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When Life gets Loud, Listening gets Hard · Red Couch Theology

• 0:00
  Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of the Red Couch
• 0:02
  Theology podcast. This week we're talking about
• 0:06
  listening. And no, it's not completely
• 0:09
  silent for the entire episode because neither Alex and I feel
• 0:12
  like we're experts in this topic, but we also spent some
• 0:15
  time talking and making a case for the beauty of listening to
• 0:20
  someone and the transformative power of that.
• 0:23
  But also why it's so detrimental to our souls to fill our worlds
• 0:29
  with noise all the time. And so let's dive right in.
• 0:37
  Well, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Red
• 0:39
  Couch Theology podcast. Hello, welcome to the Red Couch
• 0:44
  Theology podcast. And before we get too far, I do
• 0:48
  think you're going to have to explain the tie.
• 0:51
  What this? You.
• 0:53
  You have a problem with me dressing up sometimes?
• 0:55
  No, I don't. I just think you need to
• 0:58
  explain. It was Dad Donut Day at Clara's
• 1:03
  school, and when I showed up for Dad Donut Day, they had all
• 1:09
  these little papers that she'd done and a drawing that she
• 1:12
  specially made for me and laminated and this tie and that
• 1:16
  tie. And I thought, you know what?
• 1:20
  Given the nature of our podcast, this tie is actually perfect
• 1:23
  attire. Yes, I think perfect so long as
• 1:25
  you explain it. Well, I appreciate the assist on
• 1:31
  that. Otherwise it starts to look like
• 1:33
  you're slowly losing your mind. I would have probably forgotten.
• 1:37
  I was going to explain it and then I was just starting the
• 1:40
  episode and I would have forgotten and everyone would
• 1:44
  have been like, what happened to the podcast?
• 1:47
  Yeah. So it would have been better if
• 1:49
  it was a red cat, red tie, red tie.
• 1:51
  It would. Have been, but it would have
• 1:53
  been neon. Neon pink is close enough.
• 1:55
  All right, so I'm wearing all right.
• 1:57
  For those who are listening to the podcast, I am wearing a very
• 2:01
  short paper hot pink tie tie tied around my neck with a blue
• 2:13
  string so. I actually was very selfish in
• 2:17
  my reason for mentioning it because I did think you might
• 2:20
  look like you were starting to lose it if you didn't mention
• 2:22
  that you were wearing it. But I also thought I would if I
• 2:25
  didn't mention it's like Alex. Is just normal.
• 2:30
  Alex hires people that do this kind of stuff all the time.
• 2:37
  A good times. All right, so I I'm sporting
• 2:39
  this tie until I pick up Clara from school at least I love it
• 2:43
  because she'll be like thrilled when I show up at the end of
• 2:47
  school. I'd love it.
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  I'm. Going to suggest that she says
• 2:50
  that you should wear it every single day.
• 2:53
  Yeah, I mean, I know. I knew a guy who had like, this
• 2:56
  little necklace thing that his granddaughter had made him, and
• 3:00
  he did wear it every day that I knew him.
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  And it was like toys. Like it was literally toys on a
• 3:06
  string. Well, good for him.
• 3:09
  Yeah, it was good. All right.
• 3:12
  Anyway, what are we talking about?
• 3:13
  You preached, man. I preached.
• 3:16
  So it's like so today we're pre recording.
• 3:19
  So you're going to get this episode a little bit later than
• 3:21
  normal if you happen to watch the live stream, which most
• 3:25
  people watch it later. But we're pre recording it and
• 3:28
  Alex before the show is there trying to prepare for the
• 3:32
  episode. And I'm like, Alex, you're going
• 3:34
  to ruin the show if you prepare for it.
• 3:36
  We don't prepare on the show. We wear hot pink ties and show
• 3:41
  up unprepared. This is what we do.
• 3:43
  All right, So yeah, let you continue the series.
• 3:46
  This was Week 2, right? Yeah, yeah.
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  Listen. Listen.
• 3:51
  And so we're actually going somewhere and.
• 3:53
  This is the one you didn't want to do?
• 3:54
  Why? Why didn't you want to do this?
• 3:57
  He tried to give this sermon away to every person he knew.
• 4:01
  He asked his mailman, he asked the the checkout person at the
• 4:05
  grocery store if they wanted to preach this message.
• 4:08
  My mailman would have been great, but I don't know about
• 4:10
  anyone else. So I felt like this was a a week
• 4:17
  that could have shined in a different way with someone who
• 4:22
  made that scented their whole life around listening.
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  Yeah, You know, you just meet those people.
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  We have a couple of them at South, More than a couple of
• 4:30
  them, but a couple of them that can combine listening really
• 4:36
  well and talking about listening really well.
• 4:40
  And so I think that that's been a movement more recently.
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  Think about people like Kurt Thompson, Adam Young, some of
• 4:48
  these guys that deep into the psychological world, deep into
• 4:53
  how stories are healed when they're heard.
• 4:56
  Yeah. But also able to share that
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  really articulately. Yeah.
• 5:00
  And so I kind of was rattling the old cage to use a expression
• 5:04
  I've never used before, thinking.
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  We're trying all sorts of new things together.
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  Like, well, well, who could do that really well?
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  And in the end, the person who did it was me.
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  And and you know, some of my concern was, do you, do you feel
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  listening comes really natural to you?
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  What do you think? I don't know.
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  I'm asking. I want you to confess.
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  No, yeah, I don't think I'm as, I don't think I'm natural.
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  Yeah, that. And so I feel like I've worked
• 5:39
  quite hard. Yeah.
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  To the point that I mentioned this to someone and someone you
• 5:44
  know very kindly said I would not have said of you that you're
• 5:47
  not a good listener. I would have said that you are.
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  Yeah. But but I also know like some of
• 5:54
  the interior like stuff going on when I'm trying to listen,
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  especially if it's listening for a while, I tend to move quite
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  quickly and like like to. Yeah, same.
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  Around. Yeah, I have like when, when I'm
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  hearing things, I have like I'm tying connections to other ideas
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  incessantly. Well, that reminds me of this.
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  That reminds me of this, that. And it's hard to just shut all
• 6:24
  that off and and focus on what they're saying because I'm like
• 6:27
  chasing rabbit trails in my head.
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  And so, so one of the things I feel like I have to still do
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  very intentionally is listen to listen and not to reply.
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  Yeah, because usually I'm like, oh, I could say something there.
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  And, and all the compliments I got when I was a kid,
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  compliments like quote, compliment UN quote.
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  Well, like, oh, you talk really well, you know, you're very
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  quick to think and quick to reply.
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  And you know, so I had teachers when I was 8 or 9, like you have
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  an answer for everything. My, my parents always said,
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  like, are you going to be a lawyer?
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  And actually, Gigi, my second daughter, is very.
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  Like that as well, yeah. And so I never felt like
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  listening was something that came natural to me.
