the form of learning about the listening skills described in this chapter, consciously trying to use them in new ways, and asking for feedback about how well we are listening. That effort might include practicing the skills in a workshop setting,

I find it helpful to think about five areas of listening skills:

This chapter is arranged around those five areas, and as I walk through each of them, I will give particular attention to the way the various skills relate to listening in pastoral care. I will also stress the aspects of the listening skills that help to empower care recipients.

My husband has been mentoring a young man who is shattered by a breakup that happened several months ago. Recently I overheard Dave talking to a friend about this relationship. Dave said,"All I do is listen, and after almost every conversation he says, 'Thanks so much. This has been so helpful.' But I don’t do anything except listen. Whenever I give him advice, he’s really not receptive to it, so I’ve stopped giving it."

Another reason it might be appropriate in a pastoral care setting to simply encourage the person to keep talking is that sometimes people discover their own inner wisdom and arrive at a solution to their problem on their own. If we want to help people find their own strength, then giving them space to arrive at their own solutions through careful listening is an important strategy.

We encourage people to keep talking, without guiding the conversation, in three ways:

The ability to guide conversations is also key in pastoral care. We guide conversations so we can get information. We steer conversations in certain directions so we can clarify and understand the issues in a person’s life and what that person considers to be important, which helps us understand their lite and often helps them discover what really matters to them.

We can direct conversations toward the other person’s perception of the intersection between ordinary daily life and God, faith, prayer, spirituality, or something that calls us beyond ourselves. We can encourage people to talk about the ways they are already praying about their situation.

When we guide conversations toward people’s views of their own situation, we indicate our interest in their experience and perceptions. We show that we care about what they think and feel, which communicates love and empathy. If we express genuine interest in the way other people view their lives, we empower them to believe their lives matter and they may be able to find solutions from their own inner wisdom.

We guide conversations two ways, by using questions and reflecting. Both questions and reflecting keep people talking, so they meet the needs described above, but questions and reflecting also steer conversations in specific directions.

Good questions are usually open-ended, which means that they seem to be asking for a sentence or paragraph, rather than one word. "How many siblings do you have?" is a closed question, while "What are your siblings like?" is an open question. In many settings, closed questions work fine to kick off or guide a conversation,

because many people are so eager for a listening ear that they will answer even closed questions with a paragraph.

Many statements that are not technically questions function as questions:

These statements are useful in avoiding "why" questions, which often feel judgmental, aggressive, or intrusive. I was taught in school to ask what, where, when, why, and how questions. All of those work well to guide conversations except why.

Other kinds of questions can also feel intrusive or overwhelming to speakers. I once asked a question that obviously came across as invasive. I was trying to go deeper in a conversation with someone who was moving from acquaintance to friend, and I said, "Where has God been in your life recently?"

She replied, "Wow, you ask hard questions." I apologized to her for sounding intrusive and added that our time together that day was short, so I was jumping in deep because I wanted to give her the opportunity to talk about anything meaningful to her. She seemed fine with my apology, and the conversation did move quite a bit deeper after that interchange. Listeners need to be careful with questions, but not so afraid of being intrusive that we never ask about deeper issues like values, spirituality, and faith. Sometimes we will get it wrong, and that’s okay.

Imagine at coffee hour one Sunday you are listening to Tim, who is getting married next month. Tim is talking about the wedding preparations, and he’s a bit impatient with his fiancée, Julie, because of her apparent obsession with every detail of the wedding. Mixed into his words is optimism about the marriage after all this wedding nonsense is over.

A follow-up question will steer the conversation. A question like "What have been the hardest parts of your relationship lately?" gives Tim permission to talk about the challenges he’s experiencing, If you want to steer Tim into a positive direction you might ask: "What has been the best part of the engagement period? want to guide Tim to questions of faith, you might ask, "How have you experienced God’s guidance in the preparation for your marriage?"

Asking questions in conversations exerts quite a bit of power, because the question asker is choosing the direction for the conversation. When we ask questions, we need to be aware of the presuppositions and values that influence the questions we ask. A question about how people are praying for a situation indicates that we expect them to be people who pray, which is entirely appropriate in some settings but not in others. We need to seek God’s guidance for the most fruitful direction for our questions.

All the listening skills I’ve described help conversations go deeper, and I love deep conversations. I’ve always been a bit impatient with conversations about the weather. Why can’t we talk about something more significant?

Eight years ago, in preparation to teach the course on chaplaincy, I read several communication textbooks to find material on listening for my students. One of those textbooks had a section entitled "Contrasts in Listening," where the authors described some contrasts that good listeners keep in mind. The first contrast helped me understand weather conversation.

