“Being In Conversation With Each Other”

Reverend Vann Knight

January 30, 2005

I want to talk with you about something today that I’m not very good at, or at least something that I’ve struggled with all of my life, and that is how to be in continuous, effective conversation over a long period of time. 

One of the toughest parts of being a minister is that people relate to you, not so much as a person, but as a uniform.  All the previous stuff that one may have had in the past with mothers and fathers and ministers or priests and principals and teachers, all of those authority issues just get directed right at the minister.  And ministers know this.  It’s kind of like being a lightening rod.  It’s a part of the reality, but it’s not a pleasant part of the reality.

Related to this is that everything ministers and priests do represents more than they themselves are or do.  Many times what we are trying to do is to point to an ideal, and that ideal is always far beyond and superior to where we are in our individual lives.  You could take almost anything that I have talked about in three and a half years and look at it closely and you would be able to see that I know more about this in theory than I have been able to integrate into my life. 

Now if you are honest, you probably have to admit the same thing about yourself, that we, in this day and age, are fortunate enough to be exposed to all sorts of wonderful and helpful information, and so we know how to do almost anything better than we actually do it.  We know how to relax better than we actually relax.  We know how to eat better than we actually eat.  We know how to read better than we actually read.  We know how to do almost anything better than we actually do.

Being in conversation with one another is a skill that is increasingly difficult in our lifetime, because though we have more information coming at us and flowing from us, it is a sort of impersonal information for the most part, and we, through our computer age, are losing some of the skills of being face to face with one another in more meaningful ways.  When you write to somebody – you saw this on a television commercial – when you write to somebody in an e-mail and you ask them, “How are you doing?” and they say, “Okay,” you don’t really know if they’re saying, “I’m okay,” or if they’re saying, “Okay.”

What I’m wanting to do today is to help us all to see that this abstract thing that I’m calling communication or dialogue or conversation is not abstract at all, that to the degree that we work with our dialogue skills, to the degree that we in this church build a culture of conversation, we actually increase the quality of our personal relationships and we increase the quality of our life together. 

When Linda Lee and I were not yet married and I was in the process of proposing to her, one of the things that we promised one another is that we would stay and fight with one another, because both of us had been divorced, and we knew that if you stop the conversation, the relationship dies, and this little bit of distancing grows into total separation.

The humbling thing for me about words, the humbling thing is that my words reflect who I am.  And when I say healing words to you, it reflects the part of me that has experienced healing.  When I say hurtful words to you, most often it reflects the part of me that has not yet been healed.   It is so embarrassing that our words have this direct line to the very core of our being. 

One of the reasons that I keep asking us to be intentional about our spiritual journey is not that the spiritual journey is the end itself, but the spiritual journey is that part of our life that equips us and prepares us for the outward journey.  It is in that intentional paying attention to who I am and my places of not-get-ness, my places of brokenness, and as I can work with that and bring some sort of healing, it is then in my relationship, in my words, in my conversation that I am able to bring that and you are able to bring that.  Does that ever stop?  No.  Do we ever in this lifetime get ourselves totally healed?  No.  Do we ever stop putting our foot in our mouth?  No.  Do we ever stop hurting one another?  No.

But can we reduce those times?  Can we look at our lives over a period of years and say, “Yes, who I am and the way I am in conversation with others now is better than it was five years ago”?   I know of no more disheartening thing than to be in a hurtful relationship with anyone.  That bothers me.  One of the dynamics of conversation, one of the dynamics of relationship is forgiveness.  You and I will never get to a place where occasionally we don’t need to ask for forgiveness and to be in a place where we can give forgiveness.  If you think that you will ever get to a place in your life where you are so together and your conversation is so together, your relationship is so together that you never need to ask for forgiveness, you are really going to isolate yourself.  And if you ever get to the place where you can’t give forgiveness, you will also isolate yourself.