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  And so it still feels like a work in progress.
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  And so the question for me was like, what was I going to be
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  able to well articulate Jesus way of listening and give people
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  a vision for what that might look like in their own lives and
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  what it can do if you do it well.
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  And, and there I think, you know, I was comfortable enough
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  because I'm like, well, we're all on a journey together in
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  that respect. Maybe you'll nudge me a little
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  longer further along on my journey.
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  And so there it was. I I jumped in to my own teaching
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  series. You did, and there we are.
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  And how does that make you feel, Alex?
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  Fine, I guess. I'm trying to listen.
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  I'm trying my best. I'm the podcast.
• 8:00
  I'm trying, yeah. So what else do you want to say?
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  Like so so. I'm demonstrating how bad I am
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  at this. So anyway, the the the the text
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  I took was this moment and I think we could have picked a ton
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  of actually texts with Jesus. Yeah.
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  We'd already done The Woman at the Well, which was another one
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  that kind of came up as I was reading, as I was thinking,
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  praying, you know? Yeah.
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  This text, I suspect if people knew the topic after reading the
• 8:33
  text, they'd be like, yeah, why this one?
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  Yeah. Yeah.
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  So like, unpack your heart behind it because it was like a,
• 8:40
  it's a nuanced reading of this text.
• 8:42
  Yeah. Well, it is to a degree.
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  I mean, the text gets dominated by the healing of a blind man.
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  Yeah. So like, because those are
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  things that we don't see every day.
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  We're like, oh, right, a blind man was here.
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  That's the focus point. Right.
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  But there is a way that Jesus interacts with him A a way of
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  asking questions that actually is true more in John than
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  anywhere else. You know, in John, you have John
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  chapter 5, the man at the pool of Bethesda.
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  You have John Chapter 9, the man born blind, John chapter 4, the
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  woman at the well. Like, there's all these stories
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  in John where Jesus enters into asking questions, listening to
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  responses, all those different things, like the the woman at
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  the well gets to give him a whole, like, treaty on, like the
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  history of Samaritans and Jewish people.
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  Like Jesus is kind of sitting there like, yeah, interesting.
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  Yeah, fascinating. I had not heard that before in
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  eternity. What a new idea to me, yeah.
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  So, so in this text, like one of the things that I, I noticed was
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  Jesus kind of patient leading of this guy who is deeply troubled,
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  is deep, is is rejected by a crowd.
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  So, so you got the start of the story where the man somehow
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  finds out Jesus is passing out of the town.
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  He's leaving, you know, he's, it's not coming in and he's got
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  multiple days to engage not coming in for a vacation.
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  He's he's leaving the town. And so the man desperately
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  begins crying. Oh, son of David, have mercy on
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  me. Whole bunch of interesting stuff
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  going on with the Son of David language, which is the only time
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  that Mark uses it. Very unusual for him, yeah.
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  OK. So then what?
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  What do you think's going on there?
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  So so well well, the most obvious answer is that someone
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  added it. Although the easy answer I guess
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  is that someone added. Yeah, the textual critic answer
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  would be that. You know, the, the there's a
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  history with the Son of David language as a Messiah
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  declaration going back hundreds of years before Jesus time.
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  And so like, on what surface maybe the man is acknowledging
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  who he thinks Jesus is. But it's just very strange that
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  in Jericho, the term he has heard for Jesus is son of David.
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  And especially strange in Mark given that that's just not used
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  anywhere else. It's a very Matthew thing,
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  really. It ties Jesus back into a Jewish
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  culture that Mark doesn't seem to have a particular interest in
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  doing. And and I actually, as I was
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  teaching this, I'm like, man, I really don't teach from Mark a
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  lot. Yeah, I don't know why.
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  We did a, a, a series through the book of Mark right before
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  you came. I think that was one of the
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  series we did right at the tail end of the pasture search
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  process. OK, whom?
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  We brought you on and it was fun.
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  Maybe that's why I don't teach for Mark Very.
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  Often it was surprisingly fun. I like I typically do.
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  I, I went into it thinking like, I don't know, this is going to
• 11:53
  be not my favorite gospel. And then by the end I'm like,
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  it's the best gospel ever, you know?
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  And whatever I'm looking at at the moment, it's the best thing
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  ever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  I, I, I wonder whether some of my like under the surface
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  suspicion that Mark isn't my favorite of the Gospels is
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  because I by nature hate abridged books.
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  So if you give me an abridged version of a book, I'm like,
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  where's the real version? So maybe I just feel that Mark,
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  because he's so much shorter than the others, he's secretly
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  an abridged version. I think what I found to be fun
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  about Mark was that it is very quick paced, which which means
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  that when he does give some detail, it feels extra
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  significant. So you can hyper focus on those
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  little details, which which actually kind of made it in a
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  lot of ways an easier gospel to preach to because he's
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  highlighting very efficiently. Like, it's like reading a if
• 13:00
  you've borrowed a book from someone and they've already
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  highlighted all the good quotes, you know, that can be madding if
• 13:06
  you want to determine them yourself.
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  But it's also like he really highlights the things that are
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  important. Because I think in Mark, Jesus
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  is always doing something, isn't he?
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  As opposed to Matthew and Luke and John, where he's usually
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  teaching something. And John's a little bit more
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  balanced. You get these heavy sections of
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  doing in these heavy sections of teaching, but he's usually
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  teaching what he's doing. And so, so Mark's, he's got some
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  quirkiness in Mark and then some brilliant passages that are
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  just, you know. And so I, yeah, I think my
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  closest explanation for that, the Son of David language was
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  it's a name this man has heard. It's a respectful name to a
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  degree. It acknowledges something of who
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  Jesus is while not going the whole way.
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  It allows us, maybe as people reading for the first time, to
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  kind of join this man in some kind of suspicion that Jesus has
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  done something, but not a certainty about who he is.
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  Exactly. And so he cries out and the
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  crowd, and this is one of the the, the unusual things about
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  the story. I mean, it's hard to find
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  another story where the crowd is almost like a character in the
• 14:26
  story. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  You get it in the the passion narratives, but anywhere else,
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  like for the crowd to have a voice that's actually a very,
• 14:39
  very Roman thing. It's like a very Greek Roman
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  play style, like the chorus in the Greek tragedies often
• 14:49
  speaks, often has a role. And so so here the crowd plays
• 14:57
  this weird inter playing role or or this, this, sorry, this, this
• 15:02
  role in between. Yeah, yeah.
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  Yeah, Jesus and the man. Jesus doesn't talk to the man
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  until the man is standing before him.
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  And so early in the story, the crowd becomes a, a roadblock
• 15:20
  between the man and Jesus. Yeah.
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  Their their job, their, their role or their, their chosen role
• 15:27
  is to shout him down. Yeah.
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  In the hope that the story doesn't get interrupted, that
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  they feel like this is going somewhere.
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  They're following Jesus on a journey.
