Trump listens!

Steve House, Chairman of the Republican party in Colorado, writes,

Spent the evening with friends and Donald Trump. Every interaction I have with Mr Trump i learn more about him. Today there were a couple key things.
The first was that when we were in a one on one conversation he showed me outstanding listening skills. He never interrupts and he is intently listening which makes you feel good and the conversation very valuable. He made it very clear in that one on one and later in the group setting that he is willing to do whatever I need him to to win Colorado. He knows the electoral map very well and this state is as critical as we have been saying.

The second observation was just how deep his business acumen and friendships in the business community are. A typical presidential candidate will surround themselves with experts in foreign policy, fiscal policy, and other cabinet level positions. Mr Trump will too. What is different is that he knows people, and cited great examples tonight, who are very successful in different industries. If he needs to know how to solve a problem in energy, agriculture, real estate, or healthcare he will call friends with expert knowledge in each field to get real inside information. This should allow him to boost our economy and always know what legislation would do to an industry at the point of application. It was very impressive to watch.

Listening and communicating in intimate relationships

Maria Popova writes at Brain Pickings,

“Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in her masterful meditation on the magic of real human conversation. “They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it.” But in moments of pain or anger, when words spring from the rawest recesses of the heart, they can amplify our deepest insecurities and emotional vulnerabilities, in turn fueling a maelstrom of mutual misunderstanding.

How to avoid that is what Alain de Botton explores in a portion of The Course of Love (public library) — the immeasurably insightful psychological novel that gave us De Botton on vulnerability and the paradox of why we sulk.

De Botton writes:

What makes people good communicators is, in essence, an ability not to be fazed by the more problematic or offbeat aspects of their own characters. They can contemplate their anger, their sexuality, and their unpopular, awkward, or unfashionable opinions without losing confidence or collapsing into self-disgust. They can speak clearly because they have managed to develop a priceless sense of their own acceptability. They like themselves well enough to believe that they are worthy of, and can win, the goodwill of others if only they have the wherewithal to present themselves with the right degree of patience and imagination.

Fertile communication, in other words, is largely a matter of what Anna Deavere Smith called refusing to “use language as a mask” — refusing to hide from both the other person and from oneself in the act of communication. This skill is no different from the vast majority of our psychoemotional arsenal, which is shaped by our early caretakers, and is contingent upon the degree to which our parents have managed to unconditionally accept us and nurture our inner wholeness. De Botton writes:

As children, these good communicators must have been blessed with caregivers who knew how to love their charges without demanding that every last thing about them be agreeable and perfect. Such parents would have been able to live with the idea that their offspring might sometimes — for a while, at least — be odd, violent, angry, mean, peculiar, or sad, and yet still deserve a place within the circle of familial love. The parents would thus have created an invaluable wellspring of courage from which those children would eventually be able to draw to sustain the confessions and direct conversations of adult life.

Echoing Hemingway’s assertion that “most people never listen,” De Botton adds:

Good listeners are no less rare or important than good communicators. Here, too, an unusual degree of confidence is the key — a capacity not to be thrown off course by, or buckle under the weight of, information that may deeply challenge certain settled assumptions. Good listeners are unfussy about the chaos which others may for a time create in their minds; they’ve been there before and know that everything can eventually be set back in its place.

Paradoxically, De Botton argues, being frequently unsettled by communication with our loved ones is precisely what attests to the fullness and strength of those bonds, and to their orientation toward mutual growth:

It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we should begin to be concerned, for this may be the surest sign that we are being gently lied to or shielded from the other’s imagination, whether out of kindness or from a touching fear of losing our love. It may mean that we have, despite ourselves, shut our ears to information that fails to conform to our hopes — hopes which will thereby be endangered all the more.

Read more here.

A way less traveled

Ann Voskamp advises us at A Holy Experience,

When you’re worked up, whisper.
It’s how God can usher Himself into a place — ask Elijah.

It’s best parenting practice. It’s best life-survival practice. When the world gets loud, put your ear down to it and listen — and then whisper. When everyone yells, no one can hear.

When the world and you are worked up, whisper — and a pin will drop. The other shoe will drop. Then we can finally get our shoes on, finally get somewhere. Get somewhere better.

...When you stand down at the river, the world get’s mighty quiet.

Like the mightiness might actually come in the quiet.

The river keeps navigating its complex course.

Keeps rolling out the possibility of another way, a way less travelled, a way through.

And the river’s wide and deep and strong and long and there are layers to all this water, quiet depths. The travellers and followers and disciples, we navigate complexity. We acknowledge complexity. A river like this faithfully carries us Home.

Because the Truth is: We’re not called to carry boxes — we’re called to carry crosses.

Box carriers are about buying certainty for living. Cross carriers are about carrying the complexity of living.

Box carriers strain for the power of controlled lives. Cross carriers surrender to the power of the Christ life.

Box carriers box things into simple. Cross carriers unpack things and sit with the suffering.

It’s only those who carry crosses who can know how there is an intersection of the many complicated things that bear down on people.

By this all people will know that you are my disciples — not if you label one another, but if you love one another. (John 13:35).

They’ll know you are My disciples if you don’t label the limping people, the misunderstood people, the people with a different ethnicity, skin colour, culture, depressed people, struggling people, sick people, confused people, angry people, hurting people — but if you love them.

