Last night, Laura and I recorded a podcast where we were reviewing one of my blogs about simple spirituality. One of the statements I made in that blog was “maybe instead of listening to sermons we should have been listening to each other. ”
Early on in my deconstruction, I heard a person named Sarah Styles Bessey say, “the church didn’t have room for my grief.” It deeply impacted our deconstruction. We wanted to talk to her about this on a podcast, but for personal reasons she canceled and I haven’t been able to make contact with her ever since. Nevertheless, the statement stayed with us..
In our deconstruction, we haven’t been afraid to question everything. Just because we have done certain things, even if we’ve done them for hundreds of years, doesn’t mean they were effective or it doesn’t mean they were right.
Right now we are interviewing mostly females for our podcast, The Desert Sanctuary, and learning so much from just hearing their stories of grief and trauma and deconstruction. Another group of women, some Benedictine sisters, taught me so much through a process of focusing and evocative listening.
As I said before, maybe instead of listening to sermons, we should have been listening to each other. Since I’ve left organized religion I have lost the addiction of listening to sermons. I used to love it. I used to love to listen to good preachers. One day I realized most of why I liked listening to them is that they were confirming what I already believed in a creative way. But maybe it’s possible that instead of confirming my bias, I should have been listening to my neighbor. Laura does this for me — slowly I have been learning to do it for others. By the way, it never pays off to preach to your spouse.
But also, maybe instead of teaching Bible studies to confirm what we already believe, maybe we should have been listening to each other and getting counseling and hearing each other’s grief. Laura and I have produce about 210 episodes of the Desert Sanctuary. In each of these episodes, we listen for about 45 minutes to someone telling their story. When we listen deeply, and hear their story and believe it, it normally helps them heal but it also helps us grow and understand and evolve further on our journey.
As we talk about in our book, Out into the Desert, we are addicted to religion and the ways that we’ve done things in the past. We assume they’re right because we’ve done them for a long time, but it’s time to evaluate everything and have discussions about all of these issues.
The deeply divided election in the United States has about concluded as I write this. We remain deeply divided because we still stand on stages and lecture and campaign to each other instead of having discussions. It’s very much like our churches. Nothing changes until we talk to each other. True for marriage — true for politics — true for religion.
Be where you are,
Be who you are,
Karl Forehand
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