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  So there's a whole like, no, he doesn't have time for that.
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  Yeah. And and then the man refuses to
• 15:41
  accept that, blocks crowd. He cries out all the more.
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  And Jesus now hears him. But he doesn't call the man, he
• 15:47
  says to the crowd, call him. And so the crowd go to the man
• 15:51
  and say, take courage, good heart.
• 15:53
  You know. He's calling for you.
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  And so somehow like the and the text is really unclear, like
• 15:59
  some of the commentators say, well, he must not have been
• 16:01
  completely blind. He was able to get up and follow
• 16:05
  Jesus or or come to Jesus. You know, some just assume that
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  someone in the crowd helps him over to where Jesus is.
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  And then finally he stands before Jesus and Jesus asks him
• 16:16
  a question, which is so Jesus, right?
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  Because there's a couple of assumptions you could make is
• 16:22
  that he's a beggar that needs money or he's a blind man that
• 16:24
  wants healing. And yet Jesus is brilliant in
• 16:28
  his ability to give people the choice.
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  Yeah. So that's part of that's the
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  listening component in this, in this text is that we get this
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  very strange question. Yeah, which seems strange to us
• 16:43
  at least. Yeah, I, I mean, like all of the
• 16:48
  context clues would indicate obviously the guy wants to be
• 16:52
  healed, but Jesus. Actually, this is pretty true
• 16:57
  with most of his healing stories.
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  He's so much less concerned with the final outcome of their
• 17:03
  physical state as he is with them as a person.
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  And so he's constantly taking what could be these.
• 17:12
  Like, I mean, he could just be walking down the road dishing
• 17:15
  out healing. And that's not his primary MO.
• 17:18
  It's instead like I need to see this person, acknowledge them,
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  all those sorts of things. I have this sneaking suspicion
• 17:25
  that he's hoping just once and all the times that someone comes
• 17:28
  to him for healing, he's going to say to them, what do you want
• 17:31
  me to do? And the person's going to
• 17:33
  respond. I want redemption for the
• 17:35
  interior sense of sinfulness and brokenness that I carry with me
• 17:39
  constantly. Would you heal my shame?
• 17:42
  And he's like, what? Wait, what?
• 17:44
  Yeah, yeah. And there's a couple of moments
• 17:48
  I think in Mark as well, actually, where someone comes
• 17:51
  and he doesn't ask the needs. And what he actually says to
• 17:54
  them is your sins are forgiven. Yeah, exactly that.
• 17:57
  My point is like he's constantly doing this thing where he's he's
• 18:01
  saying the counter intuitive thing in the moment where you're
• 18:05
  where the context clues would seem like they implied.
• 18:07
  An answer already. So what I I mean, what caught my
• 18:10
  attention was that crowd like they become this intermediatory
• 18:19
  going back and forth. So I think somewhere like that's
• 18:22
  what Jesus asks them to do, rather than to try and quieten
• 18:26
  the man down, Jesus invites them to play a role in bringing the
• 18:30
  man to Jesus. And I suspect that he asks us to
• 18:34
  do similar things. And actually that that kind of
• 18:37
  narrative is is present all the way through the Gospels.
• 18:41
  Whether it's Philip and Andrew bringing the Greeks to Jesus in
• 18:47
  John chapter 12, whether it's, is it Philip again bringing?
• 18:51
  I think it is, isn't it bringing Nathaniel to Jesus in John
• 18:55
  chapter 2? There's all of these, you know,
• 18:58
  ways in which someone becomes a reason Jesus encounter someone
• 19:03
  Mary in John chapter 2 with the with the wedding at Kane scene.
• 19:10
  So this is all these ways that people like 6°, you know, do you
• 19:15
  remember the game 6° of Kevin Bacon?
• 19:17
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's almost like this kind
• 19:20
  of thing where Jesus is connected to people through
• 19:23
  people and then pulls them into the story.
• 19:26
  Yeah, and that's still how he does things.
• 19:28
  Totally, Yeah. And so that's actually the
• 19:30
  vision I hoped people got for sitting with people and
• 19:34
  listening to them, knowing that actually that's something of
• 19:38
  what we crave like we crave like.
• 19:41
  I love that David Augsburger quote, which was the, the being
• 19:46
  heard and being loved so close in terms of how we receive them.
• 19:54
  The it's most people can't distinguish the difference.
• 19:58
  When someone listens to you, it's, it gives you this sense of
• 20:01
  being loved like, and you think about that as, as, as children,
• 20:07
  what it means when for your, for your kids, when they come to you
• 20:11
  and want to share something. You know, I'm too busy for that.
• 20:15
  My wife teases me because for the first time in her memory of
• 20:20
  me as a dad. Elena now reads at such a pace
• 20:24
  that I'm really struggling to to be interested, especially as she
• 20:29
  refuses to read any other things.
• 20:31
  I suggest the only things that a friend suggests.
• 20:36
  And so she's like, what happened?
• 20:38
  Like you're always like the guy that was like determined to be
• 20:41
  interested in what they were interested in.
• 20:44
  And now you're just desperately, like, lost in this maze of names
• 20:48
  of books. Yeah.
• 20:50
  And terrible storylines. Yeah.
• 20:52
  But. But actually, yeah, kids,
• 20:54
  especially little kids, have this longing for parents to say
• 20:57
  no. I got time to listen to you.
• 20:58
  What? Do you want to talk about?
• 21:00
  I've noticed that, like, I wish I'd noticed these things with my
• 21:04
  younger kids. I was just too oblivious.
• 21:07
  But I've noticed that Clara will say my name over and over and
• 21:12
  over and over and over and over until she grabs my attention.
• 21:16
  And then she'll say what she wants us wants to say.
• 21:18
  And actually, like in in interpersonal or leadership
• 21:26
  training, they actually teach that skill.
• 21:29
  Yeah. Of commanding attention.
• 21:31
  Yeah. Don't say something important
• 21:33
  until the whole room is. Locked on you.
• 21:36
  Or even in humor, like if you want to be a generally funny
• 21:38
  person, you're like, I got this story, I got this story and
• 21:41
  everyone's laughing and stuff. And you will just say, hey,
• 21:43
  let's listen. Like I got this story, I got
• 21:44
  this. Wait till everyone is locked in
• 21:47
  and then you say the thing. Otherwise you lose, you lose the
• 21:52
  capacity of, of being able to command the moment.
• 21:57
  And kids intuit this. Yeah.
• 21:59
  They, that's why sometimes it's like, goodness gracious, can you
• 22:03
  stop saying my name? Well, in fairness, I haven't
• 22:07
  paid attention. Yeah.
• 22:09
  And I I I've had this thought more recently.
