active listening – Feminism and Religion

Listening to One Another: Part Two by Beth Bartlett

Part 1 was posted yesterday.

What are the conditions necessary to foster an environment in which we can truly listen to one another across differences? Gathering insights from many perspectives[i], Alison Jaggar outlined the essential conditions for what she called Feminist Practical Discourse or FPD. These include: 1) the creation of opportunities for participants to talk about their own lives, stressing the importance of first-person narratives and of others listening; 2) the equal importance of each person’s experience; 3) an openness to reevaluating one’s perspective; 4) the inclusion of people whose lives are different from our own and each other’s, especially those whose public voices have been most marginalized; 5) a nurturant, rather than an antagonistic environment, while still allowing for respectful disagreement; 6) participant qualities of self-discipline, responsibility, sensitivity, respect, and trust; and 7) the motivation of care and friendship.

Listening to One Another: Part One by Beth Bartlett

“Listen is such a little, ordinary word that it is easily passed over. Yet we all know the pain of not being listened to, of not being heard.“[i]

“You heard me. You heard me all the way.” So goes the oft-quoted statement of one of the participants in a consciousness-raising (CR) group in which feminist theologian Nelle Morton participated. It is a testimony to the power of what happens in CR groups – of hearing each other into speech. “When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow with us and come to life,” wrote Brenda Ueland, the first female journalist in Minneapolis.[ii] This was the blossoming born of CR groups, where women began to discover truths long buried and watch them unfold and come to life.

Fostering Conversation and Connection in Community by Katie M. Deaver

I recently began a new job as the Associate Director of Admissions for the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, one of the seminaries of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This week was orientation for our new and returning students and much of the time has been focused on getting to know one another as well as getting to know the corner of Chicago in which we are located. There have been so many life giving conversations as well as so many questions!

Our mornings featured speakers who helped us to engage one another in conversation as well as to start thinking about the unique reality of our place within not only the LSTC community but also within the rest of the Chicago community and the larger world. Throughout these presentations and getting to know you activities my thoughts continued to be pulled back to the question of how to have life-giving conversations in a time when so many of us feel emotionally and spiritually drained by the world around us.

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