Listening for a Change
Rev. Joe Cleveland
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Saratoga Springs
October 11, 2020
May we “pray without ceasing.”
In Unitarian Universalists I have often encountered a resistance to prayer. This tends to be because we tend not to think that some supernatural force is going to enter into the world and fix anything for us. Prayers don’t change anything. They don’t make the situation different from what it already is.
But this puts the idea of prayer in too small a box.
I really like the story by Douglas Wood we heard today. The grandchild asks the grandfather about prayer. And the grandfather replies saying that there are prayers happening all around them in the woods where they go walking. The trees reaching to the sky, the stones of the earth, the stream flowing by, grandad says that they are all prayers. He reframes the relationship of prayer to change. In praying, we change ourselves, he says. Grandad says, “Like the trees and winds and waters, we pray because we are here—not to change the world, but to change ourselves. Because it is when we change ourselves . . . that the world is changed.”
If this is what prayer is, it makes sense to me that we resist it. We don’t really resist prayer for theological reasons. We resist prayer because we resist change. I recall seeing a two-panel cartoon once. A speaker is addressing a crowd and says, “Who wants change?” And everyone in the crowd puts their hand up. In the next panel the speaker asks, “Who wants to change?” And no one puts their hand up.
In Wood’s story, the grandad dies and the grandchild prays and prays and says, “no matter how hard I prayed, he didn’t come back. He couldn’t come back.” The kid feels a deep grief and misses their grandad. And then there was a day when the grandchild goes on a walk like they used to with their grandad. They listen to the stream and breeze and birdsong. When the child was walking with grandad they were never sure they could hear any of the prayers that grandad was hearing. But this day listening to the sounds of nature, the child heard prayers. The grandchild is moved to gratitude for the trees and flowers and the stream and the stones. They are grateful for having known their grandad. The words Wood uses to end his story are: “as I prayed, something changed, and my grandad seemed somehow near. And for the first time in a long time, the world seemed just right.” The something that seems to have changed — what’s different is the move to gratitude. And that move to gratitude is preceded by, even precipitated by, the act of listening. Let yourself listen to what is around you. Don’t let the boundaries of yourself or even of your feelings be the boundaries of your world. Listen, and you will be changed.
Set in nature, and set in an idyllic story about a grandchild and grandad, this listening is praying thing seems both powerful and friendly. And I recommend getting yourself out in the woods, as I’ve said before. Get out there and let yourself listen and you will feel qualitatively different than you felt before you went out there.
But it isn’t all easy listening that we have to do. It’s not all pleasant streams babbling prayers. We are always being challenged to listen to something unfamiliar, perhaps discordant. Depending on the kinds of privilege we have and don’t have, it is easier or harder to keep from having to listen to things we don’t want to. We don’t have to listen to everything. There are boundaries and choices to make about what and who we listen to. But to really listen, some of that listening needs to be challenging. There are challenging voices that need to be heard. And we need to challenge ourselves to listen.
Since I am white, I try to challenge myself to listen to voices of people who aren’t white. I learned about a songwriter named Kyshona Armstrong who is based in Nashville. She has a new album out called “Listen” and the title track, as you heard just a little while ago, asks again and again the question, “Why don’t you listen?” I like Kyshona’s music. She is focused on justice and on healing the hurting and she has a gorgeous voice. But, I confess that one of the things I thought when I first heard this song was that it is maybe longer than it needs to be. And then I realized that I was implicated by this song. Why don’t you listen? That’s a question directed to me, demanding me to interrogate the boundaries of my willingness to listen.
Trying to expand my listening, this past weekend, I took a 12-hour class on the theology of James H. Cone and a book he published 50 years ago called Black Theology & Black Power. He wrote it in the context of the 12th street riot in Detroit and the Black Power movement. Theologians were not listening to the Black Power movement. It wasn’t just the violence of the riots that was making things difficult for white America, it was the pointedness of the critique that was being leveled at society and its institutions: White supremacy is foundational to the American project and is woven through and supported by its institutions, its government, its churches. Cone says, “The time has come for white Americans to be silent and listen to black people.”
I think of life as change, growth, evolution — but fifty years later, it sounds like Cone’s book was written for today, for right now. The Black power of the 60’s & 70’s wouldn’t play by the rules of white supremacy culture. It wouldn’t calm down and sit down and have a simple chat with the white powers that be. And today, in Saratoga Springs — the city is annoyed that the Black-led group All of Us won’t come sit down for a conversation with city officials or the police. And now if any protest tries to block a street or intersection, the new policy of the city is to arrest them immediately. Black voices are struggling to be heard in Saratoga Springs.
All of Us has published a list of 13 demands regarding policing in Saratoga Springs and other capital region cities and counties. https://bit.ly/13DemandsPetition The demands include such things as abolition of no-knock warrants and chokeholds. Prosecution of law enforcement and corrections officers for violations of the civil rights of People of Color, marginalized individuals and all peoples. Lots of these 13 things could be done with simple policy changes. But none of these actions are being taken. And so is it any wonder that All of Us and its leaders keep asking, as loudly as they can, Why don’t you listen?
Kyshona, the songwriter, says that people ask her after her shows “What can I do?” Her reply is just this: “Listen” Or, as she sings it:
I’m standing right in front of you
Trying to tell you my truth
The only thing I ask of you
is listen
The Rev. Scott Tayler, who is white, urges us to listen, saying
We don’t just listen for clarity and guidance,
we listen to become larger.
Those voices calling us home
are our home.
We don’t have conversations,
we are our conversations. . . .
Who we listen to is who we become.
Those lines have been on repeat like a mantra in my mind and heart the past few weeks: “The only thing I ask of you is listen.” “Who we listen to is who we become.”
I don’t think that my listening to Black voices, Black theology will make me Black. But the way that James Cone talks about white and black, about whiteness and blackness — these are symbols. They are not (just) skin colors. Cone says, in language that he later acknowledges is patriarchal: “in America, God’s revelation on earth has always been black, red or some other shocking shade, but never white. Whiteness, as revealed in the history of America, is the expression of what is wrong with man. It is a symbol of man’s depravity.” I do not want to be a symbol of depravity, so there is a deep temptation I feel to stop listening when I hear those words. But what if I keep listening to Cone? Cone concludes his book with these words:
Being black in America has very little to do with skin color. To be black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are. We all know that a racist structure will reject and threaten a black man in white skin as quickly as a black man in black skin. It accepts and rewards whites in black skins nearly as well as whites in white skins. Therefore, being reconciled to God does not mean that one’s skin is physically black. It essentially depends on the color of your heart, soul, and mind. […] The real questions are: Where is your identity? Where is your being?
We can hear Cone’s words this way: Where are your ears? What are you listening to? Who are you listening to?
The Christian scripture says “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5.17) What if that just means this: keep listening. Don’t stop listening. Listen without ceasing. And when you do speak, strive for your speaking to be a kind of listening, a demonstration of the practice of listening. The practice of listening will change you.
The only thing I ask of you is listen. Who we listen to is who we become.
May we be a people of deep listening, committed listening,
a listening that leads to healing
a listening that leads to whole-heartedness
a listening that helps us grow in compassion
a listening that helps you discern an action for justice-making that you can make
a listening that nurtures the self-change that is growth in wisdom and spirit and soulfulness
may you find your practice of listening to be a blessing for yourself
may your listening be a blessing to others
Listen.
References
Douglas Wood. Grandad’s Prayers of the Earth. Illustrated by P.J. Lynch. Candlewick Press, 1999.
James H. Cone. Black Theology & Black Power. 50th anniversary edition. Orbis Books, 2018.
Topics: Listening, Transformation