• 22:12
  I'm frustrated because she's saying my name so much and yet I
• 22:15
  have yet to pay. Attention Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:17
  And so and so, so for me then like trying to give people that
• 22:22
  sense of, you know, maybe that in neighboring is a calling for
• 22:26
  you. I I have had neighbors where
• 22:29
  I've done that really well and God has put around us some
• 22:34
  neighbors that have some stuff at different points in our
• 22:38
  lives. We have a neighbor now who's
• 22:43
  been a widow for 40 years. Her son still lives with her,
• 22:49
  but she, I mean, she, her husband was in the Air Force.
• 22:55
  He died in a plane crash. And she just got some weight,
• 23:00
  some stuff. Yeah.
• 23:02
  And so I, I've tried times to listen really well.
• 23:08
  And then there's times, if I'm honest, I'm just too busy.
• 23:11
  And so I'm kind of like, like, kind of like looking out the
• 23:14
  door, like, wait, is she sat on the patio?
• 23:15
  Like, I really don't have time for a conversation.
• 23:18
  I've got this, I've got to do. I've got this.
• 23:19
  I've got to do. I've got this.
• 23:20
  I've got. It How do you know she doesn't
• 23:21
  watch this show? Hi, Shaw.
• 23:29
  Yeah, I, I, I don't think she does, but but, and, and again,
• 23:32
  she, she would know that there's times where I'm, I'm, I've been
• 23:36
  too busy in times where I have listened really well.
• 23:39
  But, but she's someone who really like, feels this
• 23:43
  loneliness and feels this need of like, I just want someone to
• 23:46
  listen to me. And we're the only neighbors
• 23:49
  that really have that connection across a fence for her.
• 23:55
  And then I've had my neighbor Bruce back in New York, who was
• 23:57
  someone, you know, that was very good to us.
• 24:00
  And, you know, I was able to sit and listen with him and, you
• 24:04
  know, help him navigate some of his stuff.
• 24:06
  And, you know, so those relationships are, are gifts to
• 24:10
  people. But but we are so busy, it's
• 24:14
  very hard for us to take that time to even believe that we
• 24:17
  could be able available to to listen well.
• 24:20
  And so, so I, I was trying to decide because I'm, I'm teaching
• 24:24
  this week as well, when to talk about my parents and the way
• 24:27
  they have done that. I think so.
• 24:29
  Well. You.
• 24:32
  Know they, they would just have on a Saturday a group of random
• 24:39
  people that would wander into the house.
• 24:41
  You know, there are all sorts of like, you know, like the
• 24:44
  oddballs, the, the, the ones that didn't have places to go.
• 24:47
  My parents store was always open, they were always free to
• 24:50
  either have a cup of tea or make themselves a cup of tea if my
• 24:53
  parents were busy. But my parents would just take
• 24:56
  time for them. And, and, and I actually really
• 25:01
  believe that my parents are the reason some of those people are
• 25:04
  still alive today. They just had a way of caring
• 25:09
  for people, not because they were cool, but because they were
• 25:12
  nearby. And they did that for some of
• 25:15
  those people for like decades. I mean, very like they were.
• 25:20
  There were some of those people they were doing that for before
• 25:22
  I was alive and they were still doing it when I got married.
• 25:27
  Yeah. So my, my parents were, you
• 25:32
  know, missionaries for a number of years and then they were in
• 25:34
  quote UN quote, mobilization of missionaries for another chunk
• 25:38
  of years. And there was a season there
• 25:42
  where they were doing that full time, where there were some,
• 25:46
  some of the most I'll be, I'll be generous to the other
• 25:51
  mobilizers. They were some of the best
• 25:53
  mobilizers. In other words, they single
• 25:57
  handedly brought in 50% of all new missionaries.
• 26:01
  That's amazing. And knowing them a little bit,
• 26:03
  that makes total sense. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:04
  And now, and I don't know, I could be exaggerating those
• 26:07
  numbers a little bit I'm but I don't think I am.
• 26:11
  And part of the reason was, is like they had this long term
• 26:16
  agenda when it came to relationships with students
• 26:20
  primarily. They mostly went to college
• 26:22
  campuses and they would had a set of college campuses they
• 26:25
  rotate around. And my dad, when he talked about
• 26:29
  mobilizing, he says, I want to meet a student their freshman
• 26:33
  year of Bible college. I want to officiate their
• 26:37
  wedding three years after they graduate Bible college and then
• 26:40
  send them to the mission field after they have their first kid.
• 26:44
  Wow. So he's playing the eight to 10
• 26:46
  year game with every one of these relationships.
• 26:50
  And so that's how we approach these conversations.
• 26:53
  So he's not sitting there across coffee with a freshman in Bible
• 26:56
  college. Do you want to go on the mission
• 26:58
  field? Have you ever thought about
• 26:59
  going to the mission field? Do you want to do this?
• 27:01
  He's like, who are you? What are you studying?
• 27:04
  Like, his agenda for the mission field is so far down the
• 27:08
  pipeline to him that like these students would consistently ask
• 27:12
  him to officiate their weddings, do their premarital counseling
• 27:16
  and stuff. And then which mission agency
• 27:18
  are they going to go with when they if, when and if they ever
• 27:21
  decide to go on the mission field?
• 27:22
  Well, obviously the one that Bill Bill recommends.
• 27:25
  College recruiting, it was like for like, you know, for like
• 27:29
  basketball or football. It's like, yeah, we're going to
• 27:31
  have that kind of relationship with you.
• 27:33
  Absolutely. And that's part of the reason
• 27:35
  why, like, it took them a number of years, but they're like,
• 27:38
  quote a more quote, closing deals that started 10 years
• 27:42
  prior. The the the couple gets married,
• 27:45
  they have their first kid, they sense their first calling, they
• 27:49
  try a career, and they realize, no, there's a deeper calling
• 27:52
  and. Current in their.
• 27:52
  Soul. And suddenly they reach out to
• 27:55
  my dad and they're like, I'm ready to go to China or
• 27:57
  whatever. And that's how he did really.
• 28:01
  But it started with probably spring and fall every year for
• 28:09
  for four years of college, and then they'd come to town and
• 28:12
  have them for dinner and on and on and on, tons of listening.
• 28:17
  That then blossomed into some significant ministry.
• 28:19
  That was always, I think what, what amazed, you know, I think
• 28:23
  if you like, I think of the one person, the, the was the first
• 28:27
  person I think my parents really took in and gave space to.
• 28:33
  And she was like, she had a low IQ, never got married, lived in
• 28:39
  a little apartment. And I think my parents were so
• 28:43
  good at this. If you'd have asked this lady,
• 28:46
  his name is Pat. She's passed away now.
• 28:49
  Who was caring for who? I think Pat would have said, oh,
• 28:52
  I'm checking in on them. Just dropping by to see if
• 28:55
  they're OK now. My parents were absolutely OK.
• 28:59
  Both really intelligent, really well put together, well adjusted
• 29:04
  people. That's great.
• 29:05
  But I think she would have said that and, and it always reminded
• 29:08
  me like lean lady since I've been here.
