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Friends United Meeting |
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December 1997
On Learning To Listen
by Carol Urner
I am distrustful of outward signs, voices and visions that seem to defy the laws of nature, which for me are God's own laws. But, nonetheless, such things are also part of my experience-I remember Mary, and how she pondered such signs, and kept them in her heart. I believe that's where they belong.
I am convinced that God is speaking to each of us all the time. To hear we only need to listen, and then to respond.
For my part, I must admit that I do not often hear this speaking in an audible voice. The speaking is of another kind: a quickening, a sudden insight, a revelation, an inward stirring, a clear vision of the next step that I must take. I love the terms Friends use, and none more than inward teacher, and inner light.
Perhaps as children we are born listening, and only forget as we grow older because the adult world around us seems to regard so little of what we hear. I don't think anyone taught me, as a child, how to listen inwardly, but I clearly remember experiencing this inward teacher from the time I was two or three. God and the sustaining love of God were very real to me as a child-and I accepted both the experiences of God's presence and of God the inward teacher, as completely natural.
Let me share one example from my own experience that I remember in all its original power. I was five or six, and playing cowboys and Indians with the neighbor boys. As a girl, of course, I was the Indian. I still recall everything around me as I dutifully fell to the ground at the cry of "Bang! You're dead!" I can feel even now the warm earth under me, and the sun on my back, and I can see the corner of the high porch near which I lay. I can sense again the revelation sweeping through me-games like this are wrong! Death is no game. We must not kill!
My father had already read Bible stories to me, and I had heard the "thou shalt not kill" from the ten commandments and in the words of Jesus. But this was more than a "because the Bible tells us so" experience. It was a deep, personal, inward realization that, no matter what others said and did around me, that teaching was real and right and I was expected to live by it.
It is a homely example, I know, but this is how what I knew of God spoke to me then, and one way in which God still speaks to me now. There is first an inward realization and then the steps set out for me to take. In the case of this particular teaching, I could never play that game again-and I suppose my identification with American Indians stems in part from that inward lesson. When I grew up my own children never had toy guns. As a young mother I was a leader in our local mothers' boycott against department store Christmas time promotion of war toys, and-despite my own "stage fright"-went on television to speak against their sale. But that came later, after still more lessons on the way.
By the time I was a teenager I was less in touch with this inward teacher. The world around me seemed to be sending such different messages-sometimes I questioned, and sometimes I wondered if I was wrong. Maybe the Presence I had felt from childhood was just a dream in my own head....
Our country was at war then, and I was swept up in what we called the "war effort." I felt most for the young soldiers called to die, and I wrote poems and stories about these young men for the school paper. I wrote more poems and articles pressing my fellow students to buy war stamps and bonds to show our support for them. I cut back drastically on my own school lunches so that I could spend the money on war stamps. I've never been skinnier, and even suffered a couple of fainting spells!
And then I had another of these sudden revelations. Once again, I can clearly remember the outward scene as well as the inward stirring. I was sitting alone in the crowded lunchroom-for once my friends were not beside me. I was staring at my almost empty tray. I don't think I heard an audible speaking voice, but the inward questioning was clear! What was I doing, going to such lengths to promote sale of war stamps or to buy them myself? What was I purchasing for these boys for whom I felt so much love? Bullets, bombs, instruments of death. I was helping them to kill! What did this have to do with the way that Jesus taught us, the way I already knew as right? We cannot kill, even when we are faced with death. We are to love our enemies.
And that sudden insight led to other, harder lessons: the need to act on the light we are given-the difficulty of going against the mainstream, resisting peer pressure, saying no when all around us demand a yes. I, who had so publicly urged purchase of war stamps now had to publicly refuse. The first steps were hard and painful for a teenager-but, to my surprise, I didn't become a pariah. I even sensed a quiet sympathy in the responses of many of my fellow students.
That too is a homely example, but it was inward teachings like these that eventually drew me to the Society of Friends.
I said in the beginning that what I sense as God's speaking has not often been in an audible voice. In fact, I am inherently distrustful of outward signs, voices and visions that seem to defy the laws of nature, which for me are God's own laws. But, nonetheless, such things are also part of my experience-I remember Mary, and how she pondered such signs, and kept them in her heart. I believe that's where they belong-only God knows if they are valid, and they should be left to God.
But there is one such incident I've told about, sometimes, tentatively and with a laughing "Could it be so?" I was sitting in the car with a young boy I knew, saying good-bye for the night. Suddenly I heard an audible voice which said "Marry this man." I looked across at the boy and saw a soft light shining on his face. He hadn't even asked me yet, but I felt the imperative. A few weeks later we became engaged-and we still don't agree on which of us "proposed" first!
