Learning about Listening
From work with the WCRC and WCC to spending time in nature, God is teaching me to listen.
I’ve been learning about listening this summer. As a white settler in the Global North, I’m much more used to speaking than listening. To leading than learning. To assume I’m right more than wondering if I’m wrong, or perhaps don’t have the full picture.
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Learning to listen has been a focal point for me in my appointments to the Climate Justice Core Group of the World Communion of Reformed Churches and the Commission of the Churches on Climate Justice and Sustainable Development (CCJSD) of the World Council of Churches. There, I sit on committees comprised of leaders in the arena of faith and ecological crisis from around the world. I am learning in our formal meetings and in the many informal conversations that occur as we gather in person and online.
In November I wrote about what I learned in Jakarta, about the fact that the city is sinking and the people most impacted, the poor who live closest to the water’s edge, have the least capacity to escape to higher ground. Here’s that reflection:
And when I was in Geneva for the first in-person meeting of the CCJSD, I listened to the powerful witness of an Indigenous commissioner from the Southern Himalayas, who spoke with holy tears of rage about the discrepancy between our sitting in an air-conditioned room, in western-style clothing, talking as religious leaders, and the reality of day-to-day life for her people. I listened and I learned. I am still learning.
Today’s essay, below, is about how I’ve been learning to listen to the natural world this summer. This past year has been a powerful time of God teaching me to listen with my ears and heart, with my mind and spirit.
I invite you to listen, too. Listen to the Earth community, listen to the voices of others, especially in the global South.
In this vein, I invite you to read the following essay, which was sent to me by a friend while I was drafting this week’s essay. I follow Britt Wray and am subscribed to Gen Dread, and love the wisdom Dr. John Jamir Benzon Aruta offers about how our tendency in the Global North toward a bias which impacts people in the Global South and their climate mental health. For your Friday Nudge I invite you to read and listen.
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Summer in the Earth Community: Learning about Listening
God has been teaching me about listening this summer.
When I was away on the Wild Church retreat in June, I learned that an essential part of wild church worship is to go out into nature and “wander,” letting ourselves listen to what the natural world is saying to us. In Wild Church, they say that this is when the sermon happens; the natural world ‘preaches’ to us in this way.
I put this into action while camping in Algonquin Park last week.
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