• 29:10
  Really. Do you, do you remember what
• 29:13
  Anne Cresswell's niece said about her during her funeral?
• 29:16
  I don't know if you remember this.
• 29:17
  I've quoted it before because it always just captured my
• 29:20
  attention. She said her way of doing
• 29:22
  hospitality was to give people the impression that they made my
• 29:27
  day by visiting. Yeah.
• 29:29
  So like, it's one level to one level to think, oh, I want to
• 29:31
  make their day and for them to feel like I made their day.
• 29:34
  But to actually give people the sense that, like, I was just so
• 29:38
  glad I turned up. Like so like, you know, it was
• 29:42
  the best thing of her. Year I didn't even realize how
• 29:45
  much she needed me to be here it.
• 29:51
  Really is. And, and so I think it's one
• 29:52
  thing to to make people feel like, you know, the, the, you're
• 29:56
  doing them a favour. Yeah.
• 29:58
  It's another thing altogether to help people get to the point
• 30:01
  where they think, you know, like, like for, you know, I
• 30:03
  imagine just knowing your dad a little bit, you know, I've had
• 30:06
  less conversations with your mom, but, you know, I can
• 30:09
  imagine, like, you know, like students been like, oh, man,
• 30:13
  he's just loving me sitting down with them for dinner.
• 30:17
  Like, you know, he's so glad to be asked to do my wedding.
• 30:20
  Yeah. So.
• 30:23
  So I think that, yeah, I, I I think that they had somewhat,
• 30:31
  like, that's where you see some of the gift of being in the same
• 30:34
  place for a long period of time. They weren't desperate for
• 30:38
  friends. They had friends, they weren't
• 30:41
  desperate for community, they had community.
• 30:44
  What they were doing is just saying we're not in a rush, that
• 30:49
  we're happy to give Saturday over to being in the garden, to
• 30:54
  doing some like some cleaning, some odd things, but we're not
• 30:58
  planning on filling it with stuff.
• 31:01
  We're happy to be available to those that want to drop by.
• 31:05
  And so I think there was a a little bit different to how I
• 31:09
  see like even just how people are about opening the door now,
• 31:14
  like, well, having people just drop in.
• 31:16
  Like I have this firm belief that you need people in your
• 31:19
  life that can just drop in without you having to clean the
• 31:22
  house, that you don't need to have that sense of like, oh, I'm
• 31:26
  getting ready for them. Yeah.
• 31:29
  I mean, these people sat around some messy houses.
• 31:33
  Like, we were not. We were five kids, like a lot
• 31:37
  going on. Like this house was not always
• 31:41
  super tidy by any means. And yet it had this warmth, this
• 31:44
  friendliness to it that I would have have friends that would
• 31:49
  come by and say, Alex, like, your house is a complete mess.
• 31:53
  And this is exactly what I want my house to be like when I'm
• 31:55
  growing up. Yep.
• 31:57
  It just feels like you're allowed to belong here.
• 32:00
  Yeah, I've experienced some of those environments before too,
• 32:04
  where there's just such a high sense of invitation in that it
• 32:11
  overcomes any of the the blemishes that might be in in
• 32:16
  the environment. Yeah, there's like the
• 32:18
  relational pull is so strong. It, it, you know, it, it's just
• 32:23
  so, so powerful. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:26
  So, so yeah, I, I'd love us to be a, a group of people that
• 32:30
  could could be known well for listening and I'd love to be a
• 32:35
  person that was well known for listening again, Definitely
• 32:38
  still on a journey. Yeah, same, same.
• 32:42
  Yep, I think so that then why do you think that is especially
• 32:49
  maybe even in youth In in in young career that listening
• 32:55
  seems to be even harder? You know, I, I think we, we tend
• 33:01
  to think that we, we, we make ourselves known by the things we
• 33:07
  say. Like it.
• 33:10
  Like, I think there's this feeling like when you're young
• 33:12
  that, well, I've got to get my voice out there.
• 33:14
  I've got to say some stuff. I actually nearly quoted a
• 33:18
  friend of mine who's like, he's a genius.
• 33:22
  Like he's level of building a company and seeing the future.
• 33:28
  But he's one of those people that he's so comfortable in his
• 33:30
  own skin. He'll sit there and say like,
• 33:32
  talk to me like I'm 5. Like talk to me like I'm a
• 33:35
  golden retriever. Like, talk to me like I'm like,
• 33:38
  you know, because he's like, I'm, I believe that you have
• 33:42
  something to say that I'm going to need to know.
• 33:44
  And he's still able to do that in his sixties, 70s.
• 33:48
  But I think early on you feel like your call is to to speak,
• 33:52
  especially in a culture like America, where it's like, you
• 33:55
  know, there's enough out there about like, creating your brand
• 33:58
  and like speaking your truth and all these sorts of things that,
• 34:02
  yeah, you kind of tend to go into things with this sense of,
• 34:05
  yeah, if I don't speak, no one's going to know I'm here.
• 34:10
  Yeah. And and yet like as people get
• 34:13
  older and wiser, they tend to get more comfortable listening
• 34:16
  as well tend to not everyone tend to.
• 34:19
  So it's something. I think it's AI think it is a
• 34:24
  it's a data point on whether someone's walking with Jesus.
• 34:29
  Oh, I like that, yeah. Yeah, I think it is because I,
• 34:31
  I, those most older Saints who've been walking with Jesus
• 34:36
  with any measure of intentionality, even if they
• 34:40
  didn't start that way, tend to start becoming better and better
• 34:44
  and better. Listen.
• 34:45
  Well, I, I wonder what the connection is like I'm, I'm kind
• 34:48
  of, this was floating around in my head, but I couldn't figure
• 34:51
  out how it fit completely. And that's what kind of what
• 34:54
  this podcast is for. Yeah.
• 34:56
  I started to wonder what the connection was between how good
• 34:59
  we are at listening to God and how good we are at listening to
• 35:04
  other people. So if you think about prayer as
• 35:07
  they think early on, most people tend to think that prayer is
• 35:13
  about what you say. Like that's how you begin at
• 35:17
  prayer, right? You say stuff and then later on,
• 35:20
  like, you know, do you remember the famous interview with Dan
• 35:23
  Rather and Mother Teresa? But, you know, and and he kind
• 35:27
  of said to her, what do you say to to God when you pray?
• 35:33
  And she's like, I don't, I listen.
• 35:35
  And you can see Dan rather kind of gives this like, OK, what
• 35:38
  does God. Yeah.
• 35:39
  Oh, you're serious? Yeah.
• 35:40
  And then? He says, oh, what does God say
• 35:43
  to you? And she said he doesn't.
• 35:46
  He listens. And then there's kind of like
• 35:53
  trying to remember, she said this.
• 35:55
  Interview over I guess like. Well, there was either a
• 35:58
  commentary on it from someone else or like, or she said, I'm
• 36:01
  trying to remember exactly, but but the the like the follow up
• 36:04
  was and if you can't understand that, I can't explain it to you.