Deep listening requires intense focus, a lot of time, and careful use of a variety of listening skills to help the speaker express thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Surface listening invites casual conversation about things like the weather. Because of the effort and energy required to listen deeply, casual conversations involving surface listening are a helpful way to connect with people in many everyday settings, conveying ease and acceptance without spending the energy and time necessary for deep listening.

In pastoral care settings, good listeners use both deep and surface listening in the appropriate situations. Maybe a little weather conversation in a pastoral care conversation will help the care recipient relax. Maybe some discussion of sports or vacations will help care recipients decide I’m trustworthy. Then perhaps later we can go deeper.

Sometimes the speaker is talking fluidly, and the listener can sit back and let the speaker talk. The speaker is talking through the issues and making headway in finding wisdom to deal with challenges, In that instance, no listening skills are required other than silence, and the style of listening is passive. Other times, lots of questions and reflecting are necessary to draw out speakers or to help them focus on the issue at hand, and the style of listening is participatory, which requires focus, wise use of listening skills, and a lot of energy. In pastoral care settings, good listeners Pay attention to cues indicating when to spend a lot of energy using a variety of listening skills and when to relax a bit and let the conversation flow on its own.

Empathy conveys love in a powerful way, while objective listening helps get the facts on the table. Imagine talking to a care recipient who is facing eviction from his apartment. Empathetic listening helps the man express his feelings. When tr ying to get the details regarding the eviction in order to provide practical help, though, a focus on objective facts is necessary. In pastoral care settings, good listeners move between empathetic listening, when people’s emotions are engaged, and objective listening, when problems are being discussed. footnote:[]

This third contrast is a bit different from the other two because even in the midst of empathy, some degree of objectivity is required Objectivity is necessary to think clearly about which direction might be the most helpful to the person speaking. Listeners need to remain objective as we deliberate about which listening skills will convey empathy most effectively.

Objectivity is also necessary for us to observe and deal with what’s going inside of us as we listen. Some people use the term "inner noise" to describe the various emotions and thoughts we feel as we listen. The anxiety raised by these emotions and thoughts is the biggest obstacle to listening.

Many things can distract us from listening well. The term "outer noise" is sometimes used to describe the situations that impede listening: a noisy room, a second conversation close by, a chaotic setting, or background music. "Inner noise" describes the emotions and thoughts that can get in the way of listening. These include thoughts and feelings we bring into a conversation with us, such as absorption about something scheduled for later in the day or the long to-do list crowding our minds.

Inner noise can also come from our reactions to what our conversation partner is saying. Once again, imagine that conversation with Tim, who is experiencing both irritation and hopeful anticipation as he approaches his wedding. Maybe you had a tumultuous build-up to your own wedding, and Tim’s words bring back a lot of painful memories. Maybe you know Tim’s parents, and you know they really don’t like his fiancée, so as Tim talks, you’re worried about his parents' emotions. Or maybe you know that Tim and his fiancée are living together, and you believe that’s a bad way to start a marriage, and your disapproval fills your mind.

Coping with inner noise—​including the to-do list, memories, worries, and judgments—​is a key listening skill. The first step in dealing with it wisely is to recognize that everyone experiences an astonishing array of thoughts and feelings as they listen. Communication scholars use the term "double listening" to describe the need to listen to the conversation partner while also paying attention to our own thoughts and feelings as we listen.

A friend who teaches counseling told me that the major skill addressed in the first six months of counseling training involves learning to. cope with inner noise. He said he suggests to students that they imagine a parking lot, and every time they experience a thought or emotion that distracts them from listening, they park that thought or feeling over in the parking lot.

In some instances, simply parking the inner noise makes it go away. In other instances, after the conversation has finished, we need i to take the inner noise out of the parking lot and try to figure out what was going on inside of us during that portion of the conversation.

Inner noise derails conversations in predictable ways. If our thoughts and feelings create anxiety as we listen, we usually have a favorite way of making sure the anxiety goes away. In a communications textbook, Richard Bolstad and Margot Hamblett describe behaviors we fall into habitually when we feel uneasy in a conversation:

Most listeners have a favorite behavior on the list above. For me, I easily default into giving advice. These responses lessen the discomfort that inner noise raises in us, the listeners, helping us feel less anxious about the situation. The negative emotions in the listener—​anxiety or discomfort—​are thus transferred to the speaker, who now has to cope with the original situation along with the new emotions raised by the listener’s response. The listener, then, adds to the speaker’s burden, which is profoundly disempowering.

I’ve learned a lot about listening in the past two and a half years, since my husband, Dave, developed a chronic lung disease originally diagnosed as a fungal infection. Before the illness, he was one of the most physically fit people I knew.