In your marriages, in your friendships, in your professional relationships, in your life here at church, your peace, your sense of well-being is tied to some degree to your skills in staying in dialogue.  But deeper than your skills at dialogue is that quality of being.  None of these are separated: the quality of our being, the quality of our conversation, the quality of our life together.

Now I’m going to pick out just a few practical things that I have learned that I sometimes practice and sometimes don’t.  But these are the things that I think are very helpful.  I’ve got six here, and if you want to see them later, I’ll give you six, but I’m going to give you the one that if I can do this – and I don’t – but everything when it comes to speaking can come under this. 

So you’ve got all the dynamics of your self-being and all that personal stuff there and you’ve got some skill stuff, but let me give you something simple in terms of speaking.  Try as much as you can to always speak in ways that are simple, honest and caring.  Speak simply enough that the person understands.  Speak your truth; in other words, speak honest.  But don’t blow somebody away with your honesty.  Also speak in a caring way.  Simple.  Honest.  Caring.  And where we have failed to do that, let us ask for it and offer forgiveness. 

But the biggest part of dialogue is not speaking.  The biggest and most important part of dialogue is listening.  And let me tell you where we get in trouble.  We get in trouble listening because we hear what we expect to hear.  You can write that down and take it to the bank.  I hear and you hear what you expect to hear.  This is why labeling a person is so dangerous and hazardous to communication.  The minute you label somebody – “Oh, he’s a,” “She’s a,” everything you hear is filtered through that label.  When I was in Victoria, British Columbia, after being there for I think it was about two, two and a half years, a woman came out after church one Sunday, and I forget her exact words, but basically she apologized to me.  She said, “What I thought you were and what I thought you were going to say was so strong, I couldn’t hear a word you were saying.”  When we label people, we unconsciously get a set of expectations, and that messes up our hearing.

The other thing that messes up our hearing is when we attribute motive, if somebody said something, “Well, I know why they’re saying that.”  But you don’t know why they’re saying that.  When you attribute motive, that is an assumption that will almost always get you in trouble and mess up communication.  When you hear yourself unconsciously saying, “I know why they’re saying,” “I know why they’re,” you’re in trouble.

Now, here is the next-to-the-last thing.  This is the hardest thing to do.  When you are listening, try to suspend judgment.  It doesn’t mean that you take off your analytical head permanently, but it means when you are there with somebody and they’re talking, temporarily suspend judgment.  Don’t pass a judgment on what they’re saying.  Try to really understand what they’re saying so that you could say it back to them better than they can say it to you.  If we don’t suspend judgment, then we pass a judgment on what they are saying and it blocks our ability to hear.  If I only could give you one thing that I knew that you could walk out of here with today, it would be that:  When you are in conversation, learn to suspend judgment.  Closely related to this is, when somebody else is talking, listen.  Don’t be planning your speech.  That’s what I do a lot of times.  Somebody is talking, and rather than listening, man, I’m just getting my response.  Does that ever happen to anybody else? 

Let me tell you why I’m telling this sermon.  As far as I know, in four years – there may have been others – I’ve got my wires crossed with only two of you and only one of you big time, and so I – though I regret that, that’s within the bounds of normal.  But I really like you.  I am convinced that if you as a congregation can learn how to listen to one another and learn how to talk to one another, that that skill, more than any other, is going to determine the quality of our life together.  It will determine how happy you are, that skill, and if you do it in other places, it will determine your sense of peace and tranquility.  It will determine your sense of well-being in other relationships.  It will determine the quality of all those personal relationships, and it will determine the quality of our life together.

So here’s what I’m going to ask you, not in any kind of official commitment, but just personally: Can we commit ourselves to trying to learn to listen, to suspend judgment, to not label; try to learn to listen, and then try to learn to speak to one another in ways that are simple, honest and caring.  To the degree that we will do that, we will nurture a culture of conversation, and out of that, wonderful, wonderful things will be ours.