• 36:09
  Like it goes beyond the sense of, you know, it speaks to
• 36:16
  speaks to what it is to be able to be in a room with someone you
• 36:19
  know very well and just be silent, which is very few
• 36:23
  relationships. So I think 1 like I'm curious
• 36:26
  how that affects us, like what we used to like talking to God
• 36:31
  preps and we think we need to talk to other people and
• 36:33
  listening usually comes later as a skill set.
• 36:35
  And and then I wonder about the current culture we live in,
• 36:42
  which seems designed to fill every space with noise.
• 36:47
  Like actually we're deeply afraid of silence today in most,
• 36:51
  you know, you, you, you go to like to watch a baseball game
• 36:57
  and before it starts, what do they do?
• 36:58
  Like they blast like Everything Everywhere.
• 37:02
  Do you know actually years ago before they started like all of
• 37:06
  the studio pregame things and everything and and half time
• 37:11
  thing on TV feeds of football games, all you would have before
• 37:16
  the game started was just a camera on center field, like the
• 37:22
  middle of the like the middle of the pitch and silence.
• 37:27
  And then they're like, well, we got to fill this with stuff,
• 37:29
  start adding like the commentary pieces, the people talking about
• 37:32
  the teams beforehand. They realized that this whole
• 37:34
  market, but people would literally turn on like a couple
• 37:39
  of minutes before and and it would just be silent.
• 37:42
  You know the game started because you started hearing,
• 37:44
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 37:45
  So, so, you know, on one hand, there's all these sort of
• 37:50
  reasons that we fill those spaces, like market and
• 37:54
  education and the way that, you know, you get to learn about the
• 37:57
  players and all those sorts of things.
• 37:59
  But I regularly think about when I try and fill my life with
• 38:03
  noise, the way CS Lewis described the Kingdom of Satan
• 38:08
  as a Kingdom of noise. It's just all noise and there's
• 38:12
  no space for silence and there's no space for worship, 'cause
• 38:17
  it's just noise. Yeah.
• 38:20
  And. And so.
• 38:21
  Usually this is like such an indictment on how I operate a
• 38:27
  ton of my time. Usually I am intentionally
• 38:31
  filling my head with noise, whether it's educational or
• 38:34
  otherwise. I've got my headphones in, I'm
• 38:36
  listening to podcasts, I'm listening to this, I'm learning
• 38:38
  that, I'm learning this, I'm learning that, I'm learning
• 38:40
  this. I'm learning that and part when
• 38:44
  I'm in a better space spiritually.
• 38:48
  I noticed that I'm starting to do that and it's the first
• 38:52
  warning sign that I'm avoiding something I'm supposed to be
• 38:55
  thinking. And so I noticed that I'm I'm
• 39:01
  listening to a bunch of stuff and then I asked myself why?
• 39:06
  What am I avoiding? And then usually there's a, a, a
• 39:10
  challenging conversation that needs to be had, a complicated
• 39:15
  issue that needs to be thought through that's mentally taxing
• 39:19
  enough that I have to turn up the volume of my world to not
• 39:24
  listen to that. Yeah.
• 39:26
  Yeah, I, I I think that I would agree with that warning sign.
• 39:34
  I don't know if you've ever done this.
• 39:35
  This is like somewhat embarrassing to admit, but there
• 39:38
  have been times where I've been going to the bathroom and
• 39:41
  realized I don't have my phone with me and gone back somewhere
• 39:45
  to get my phone so I can fill even that brief space with
• 39:49
  something. Yeah.
• 39:52
  And I think that that. Remember the days when you just,
• 39:55
  like, sat in the bathroom inside?
• 39:58
  Or you had a book or whatever. Yeah.
• 40:00
  But it was, it was deeper thinking.
• 40:01
  It was a deeper. It wasn't just content, it was
• 40:04
  more purposeful. OK, maybe it was Reader's Digest
• 40:07
  back in the day, but like, it was.
• 40:09
  Which is why most people get the most their most in powerful
• 40:14
  thinking done in the shower. You can't.
• 40:16
  You can't take the content. Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 40:18
  Yeah. It's, it's so you're actually
• 40:20
  like when you want to actually have those deeper thoughts, you
• 40:23
  have to create those spaces. I've just been reading like one
• 40:29
  of the best leadership books I think I've ever read, failure of
• 40:33
  nerve. And it's really about how like
• 40:38
  actually the thing we miss most in leadership across and this
• 40:42
  guy's like it's everywhere. It's in schools, it's in
• 40:45
  parents, in families, it's in churches, it's synagogues is
• 40:50
  like we don't have courage in leadership.
• 40:54
  Like, it's a failure of like, that sense of like, this is who
• 40:58
  we are. Yeah.
• 40:59
  And when you don't have space, you can't have that kind of
• 41:04
  thing. He's the guy that really started
• 41:06
  to coin phrases like non anxious presence and stuff.
• 41:09
  Like that? Oh, interesting.
• 41:11
  And he's like, yeah, no, the the moment that you don't have
• 41:15
  someone that can hold that role, the organization suffers.
• 41:19
  Like if everyone's anxious and no one can pull the organization
• 41:24
  together like. And the terrible So maybe to
• 41:29
  circle back around to listening to others.
• 41:31
  Like we just spent a bunch of time talking about why we're
• 41:37
  turning up the noise to avoid deeper thoughts to whatever.
• 41:43
  So to circle back around to like the challenge that you gave us
• 41:46
  as a church community to listen to others, I think there's a
• 41:52
  relationship there. Maybe I'm just, it's just
• 41:54
  occurring to me. The relationship is that a good
• 41:56
  listener draws out someone that might may not have thought these
• 42:05
  thoughts fully for themselves because they've been drowning
• 42:09
  them out. A good listener becomes a a saw,
• 42:14
  a silence space for someone. And yes, they're the person
• 42:20
  talking is filling the space with noise, but the listener is
• 42:23
  allowing these thoughts to fully blossom, the emotions to fully
• 42:28
  come out. And so you become a place of
• 42:30
  silence and solitude, almost for a soul.
• 42:34
  Well, I I. It is overly bombarded with
• 42:36
  noise. And I would say actually in
• 42:38
  those moments, actually the noises stopped and they're
• 42:40
  filling it with some kind of confessional, some kind of like
• 42:44
  so. So I think there's a really
• 42:45
  important distinction between noise, which is for its own sake
• 42:49
  and and then purposeful language.
• 42:52
  Yeah, that's what. I mean, I mean like it's, it's
• 42:55
  now there. I'm a, I'm a highly verbal
• 42:58
  processor. So sometimes solitude, it
• 43:02
  solitude takes me a ton of time. If I just had someone that would
• 43:07
  just listen to me vent or process out loud, I'd be.
