Listenary Listening: Strong and Safe Answer to the World's Cry to Be Listened to

By Wilma Zalabak

Did you ever say, "Please just listen to me"? Many people carry that plea deep inside if not spoken aloud. You already have the equipment to meet this need, and here is your training. You can help heal the worst long-haul disease left by the pandemic--feelings of isolation and fear at previously unmatched intensities. This is your handbook for what to say and what not to say, organized so you can find quickly what you want. There are nine ideas to keep from getting bored while listening, four safety issues in gift listening, four ways language impacts listening, six different kinds of difficult listening situations, and seven tools for disabling systemic pervasive anxiety. Forty-five chapters like the titles already listed populate Book I, a complete training course for use in any setting. In Book II, the stories of Jesus's seven metaphors, seven signs, and more on listening from the Gospel of John illustrate the topics of Book I. Here is divine inspiration and enablement to spread the healing gift of listening.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Oct 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798385201662

Wilma Zalabak

Wilma Zalabak, a pastor and business owner in Marietta, Georgia, earned her MDiv at Andrews University, Michigan, and her DMin, with specialization in preaching, at Phillips Theological Seminary, Oklahoma. Called to the ministry at age twelve, she developed a decade-long ministry of preaching on the street and thrives on biblical preaching where she can showcase the beauty in the Bible.

Book preview

Preface

What is Listenary listening? It is the kind of listening learned and done in a Listenary.

What is a Listenary? It is a space that I, in giving the gift of listening, create and hold for those who decide to enter and entertain this listening experiment with me. I coined the word from seminary, a place to learn, and aviary, a place to soar. A Listenary is a place to learn and soar, in and with a special kind of listening as a gift.

What is strong listening? It is listening that is strong enough to keep on listening to another when wanting to insert myself, strong enough to stay in place without reacting, and smart enough to fend off disturbers and hold a safe space.

What is a safe place for this listening? It is space, either face-to-face literal space, or face, voice, or written digital opportunity, or even snail-mail communication, which is protected from judgmentalism and all of several other behaviors to avoid when becoming a better listener.

What then is Listenary listening? It is also called gift listening or listening as a gift, with the kind of speaking that complements it, done in and by a community of two or more people for whom a commitment to this listening is the one necessary and sufficient basis of their unity.

How is this listening the answer to the world’s cry? It is one response, one answer, though not the only answer. If someone says, Please listen to me, giving the gift of listening may satisfy the request. Giving the gift of listening can heal a person’s internal loneliness or confusion and can strengthen interpersonal communication and relationships.

How do you know that the world’s cry is to be listened to? I cite the recent and continuing explosion of social media platforms where people can post whenever they want to be heard. I cite the influencers who need and groom thousands of followers to listen to them. I cite the well-observed growing loneliness, isolation, and depression of people in today’s world. I cite the recently increasing polarization of society in which some on one side cannot talk respectfully with some on the other side. From these instances, I deduce that one of the world’s cries is Please listen to me.

Admittedly, this is a theory, unproven by empirical means, and believed by me to be truth in this world. Quite a while ago, I read a quip which has been attributed to Mary Lou Casey, which I have adapted a bit to state my theory: What most people need is a good listening to, and I add, A person who so desires can improve in giving this important gift of listening.

With the above clarifications in mind, I invite to this book anyone who wants to see other people grow, heal, or get unconfused. This book is for grandparents, parents, siblings, cousins, friends, pastors, chaplains, prayer partners, boards, churches, corporation culture drivers, audiences of any kind, and many more.

This book is a handbook since it is short, with tersely described skills, with clearly titled lists, and without case studies or anecdotes. By looking at the table of contents one may easily find and revisit the exact topic desired.

Though this book might enhance quite a number of endeavors, this book is to be distinguished from particular training efforts in therapy, outcomes, fixing, answering, advising, clairvoyance, prophecy, directives, predictives, coercives, poling, trolling, spying, chitchat, dating, coaching, mediation, negotiation, emergency hotline, customer service, data collection, using surveys, taking control, being controlled, receiving or dispensing answers, or receiving or dispensing power over other people.

Listenary listening is not meant to agree or approve, disagree or disapprove, read between a speaker’s lines, figure out how I can get another person to listen or do what I want, discover someone’s vulnerabilities for sales or change, or put my meaning, or spin, on another’s communication.

