Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

I am one of those people, and I’m working to change.

When people start talking to me, I hear the endless lectures and scolding of my father and the hysteria of my mother, and I shut down and go inward to protect myself. I retain little of what I hear.

Listening, wrote one scholar,  is an art that requires attention over talent, spirit over ego, and others over self. So it is unusual and very much a spiritual imperative.

I’ve always known that I am a better talker than a listener; in my early life, listening was frightening. There was never anything valuable or rational to hear.

Listening asks a lot of us. We have to care more about other people than ourselves, and we have to learn more from other people than ourselves.

We also have to deal with hate and lies, and rage.

To grasp the importance of listening, look at our country’s politics or the conspiracies and hostility online, the land where no one listens. Or the inability of people in Congress to listen to one another. It hurts us; it hurts our country.

Perhaps the states could stop banning books and teach young people how to listen.

Listening is calming and grounding for me. It is essential to any spiritual life. That is what a spiritual life means to me, not being perfect but being better. I want to be a better listener.

I have no illusions about all of these spiritual goals. I will never wholly achieve some; I will get to others occasionally; some I will never get right without thinking about it. No one will ever nominate me for sainthood.

I have read Thomas Merton for years, but until I read his journals, which were posted posthumously without editing by his church, I had no idea what he was really like. He was grumpy, dissatisfied, and difficult to get along with.

He struggled daily to meet the goals and demands of spiritual life.

I need to see listening as a process and grasp the good it will do for me. And most important of all, I have to make a considered and conscious decision to change.

In my current life, listening is still challenging and sometimes dangerous:  there are not many people whose stories and feelings I want to hear, especially from the whiners, self-pitiers, broken people, and trolls who thrive on social media.

Listening to them is not healthy, and it certainly isn’t spiritual. But it can be educational and valuable when it comes to hearing. And it can teach me much about empathy. I am learning to forgive them.

In a world where leaders lie openly and are no longer held accountable, listening is something it has never been before in my lifetime. It is much more complicated than it once was when rabbis and imams, and priests defined it for us.

The Mansion has helped me learn to listen, as has my work with refugee children and their families. They have stories I want and need to hear.

My best education in listening came when I was on an Oversight Committee of a Quaker Meeting in New Jersey.

The Quakers know how to listen and have been meditating on conflicts for centuries; listening is a significant element of our faith. Our committee worked to mediate disagreements.

The process worked. One side would state their mind, and no one could speak for at least two minutes, so there was no opportunity to talk over each other, and the other side had to listen and absorb what was being said.

This silence kept everyone calm and grounded; there was no jumping on each other and answering before an argument was heard. There was no instant reply.

The participants had no choice but to listen, and that avoided the shouting and grievance that derailed so many disagreements and hurt so many feelings.

I’ve used this technique repeatedly, especially in my marriage. Maria and I are sensitive people raised by families that refuse to listen, refuse to talk honestly and shout and scream when they shouldn’t. We are both talkers who sometimes listen, not listeners.

When challenged, we both have hair triggers and are known to shoot from the hip and get excited.

I’ve adopted the Quaker approach to listening when talking to Maria, although I forget it sometimes. If we disagree, the agreement is that we can veto the other if it’s a decision that affects our lives, income, love, or animals.

I suggested shooting a lamb once because I thought it was sick and suffering. All Maria had to do to stop me was say “no,” and I stopped. We both agreed later that the lamb was suffering and needed to be killed. But not until we both were comfortable with it.

I have to listen to somebody with a  veto. It’s an excellent way to learn.

Because I love her so much and our marriage is so strong, I make it a point more and more to listen carefully to what she is saying. I try to stay quiet. Sometimes, she thinks I’m not listening or doesn’t care what she says.

But we have both seen the importance of not talking over the other over time or making small annoyances balloon into arguments. Sometimes, I’ve learned, I have to shut up to hear.

We have come to respect one another in ways that promote listening and understanding.

At first, Maria would respond to what I was saying before I could say it. I did the same. There was often little space between our words. We never had the chance to be listened to, and we take it seriously.

Listening for me is not just about silence. It also has to do with respect. Over the years, I have come to respect Marias’s common sense, curiosity, enthusiasm, and honesty.

She is worth listening to, much more than most of the people I have known in my life. And I care about her, another good reason to listen. I can’t help her if I can’t hear her; she can’t help me if she can’t hear me.

Social media tests this noble idea because so many trolls and broken people roam unchecked online. I don’t want to enable that.

In our world, I can’t always listen to the billions of people who suddenly can contact me anytime or night for free. This is a brand new reality for people who put their art and writing out there.

I have to make decisions the prophets and early theologians didn’t have to make.

My goal with spiritual life is not to be perfect. I am me, and I will always be me.

But I am learning that I can be better. That’s what listening is all about for me.