• 43:12
  It'd be more efficient in a lot of ways to process things that I
• 43:17
  So whenever I do a silent retreat, I won't go unless I get
• 43:19
  2 nights because it takes me almost 24 hours for me to to
• 43:25
  turn down the noise enough and to turn up the internal dialogue
• 43:30
  to the place where I have a question well formed to ask God.
• 43:35
  So, so I think here's where I would connect some of those dots
• 43:38
  between the constant craving for content.
• 43:41
  Piece is actually now what we're gifted with more than any time
• 43:45
  in history is we get to completely curate the content we
• 43:50
  hear. Ah, interesting.
• 43:52
  And so like, ah, like, ah, deselecting of content takes
• 43:59
  seconds. It's actually the same as we've
• 44:01
  done with relations. I mean, think about the very
• 44:04
  like for people that do things like Tinder, it's like a what,
• 44:09
  what is it a 2 second decision they say, or something like
• 44:11
  that. It's like a swipe, swipe,
• 44:13
  whichever way. Yeah, swipe.
• 44:15
  I'm done, I'm done. No, I'm done.
• 44:17
  And and so we do that with like, like content.
• 44:20
  Not only is the content so short that it shortens our attention
• 44:24
  span, but we're also like, oh, no, I don't know already.
• 44:26
  No, don't want that. Nope, done with that.
• 44:29
  And so all of our content is completely curated.
• 44:32
  Unless you still listen to the radio, you hear a song you don't
• 44:35
  want done. Gone.
• 44:37
  Like you, you, you. You watch a show like.
• 44:41
  Nope. Done next one.
• 44:43
  You're not waiting for anything anymore.
• 44:45
  You know, I even like, Laura and I were reminiscing back, like,
• 44:50
  what is it now? Nearly 16 years ago when we
• 44:53
  still used to watch shows on normal television.
• 44:56
  Yeah, We. We.
• 44:58
  And those shows felt more satisfying.
• 45:00
  Yeah, we would watch The Office every Thursday at the same time,
• 45:05
  like we'd sit down as a family group.
• 45:07
  We were living with Laura's parents for three months.
• 45:10
  I think we'd come over to stay for three months and everything
• 45:15
  was you waited and you waited. Commercials couldn't be fast
• 45:19
  forwarded. You commute them, you could have
• 45:22
  conversations. And when you live in a world
• 45:24
  where you get to curate every single thing, as soon as you
• 45:29
  talk to someone and you can't curate their conversation or
• 45:32
  what they say, you suddenly start to feel that sense of
• 45:36
  like, oh, man, this is so long. This person still talking, like,
• 45:41
  what are they even? Like everything in you has
• 45:44
  trained yourself to say, well, I should be able to just click on,
• 45:46
  right? I should be able to just move
• 45:48
  the conversation forward. So we're actually like training
• 45:52
  ourselves without knowing it to not be able to listen.
• 45:55
  Our attention spans shorten. A tolerance for meandering and
• 46:01
  fluff and all those different things shorten.
• 46:03
  Which might mean a good listener is even more in a high premium
• 46:07
  than ever. Yeah, because some people have
• 46:10
  never been listened to before. Totally.
• 46:12
  I would guess so, yeah. And and so we're actually like,
• 46:15
  I think the spiritual discipline of, of creating space, margin
• 46:20
  silence for like slowness. Like, I mean, these, these dots
• 46:25
  connect all over the place. There's so many books been
• 46:28
  written now on how you can't even do good work anymore unless
• 46:31
  you retrain your brain. Yeah.
• 46:33
  Like that that actually everything in US doesn't allow
• 46:37
  for the space. I I actually because of one book
• 46:41
  I read, started listening to baseball games and it's so
• 46:45
  counterintuitive to anything else because it's slow
• 46:48
  meandering. It takes about 3 hours to get
• 46:52
  through a game. Nothing happens for multiple
• 46:55
  like seconds at different points.
• 46:57
  Yeah, yeah. I was talking to someone.
• 47:00
  Maybe it was you, but I was talking about Wendell Berry as
• 47:03
  an author. Yeah, it was you.
• 47:06
  So. And and we were kind of
• 47:08
  reflecting like Wendell Berry, if you've never read any of his
• 47:11
  novels, Ann Coulter and Jaber Crowe or two, two names of books
• 47:16
  if you wanna try them. He has this series of books that
• 47:20
  are set in what, in Pennsylvania or something.
• 47:22
  And it's just a small town in Pennsylvania, like right around
• 47:25
  World War, 2:00-ish time. And one book in the series is
• 47:31
  random person that lives in that town and it just their daily
• 47:36
  kind of life story. And then the next, next book in
• 47:40
  the series is another random person from the same town and
• 47:43
  there's crossover because of it. But the first book I read
• 47:47
  someone recommended to me, I'm like reading, I'm like halfway
• 47:50
  through book. I'm like, where's the story
• 47:52
  going to start? Is anything going to happen
• 47:55
  'cause it's slow? So it's so slow paced and I
• 47:58
  think that that's actually the gift that Wendell Berry gives
• 48:01
  people is he gives you a window into the unhurried life.
• 48:06
  And you're, it's almost like I'm still reading with interest
• 48:10
  because my soul is crying out. Please live more like Jaber Crow
• 48:16
  or live more like Ann Coulter with all of the sorrows and the
• 48:20
  relational tensions and all of these things that it's the
• 48:24
  slower paced life is a gift to the soul.
• 48:27
  Yeah, and, and there's a bunch of guys that do similar stuff,
• 48:30
  like a few different books that like come to mind Remains of the
• 48:33
  Day, like it's like a. Theo of Golden A.
• 48:37
  Meandering story. I haven't read that one yet.
• 48:40
  I just finished it. Yeah.
• 48:41
  I highly recommend. It's, you know, it has more of a
• 48:44
  narrative arc than of some of Wendell Berry's stuff.
• 48:47
  But yeah. Yeah, Remains of the Day doesn't
• 48:50
  really go anywhere. It's a reminiscing and a journey
• 48:54
  to invite someone into another journey that they never take.
• 48:57
  You know, one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander
• 49:00
  Saltzen. It's a one day in the life of
• 49:03
  one guy in a prison camp where the victories are.
• 49:06
  I got an extra bowl of oatmeal for breakfast.
• 49:09
  Like it's just, it's just a story about nothing.
• 49:11
  Hidden Life of Trees is like a story is a book about trees and
• 49:18
  how they grow and everything is slow and like it just just like
• 49:24
  meanders. And so I think, I think we're
• 49:27
  we're we're desperately in need of the slowness of Sabbath, of
• 49:34
  listening, of silence, of all those different things that the
• 49:37
  contemplatives have been telling us for years.
• 49:40
  You really need these. But but we need them more than
• 49:43
  ever, I think. And I think that this might be
• 49:46
  to circle back to a previous question, one of the reasons why
• 49:50
  as you grow in the way of Jesus, a lot of Saint like great Saints
• 49:56
  who have been walking with Jesus for years get better and better
• 49:58
  at listening. Because when you're, when you're
• 50:00
  in your youth, you still think the things you're doing and your
• 50:03
  activities are really important and are going to come.