Useful descriptors for Listenary listening might include gift listening, no-agenda listening, silent listening, bright-eyes listening, engaged listening, available attention, calm presence, being with, quiet strength, following the expressed thought of another, trusting the other person to know him or herself, intent to freely and openhandedly bless the other, healing, restoring, enabling, freeing, and language of respect and authenticity.

This book is two books, and either one will give you a good starting place. Book One, The Listening Course, has four parts: first a comprehensive review of listening principles, then how-tos for handling difficult listening situations, then a focus on observation skills to enhance listening, and finally a look at listening despite systemic pervasive anxiety.

Book Two, The Trainer, is unapologetically biblical, viewing Jesus’s listening example as recorded in the Gospel of John. Book Two has four parts which loosely correlate with the four parts of Book One: first an overview of Jesus’s principles of listening, then a study of his statements of identity and the difficult listening situations they addressed or produced, then a focus on the metaphors Jesus chose for himself that help us observe him in action, and finally a look at the signs and the stories surrounding them by which John intended to strengthen our faith over anxiety.

This is a book about Listenary listening, the course, and the trainer. By attending these pages, you, too, can become a healer and joy bringer through giving the gift of listening.

Introduction

This is your day! This is your decade! You can become the healer and joy bringer that you always wanted to be! First, please hear how I came upon this.

How I Came upon the Gift of Listening

Mother listened. The first decade of my life (1953–62) was bliss, because Mother listened. Oh yes, I was bullied at school, but Mother listened. I did not like piano lessons; I quit, and I started again, and Mother listened. She taught me whole Bible passages, fractions, and how to analyze grammar by setting me free with an idea and then listening. Mother listened during the first decade of my life.

During the second decade of my life (1963–72), while preaching at a youth revival, I perceived the call of the Lord to preach the word of God. Dad quit truck driving to become an entrepreneur and needed Mother’s listening. I felt bereft, but she always rose at four in the morning to sit with me and listen to me during my breakfast before I went off to work on the farm. Mother listened to me. This second decade was when I began to love reading the Bible, noticing with joy the beauty of its organization. It was as if someone heard me as I read the Bible, someone was listening as I read. I felt, This book understands me!

During the third decade of my life (1973–82) the gift of listening went into hibernation, or maybe incubation, while I learned surrender. In pursuit of the call to preach, and in the thrall of poor leadership and strong persuasion at an institution I will not name here, I broke connection with my mother, my brother and family, my school friends, and even finally with my call to preach. Working overtime for the institution, believing I must help everyone around me and yet craving alone time with God, I became very conflicted. I decided, over a period of years, to end my life. Every time I tried, God thwarted my intention, and one day he broke through my resistance to bring me to allow dying in him, dying even to being good enough and to dreams of being used by God, dying in him so he could do whatever he wanted with my life. This third decade is when I learned surrender and to eat the Bible as a growing Monarch caterpillar eats the milkweed.

During the fourth decade of my life (1983–92), the gift of listening poked its way back. I left the dead end, learning college and graduate school Greek, Hebrew, religion, and psychology. I helped a friend teach smoking cessation and grief recovery and discovered that the help I gave there was listening and helping the participants to listen to each other. They received help, while I continued to be very depressed. I became acquainted with twelve-step meetings where people share their experience, strength, and hope without judgment or interruption. Though I still felt someone was listening whenever I read the Bible, I became convinced that the gift of human listening is basic to human health. The seeds of my theory sprouted: What most people need is a good listening to. Besides engaging a therapist, I prayed for a listener. God gave me not one, but two, listeners. Jean and Melody, separately, agreed to enter into contract with me, committing to taking turns listening to each other. This fourth decade brought the gift of listening poking back into my life.

My fifth decade (1993–2002) was full of headwinds, yet headwinds provided lift. I was not hired to preach by the church of my choice, yet I grew more and more careful not to bring into my life anything that would shut me away from preaching. Those were the years I learned to walk away from people who would use my listening to control me. I found the books I needed to sort the proposed listeners and keep the gift of listening. Suicide finally left. Jean became a nurse and Melody became a doctor, both amazingly committed to our adventure in listening to each other. I found others, also, who would commit with me to this adventure. In these ways, this fifth decade was full of headwinds which provided lift for the gift of listening.

My sixth decade (2003–12) was full of mission and hard work. I always created my own curriculum and materials to teach listening with Revelation and John. I gathered my own congregations who craved to learn the gift of listening and the Bible. When one congregation dispersed or diverted, another would ask for my ministry. I created websites and social media experiences to publish my listening course. This sixth decade was full of mission and hard work always directed toward the Bible and the gift of listening.