The first year was a blur of constant infections, numerous medical tests, and three nasty months on an antifungal drug with horrendous side effects. The horrible drug sent his fungal infection into remission. In the second year, he settled into an adjustment phase where he had to adapt to having less energy, intermittent bacterial lung infections, and constant discomfort in his lungs. Our relatives, friends, the church staff, and many other people in our lives know about Dave’s chronic illness.

I have watched countless people express care to Dave in the past two and a half years. Typically what happens is that people ask Dave how he’s doing. They listen patiently to Dave’s brief initial answer. Both the question and the attentive listening communicate empathy.

This moment of empathy, however, is usually very short. I am astonished at how few people encourage Dave to keep talking by using body language, minimal encouragers, or silence. I am equally astonished by how few follow up by asking a question about how he’s coping or by reflecting back what they’ve heard to encourage him to say more.

After the initial question, Dave’s brief response, and their words of sympathy, people almost always do one of three things: give advice about how to strengthen his immune system ("Have you tried Echinacea?" "Do you take Vitamin C?"), tell him a long story about someone they know who had a chronic illness, or change the subject.

Days and sometimes weeks go by where I am the only person who encourages Dave to talk about how he’s feeling emotionally and spiritually in the midst of this illness. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who is willing to spend more than one or two minutes focused on Dave and what Dave has to say about his situation. I tind this both astonishing and deeply frustrating.

Why would people find it so difficult to invite Dave to say more about how he is feeling physically and emotionally and how he is coping? Many people worry about asking invasive questions. People also often feel a strong need to be helpful and to fix difficult situations. Chronic diseases are not fixable. In chapter 1, 1 quoted Henri Nouwen’s words about friends who "can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness.""* Our need to know, cure, and heal is a form of inner noise that creates major roadblocks to listening.

Nouwen believes that the basic meaning of the word "care" is to lament with another person, "to grieve, to experience sorrow, to cry out with." The next time someone tells you about something hard in their life—​perhaps a health issue, a job conflict, a challenging family relationship, or a financial problem—​do an experiment. Respond with these words, "I’m so sorry to hear about this," and then stop talking.

Wait and see what happens next. While you wait, try to empathize. Attempt to identify with the person; attempt to experience the feelings, thoughts, and attitudes they might be experiencing; and attempt to understand.

If you want to have one useful follow-up question in your tool box, try this: "How is that for you?" The person with the difficult situation can go any direction and can talk briefly or at length.

So many people are waiting for a listener to grieve with them.

In order to avoid responding in a knee-jerk way that impedes listening, we need to be attentive to the other person’s words and body language and also to our own thoughts and feelings, the inner noise that can impede listening. That’s a form of double listening. Christians have an additional challenge. We need to listen for God’s guidance in conversations as well. Perhaps then, for Christian carers, we might talk about triple listening: listening to another person, our own inner reality, and God.

Listening to God and trying to rely on God’s guidance as we converse helps us make wise choices about how to guide conversations as we deploy the skills of asking questions and reflecting. Every question or reflection takes a conversation in a certain direction, but is it the direction God desires for the conversation?

Empathy requires the cognitive effort of trying to observe the cues that communicate what the person is thinking and feeling. Empathy involves attempting to identify and understand. Surely God’s guidance is needed for these challenges. We also need God’s help to be honest about the thoughts and feelings that can derail us as we listen.

This chapter has emphasized the ways listening can empower others. but there are times to speak as well as listen. Sometimes a story from our own lives or a story from the Bible is exactly the right thing Sometimes compassionate words are helpful. We need to listen to God’s guidance for when and how to speak up, and we need to pay attention to our own inner wisdom about what is happening in the conversation. 7

However, most people need to talk less and listen more. Many Pastoral carers need to grow in listening skills that guide conversations in directions that are helpful for care recipients, providing opportunities that enable care recipients to find their own wisdom for coping with their challenges.

Listening skills for pastoral carers are more essential than ever because of the many changes in pastoral care described in the first half of this book. Teamwork among carers and empowerment of care recipients is greatly enhanced by good listening skills. Helpful service to people from other countries and with diverse ethnic backgrounds demands a significant commitment to listening. Building relationships with people outside the congregation requires good listening skills. Listening undergirds pastoral care in the twenty-first century more than ever.

My book on listening lays out the material in this chapter in more detail and also addresses patterns of listening in congregational settings including pastoral care, congregational discernment, and local outreach.

McHugh’s chapter on listening to people in pain will be helpful to carers, as will his reflections on attentiveness to God and the challenges of listening in our noisy world.

Drawing on Jungian psychology, Hart presents the significance of listening for Christians, especially spiritual directors. His emphasis on listening as helping and holy will be relevant for pastoral carers.

A wonderful presentation on empathy. I disagree with her view of sympathy. What she calls "sympathy," I would call paternalistic advice-giving.