• 50:06
  And then once you've lived enough life, you're like, oh,
• 50:09
  the most important things that I do in my life are actually
• 50:14
  pretty inconsequential. And then suddenly everyone's
• 50:19
  life becomes more interesting to you.
• 50:21
  It's easier to listen to someone else's story when when you
• 50:27
  realize that the it's the subtleties in life that are the
• 50:30
  most beautiful. And it's, I don't know.
• 50:33
  And I think, I think this is one of the reasons why Dan's such a
• 50:39
  gifted, like, visitor and stuff, because he can just sit and
• 50:42
  listen to people's stories and he intrinsically is interested
• 50:46
  in their stories and those sorts of things.
• 50:48
  Yeah. Yeah, he has this beautiful,
• 50:50
  gentle exit move. I don't know if he's ever been
• 50:53
  on a visit with him. No.
• 50:54
  But he'll like, you know, after a while of sitting and listening
• 50:58
  and, you know, whether it's 20 minutes or 40 minutes or
• 51:00
  whatever, it's like, well, yes, we better be moving on.
• 51:04
  Like it's just so like, just like you don't feel like he's
• 51:08
  like, OK, it just feels like it's the right time.
• 51:11
  And, you know, you know, that that sense of slowness and
• 51:16
  rhythm. I think when we were talking
• 51:18
  briefly the other day, I mentioned like how my aunt
• 51:21
  functioned. She was a farmer.
• 51:23
  And so there were tasks to be done, but it was, it was so
• 51:26
  rhythmic. She would get up in the morning.
• 51:29
  The first thing she would do is she would go let the cows out.
• 51:32
  She would feed them, she would come back, she would feed the
• 51:35
  chickens. She would stop for a bowl of
• 51:37
  breakfast. So I should feed the horses,
• 51:40
  chickens, bowl of breakfast. She'd sit with a crossword.
• 51:44
  And if she got stuck, you know, this is before the day where you
• 51:48
  had a computer where you could look up to see what the answer
• 51:51
  might be. None of that all just her and
• 51:54
  her brain or whatever guest she had in the house.
• 51:56
  And she had guests constantly. And if she got stuck, she'd kind
• 52:01
  of look up at you and say, yes, that's God's way of telling us
• 52:05
  there's other things to do. And then she'd go and she'd
• 52:08
  meander about whatever tasks had to be done that day.
• 52:11
  And it was all that slow pace of life.
• 52:14
  And she always had time to drop the she used to write the parish
• 52:17
  news or do the parish newsletter delivery for the local church
• 52:21
  parish. And she'd drive around
• 52:22
  delivering it to people that couldn't pick up their own copy.
• 52:25
  And everything was just that pace.
• 52:29
  Yeah. And I think in when you're in
• 52:31
  your youth, you feel like they're wasting so much time
• 52:35
  because they've got to like, do stuff to have a meaningful life.
• 52:39
  And then when you get older, you're like, I did a bunch of
• 52:41
  stuff and it wasn't meaningful. What's meaningful is the
• 52:45
  watching the sun, sun come in the window at this time of day,
• 52:49
  this time of year, seeing the steam of your coffee in the
• 52:54
  flecks of sunlight. Those are the the most beautiful
• 52:58
  moments in all of human experience.
• 53:02
  Or, or having and then having your loved one come downstairs
• 53:05
  and see that scene and smell the coffee.
• 53:08
  I like it's just like, why are we so rushed anyway?
• 53:12
  Wow, we're we sound an old man. We are.
• 53:17
  Any final thoughts? I feel like we could go on for
• 53:20
  another hour. Yeah, I, I.
• 53:25
  Mean, I think I, I had this reminder to be gracious with
• 53:29
  yourself as you're learning to do this stuff and to remind,
• 53:31
  remember that like I read, I read Psalm 103 verse, I think
• 53:36
  it's the 13 and 1414 and 15 where, you know, it says that,
• 53:41
  you know, we God remembers that we're just dust and I forget
• 53:46
  that. So I'm like, no, I should be
• 53:48
  better at this. I should be further along in the
• 53:50
  journey and he doesn't seem particularly.
• 53:53
  To feel he's also not rushed with our our formation.
• 53:55
  Yeah, and, and, and my favorite thing about the fact that Jesus
• 54:00
  lived three years rather than just coming and dying is, is the
• 54:04
  teaching that we get, but also that he journeys with these same
• 54:08
  group of disciples who were not noticeably better at being
• 54:12
  disciples three years in and he still cares for them.
• 54:15
  He's deeply passionate. So it gives them some me some
• 54:18
  confidence that he might do the same with me.
• 54:20
  But I think to be gracious, depending on your personality
• 54:27
  like that, we have some beautiful Saints in our church
• 54:31
  that are very like present and caring and generous who would
• 54:37
  put the hand up and say, I so struggle with conversation and
• 54:42
  entering into that. Like I'm not the person people
• 54:45
  want to talk to. Like I'm the person that people
• 54:47
  want to push to the side. Like I'm like, so, so like just
• 54:52
  to be gracious and to listen to what God has for you and to
• 54:57
  listen to those that will allow you to be a listener or a
• 55:00
  conversation partner and not feel like the same obligation is
• 55:05
  like true for every single person.
• 55:08
  Like I, I try and talk to on Sunday mornings at South like a
• 55:11
  good 150 people. Like there's no sense of me that
• 55:17
  everyone should be able to do that.
• 55:20
  It's a particular way that God gifted me.
• 55:23
  And I'm trying to slow down a little bit more, even just to
• 55:26
  make some of those conversations linger a little bit and have
• 55:30
  questions about the value of what it all those different
• 55:33
  things. But like I, I think the, the,
• 55:36
  the call of Jesus is to listen as you can in line with the
• 55:39
  person God made you, and to know that the gift you might bring is
• 55:43
  listening to one person. Yeah, that's a good rich thing.
• 55:48
  I've met several people who have lamented heavily.
• 55:53
  They feel like they understand the heart of God and they lament
• 55:57
  heavily that they can't articulate the way I can and I'm
• 56:02
  like goodness gracious. They also tend to be way better
• 56:06
  listeners than me and, and similar to the concept of
• 56:09
  prayer, not saying something might be the best thing you
• 56:15
  could offer the world around you and letting someone else speak
• 56:19
  at their story to you. Yeah.
• 56:20
  Yeah. Well, good chat, man.
• 56:25
  Thanks for tuning in everyone, and we will see you next week.
• 56:30
  Give Aaron your thoughts on his tie.
• 56:31
  Yeah. What do you think?
• 56:33
  Should this be a mainstay? Grace and peace, friends.
• 56:37
  All right. Bye.