Tuned In. Art Bennett

priest and author of more than forty books on the spiritual life, a beloved professor who taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard Divinity School. Yet, he never felt satisfied — in fact, he sometimes felt depressed — when working in the high-pressure, success-oriented environments of prestigious universities. He ultimately found himself at home at L’Arche, a community where able-bodied people live together with the disabled. Here he discovered profound lessons in the spiritual life. Instead of speaking all the time, instructing others, he grew by attending deeply to a severely disabled man named Adam. Every day he would bathe, dress, feed, and care for Adam for several hours. The time he spent with Adam became his most precious time of day. One day, a colleague of Nouwen’s asked him: Is this what you got all that education for? And Nouwen realized that he experienced a greater joy in caring for Adam than he had ever experienced in his academic career.

      Despite all his “upward mobility” — his speaking engagements, his teaching at prestigious universities, his successful career — he felt alone and depressed, anxious that someone might challenge his credentials. Then he realized that Christ’s way is the way of “downward mobility” — the first shall be last; just as “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve” (Matthew 20:28). Finally, at L’Arche, where he lived and served many with disabilities, he found joy and peace. “The joy that compassion brings is one of the best-kept secrets of humanity.”⁷

      This “secret” is what Father Nouwen discovered, and what many of us discover — whether through a gradual process of trial and error or through a trial by fire, in which we are thrown into a situation demanding much more compassionate self-giving than we had ever thought ourselves capable of. And we realize that what the world holds up as a successful and fulfilling life — power, money, prestige — paradoxically brings us less joy than the simple acts of humble self-giving. There is joy in listening.

      Saint Paul, writing to the Galatians, compares the “works of the flesh” to the “fruit of the spirit.” The latter are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (see Galatians 5:19–23).

      Works of the flesh cause division, frustration, and lack of understanding. We participate in these works when we are competing with others to be first, wanting to have the last word or make the winning argument — and when we refuse to apologize or stubbornly insist on our own way of doing things. Or you may have erupted in anger when your spouse forgot to pick up that half-gallon of milk you requested. (“And now,” you might have stormed, “there isn’t any milk in the house!”) Or maybe it was that time you had the brand-new daughter-in-law over for dinner and you couldn’t resist arguing furiously with one of your adult children over whether psychological studies contain implicit biases and therefore cannot be trusted.

      Listening, by contrast, brings joy.

       Listening Is a Mercy

      Kindness, patience, and listening lead to peace and joy, intimacy and love. You gain much more when you lose yourself. Lose yourself to silence, understanding, compassion. When the space between you and your loved ones is not filled with you, it can be filled with mercy and healing. Simply attending to the other, looking him or her in the eye, allows for this healing space.

      This is love: Letting go of one’s self in order to allow the other to bloom, to reveal himself or herself. As Pope Francis says in Amoris Laeticia: “Those who love not only refrain from speaking too much about themselves, but are focused on others; they do not need to be the center of attention.”⁸ Love is self-gift and also self-surrender. We willingly abandon ourselves to the other, to be gift as Jesus gave himself in abandonment to the Father.

      — Practical Application —

      We are going to build on our practical application from the last chapter. In that exercise, our task was to remain silent in a situation in which we really wanted to respond: instead of jumping in with a comment, correction, or solution, we paused in silence. We compared this time of silence to the three days that Christ spent in the tomb.

      In this exercise, we are going to practice empathy.

      Can empathy be taught?

      You may think that empathy is something you have or you don’t, like a natural talent. Some people seem to be naturally empathic. But recent studies have shown that empathy can be taught. Researchers asked whether teaching empathy could help decrease school bullying, improve medical professionals’ bedside manner, or help engineering students relate to others. In one study at the University of Georgia,⁹ students who came from upper-middle-class families role-played living in an impoverished family — having to find shelter, provide food and clothing, and take care of their children while dealing with constraints such as language barriers and lack of transportation. At the end of the study, it was found that the students did show an increase in empathy. So, in this exercise, we are going to improve our empathy!

      Before the exercise, let’s look at an example. In the following, which response is empathic to this statement?

       “I am sick and tired of everyone at work complaining all the time!”

      a. “Me, too! I’m surrounded by cranky kids all day!”

      b. “You’re probably responsible for the attitude at work.”

      c. “Why don’t you try having a team-building activity offsite?”

      d. “You must be so frustrated!” (Response “d” is empathic, but the best response will be not only empathic but also encouraging further discussion.)

      e. “You must be so frustrated! Why do you think that is?”

      We are so often tempted to provide a solution, responding with our own similar struggles or stories. This is well intentioned, an attempt to find common ground and to be empathic. However, it only shifts the attention to ourselves and can result in the other person feeling discounted.

      Another common error is to think that what is needed is an immediate solution to the problem. Men are often accused of being advice-givers; it is possibly related to their wanting to protect and defend, and not really knowing how to respond other than suggesting a solution. But often this only serves to stifle the conversation. The other person may not want advice or a solution; she may need to “vent.” She doesn’t feel understood. And, even if she does want advice, she first wants to feel understood.

      Finally, some responses are blaming; perhaps by temperament we are the sort of people who like to solve our own problems, thinking that complaining is “whining.” So we project that onto the ones we are listening to, blaming them for their own problems. This is the least empathic response.

      Empathy does not require agreement or feeling the same way as the other person. It does entail understanding how the other feels and conveying that understanding. And it makes it more likely that the other person will respond empathically as well.

       Exercise