A kind of miracle happens when we don’t label people but love people.

Read more here.

Listening

At A Holy experience, Ann Voskamp reminds us that

You never have to be afraid of just listening.

Because yeah, too many people treat listening like it’s only a pause before their own shock and awe.

Because real listening is really a radical act of humility.

Because when you let yourself humbly listen, you let yourself be ‘holy’ remade.

Because listening is how you plant resurrection — Lazarus’s ear had to first hear before he could rise up and walk out of the grave.

...When we listen to words, not to shoot them down, but to open us up — Grace can walk in.
When we listen to words not to indict them but to inform us, they can form us into a cup of understanding. This quenches the world’s parched places.

...There are times, in the early morning rising, if I sit close enough to the window, I can hear bird songs from up in the pines, songs that I have never heard before.

And there’s time to still long enough to just listen.

Is that what angels say when they make a visitation —

Listen — and do not be afraid?

Read more here.

Amazing grace up ahead

Ann Voskamp reminds us that

The whole point of welcoming kids into your life is to wave good-bye to adults embarking out on their own lives.

...Parents aren’t supposed to be the loud police voice in your head — but the gentle pastor at your side.

...You can do this thing — because you were made to do hard and holy things.
You are always enough — because You have Jesus and He is always enough.
You don’t have to get it perfect — you just have to get back up and keep going.

...You’ve got to want to be one with Him — more than you want to be a Someone.

...You’ve got to want to serve more than you want to be seen, you’ve got to care more than you want to be comfortable, you’ve got to want to give more than you want to get.

... The journey not only matters more than the destination — the journey actually becomes the destination.

Success is always showing up and bending down.

...You know there’s no way around pain — there’s always either the pain of disappointment or the pain of discipline.

...The world’s going around with a big sign: Wanted: GIVERS. (Sorry — The world already has enough takers.)
Be a Giver — and you will get the most.

People may forget what you did or didn’t do — but they won’t forget how you made them feel. Hearts have the longest memories.

Lean in and make eye contact and simply listen to hearts.

Listening is a revolutionary act of liberation — it will liberate you from the prison of your prejudices and free you to love large.

...It doesn’t matter if you have some big title — what matters is that you have a big heart. A big heart will trump a big title every time.

...You can’t even begin to imagine how there’s always amazing grace up ahead.

Read more here.

Why ever be afraid of truth?

Ann Voskamp writes:

You only need fear the Truth of anything — if you think Christ isn’t capable of redeeming everything.

And if Christ is the Truth — then where there isn’t Truth, there isn’t Christ. Why ever be afraid of the Truth?

Do we ever have to be afraid of listening? Ann writes:

You never have to be afraid of just listening.

Because yeah, too many people treat listening like it’s only a pause before their own shock and awe.

Because real listening is really a radical act of humility.

Because when you let yourself humbly listen, you let yourself be ‘holy’ remade.

Because listening is how you plant resurrection — Lazarus’s ear had to first hear before he could rise up and walk out of the grave.

Read more here.

Get a life - by giving away the one you have!

Has Ann Voskamp lost it? She recommends that we

Get a life — by giving away the one you have.

Get a life in which you give. God said, “Let us make man in our image” — you were not made to be one — you were made in the image of God who is Three in One. You were made in His image, you were made to be in community — you were made to be in giving relationship.

Relationship is the only real reality.

Get a life by giving yours away. Don’t let a week go by until you make one new friend just by saying Hi. Pull over and pick roadside daisies and give them to the lady running the drive-through and look up at a full moon hanging pearly white in a black sky and the kingdom heaven is like that — go sell everything, leave everything, change everything, just to get that pearl of great price.

Seek out people to love and let them love you and you love them.

And it’s the art of loving that will be the one great work of your life.

So get a life by living generous, get a life by taking nothing for granted but by taking everything as gift.

Give someone the gift of listening… linger and look into their eyes and really listen and this is free and nobody can buy it and what is better than paying attention to someone with all of you fully present?

Please read more here.

Love is the last word

Powerful words today from Ann Voskamp for kids. However, we adults need these words every bit as much as do our kids.

There is nothing more explosive than words.

Words are nitroglycerin. Words can literally ignite a heart, detonate like a global bomb — or explode in your face.

Listen, kids, listen like your life depends on it, because it does:

You can mean something — but if you say it mean, no one can hear your meaning.

Have convictions — but if you don’t have compassion, you will have trials.

Please, say what you believe — but please, always be love.

Measure your words — they determine the distance of your relationships.

Speak slow. Off-the-cuff words too often slap.

Hear me, get this, don’t ever forget this: The tongue is the tail of the heart. The heart is known by how the tongue wags.

Sending word-offenders to their room, figuratively or literally, may only polarize the situation and freeze positions. Cold hearts never changes words. Silencing people may not be the most effective way to educate people.

It’s a strange but powerful paradox that upends everything: Listening is what changes words.

The Word has come down in the midst of our conflicts and our messes and Jesus Christ, The Word, He’s lit the world. Everywhere, lights. He’s the final Word, the igniting fire that goes on forever and kindles and warms and saves.

You can see it today — the whole weary world drawing nearer now, coming close to rejoice.

Because the Babe in the manger is the ultimate blessed proof –

that Love is always the last word.