My seventh decade (2013–22) was a time of fruition. I completed my DMin work with specialization in preaching; I was hired to preach; and I found a way to be published, first about Revelation, then about surrender, then about Bible reading, and now about the gift of listening. You will find in this book the listening course which I have taught and developed over decades. You will also find here some observations about the One I consider to be the best trainer in the gift of listening, the Someone who still hears me, listening to me whenever I read the Bible. By means of this book I invite you to experience the fruit of the seven decades of my work with the gift of listening.

My Resources

Now I will show you the resources which brought me to my theory that what most people need is a good listening to, and that a person who so desires can improve in giving this important gift of listening.

The first author I read that gave me some sort of map for contracting with another person for a reciprocal gift listening experiment was David Augsburger, who was a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, and had been a teacher at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries in Indiana and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Illinois. His background was Mennonite, from a people known for their peacemaking. I read Augsburger’s Communicating Good News and was captured immediately by the logic and compassion of his writing. I will quote extensively from this book to lay the foundation for my work here. Ausburger wrote:

Love begins by truly hearing another. There is a great joy that comes to you at the moment when you are truly heard by another. It’s a liberating joy, a freedom that is deeply felt when someone else hears you without judging, without taking responsibility for you, without trying to re-make or remold you into their image. They simply hear you, hear your hurts and frustrations, share the burden of them for the moment, and say in that act, I hear you. I accept you. I do not turn away from you."¹

Again, Augsburger wrote, When a person has been heard, and feels understood, he is able to see his world in a new way, he gains a different perspective that helps him move a step toward change. Not that we change him, but in listening, healing may begin.²

These paragraphs described delightfully the gift of listening for healing to which I felt called. Augsburger’s book, Caring Enough to Hear and Be Heard, helped me define and describe what I meant by this gift of listening, as well as believe that two or more people could contract to do this reciprocally for each other.³

However, I knew of more difficult communication situations. I already knew I would never send a woman back into an abusive situation to listen better. I needed to describe for myself a system by which to offer freely the gift of listening and teach others also to offer it freely, while protecting the people against its vulnerabilities. I lined up the problems I could think of from easy to hard and relied on material I already knew for each difficult situation.

I was aware of personality tests, temperament tests, aptitude tests, and other means of understanding and labeling our differences.⁴ This would be my first and least difficult of the difficult communication situations, which I would name differences, not very difficult if un-mixed with something else.

Also, I had already been included in several sets of assertiveness skills training events.⁵ This would address my second difficult communication situation. I have heard of several unsavory labels for people who need to be treated with assertiveness. I finally just called it persistent ignorance in the person who seems not to care at all about respectful listening and for whom assertiveness and clear boundary statements are necessary.

My third difficult communication situation was conflict, real conflict, where two people or two groups of people both want to control or have the same resources, resources like prestige, moral credibility, and contacts as well as money and space, etc. Augsburger’s book, Caring Enough to Confront: How to Understand and Express Your Deepest Feelings Toward Others, gave me descriptive power for conflict management.⁶

My fourth difficult communication situation, systemic pervasive anxiety, presented itself to me as inevitable. There are whole systems in our society that are filled with an anxiety which keeps non-judgmental listening on the fringes. Churches, corporations, office staff, boards, families, clubs, and more groups, all are filled with anxiety and confusing communications. I found Edwin Friedman’s book, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue, a powerful resource for surviving what I call systemic pervasive anxiety.⁷

My fifth difficult communication situation was verbal abuse, which seemed to me capable of hijacking the gift of listening and holding it hostage. I found Suzette Haden Elgin’s The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense especially helpful in the face of this situation.⁸

Finally, and not to be prematurely claimed, there are those who outright want to destroy (cancel) someone’s possibility of being heard. Kenneth Haugk is the founder of the Stephen Ministry system of caring among church members and their communities, since 1995. My sixth difficult communication situation found help in Haugk’s book, Antagonists in the Church: How to Identify and Deal with Destructive Conflict, and I labeled this difficult communication situation malicious intent.⁹

It seems clear from this account that my quest in gift listening was to define and describe the gift and then to create a system of evaluation and strategies by which I and my students could learn to recognize and protect against threats to gift listening and those giving it. I believe my interest in keeping the givers of listening in a safe place as well as providing a safe place for others to