I long wondered if that voice was just auto-suggestion: myself speaking to myself. Now, after forty-five years of marriage, moving with my husband throughout the world-often sensing our lives guided by an invisible hand-I have more faith that the voice was real. I like to joke that ours was an arranged marriage....But increasingly, as years pass, I sense that our lives as well are arranged by the One who holds us, teaches us, needs us, uses us-with all our failings and imperfections-for the work that needs doing in this world.
By the time I had reached my early twenties the world around me did not seem to be hearing what Jesus taught, or what I heard inside. The cold war had begun, the nuclear arms race-and television was already urging Americans to buy, buy, buy. New goods flooded the post-war markets. Even the church I attended seemed without deep root. There were long sermons that avoided the core messages of the Sermon on the Mount. There was much praying to tell God what "He" could do to set the world right, and other prayers asking for personal favors, but not much time for listening.
The Friends I discovered in college years, however, seemed to be a listening people, and a people who acted on what they heard. It was Quakers around me who were losing jobs because they refused to swear oaths during the hysteria of the McCarthy era, and it was they who were going to jail rather than register for the draft. It was also Quakers who were entering the slums to work among the poor, and serving in prisons and mental hospitals. I worshiped with Friends quietly and read their testimonies and queries. I found them a people trying sincerely to live the gospel way in our own troubled times. They listened, heard, and then responded, taking whatever next step was shown them on the way. I felt humble before the examples of their lives, but I knew I wanted to be one of them. My husband and I joined the Society together, and that was the beginning of a life-long journey-listening, seeking to hear clearly, and then to respond as the way opened.
My own life in adulthood has been directed by these inward promptings-although I know that I have not always answered perfectly. I am not perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect. But I know inwardly that God's demand is for perfection-not for our own sakes, but in order to become better instruments in God's hands.
I have learned much from older, more experienced, Friends about listening to God. I have learned that we must test our inward revelations, for sometimes too much of ourselves and our own weakness gets in the way of a clear hearing. We must test what we hear inwardly against the gospel teachings of Jesus, and, also, I think, against the lives of early Friends who were our spiritual ancestors. We must also test our leadings with each other. I cherish the Quaker concepts of "acting under a concern," and of "Meetings for clearness." I have found Friends to be not only a listening people, but a people who give support to one another as each one seeks to know and do the will of God.
Through the years this listening has led me into many situations and actions that I never would or could have undertaken in my own power. My work in the peace movement of the early 60's, and among Filipino tribal people in the early 70s, was thrust upon me through no choice of my own-and I felt myself asked to do much that was new to me, even frightening, and beyond my own strength. Yet, even then, though I faltered, fell, and sometimes broke, the strength and the guidance were there. I have learned since, with time, that if I listen, and wait, and act as I am led by the inward teacher, the leadings, the support and the sustaining love are always there. As my husband and I have continued through the years to move from country to country, and culture to culture, new tasks have been set before me. In each place where we come, the requirements and challenges at first seem completely new-but as I proceed step-by-step, trusting to the guidance of this inward teacher, I realize that past experiences have actually prepared me for the unfamiliar tasks at hand.
I have also learned what it is to be chastised by this inward teacher, and to have pointed out those personal faults and failings which prevent me from becoming fully the instrument God needs for the work at hand. These lessons also require response and, often painful, inward change. It is like needing to be burned clean in order to be healed-and once we allow the burning the healing can follow. The Spirit, the inward Christ, is first a fiery sword that cuts-and then, when we yield and give ourselves up to be reformed, becomes the Comforter.
Jesus said we must become as little children if we would enter the Kingdom of heaven. I think he meant in part that we must hear God as a child hears. We must listen to the inward teacher. We must act on the light we have and then more will be given. The next step will become clear, and the next and the next...
It is when we refuse to act, when we close our eyes to the light and our ears to the inward voice that we cut ourselves off. We drift further and further from the Comforter, we smother the Spirit, and we enter the desert where there is nothing to drink or eat that satisfies: no living water, no bread of life...
But it need not be. God is always there, loving us, holding us, speaking to us-we need only to listen, to hear, and to respond.
Carol and her husband Jack Urner have been involved in development projects in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, for over thirty years. They now live in Lesotho (southern Africa), where Carol works with community initiated development, democratization and human rights projects for the U.S. Embassy. The Urners presently belong to Central and Southern Africa Yearly Meeting, and also to Sarasota Monthly Meeting, USA.
Copyright (c) Friends United Meeting 1997
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