A Fortuitous Encounter in Listening

Wade Westwood

ORGL 535 Listen, Discern, Decide

Gonzaga University

Professor Larry Spears

29 May 2022

My Fortuitous Encounter

When I was 33 years old, my wife and I were at a concert in Salt Lake City, Utah. During the break between the opening act and the headline act, we started to talk with the two men who were about our age standing near us. As we were conversing, an older woman walked up to the group, and introduced herself as the mother of the men. 

During our conversation, we learned a lot about the family – what they did for work, what their hobbies were, and that they had driven to this show from Star Valley, Wyoming. However, what I remember vividly is how kind the mother was to my wife and I. She radiated love and positivity, asking us many questions about our marriage and sharing stories about her marriage and her family. Her demeanor was so friendly and caring that we ended up talking more after the show.  

She asked me if we were going to have kids, and I gave the same response I had been giving for the previous 9 years of our marriage, a perfunctory “no”. I had made up my mind when I was in my teens that kids consumed too much time, took away freedom, cost too much and the return-on-investment (yes, that’s really how I thought) seemed questionable. 

I did not detect any judgment in her response to my answer, but instead she replied with a joyous energy for her family. She shared stories of really happy times and also stories of really challenging times. She shared how empty her house feels now, and how glad she is that her grown boys like her well enough to invite her for an hours-long drive to come see one of their favorite musicians. She radiated love throughout our conversation, and when we parted at the end of the night I felt so grateful to have met this woman. And I started to realize that I wanted what she had. I wanted a family.

Now, a few years later, I am the proud father of a 2-year-old daughter and a 5-month-old son. All of the things that people were trying to tell me my whole adult life about parenthood being so challenging, yet so fulfilling are absolutely true. Oftentimes, I wonder why I was so bull-headed when other people I respected tried to tell me about how much joy their family brought them, and that I should consider having children. Of all my experiences, why was an encounter with an elderly feed store owner from a small town in Wyoming at a country music concert the episode that caused me to change my mind after more than a decade of stubborness? 

Why Was I Ready to Listen?

The backdrop of the seemingly random encounter with an elderly woman at a country western concert in Salt Lake City, Utah was the result of more than a decade of me being a control freak. I have always been competitive and motivated to succeed, which has driven me to accomplish many things, but has also driven a large amount of anxiety for me. During my twenties, I could not give a succinct definition of what the success I was chasing looked like – it was all relative to whoever I happened to be comparing myself to in that moment. In Siddhartha (Hesse, 1971), Siddhartha’s wise friend, the ferryman, reflects on Siddhartha’s son’s disposition and distaste for his current place in life, “His sorrows will not be slight. His heart is proud and hard. He will probably suffer much, make many mistakes, do much injustice and commit many sins” (p. 119). Siddhartha’s son and I had much in common in my twenties. 

In my early thirties, I started to realize that what I was doing with my life was not producing the results I intended. I was working harder than anyone I knew, I was anxious about material things and I was probably not that fun to be around. Without being able to produce a satisfactory answer on my own, I turned to God and my Catholic faith. However, attending mass regularly was not enough for me to hear what God, the universe, and those who cared for me were trying to tell me. Silence “requires going to the edge of selflessness before it will appear, so religion itself does not guarantee its presence” (Sardello, 2008, p. 11).

“Entheos means possessed by the spirit in a positive constructive sense. (Greenleaf, 1996, p. 81). Greenleaf (1996) goes on to say that busyness is one of the false indicators of entheos, and that was certainly the case for me. The harder I worked to understand what purpose I was meant to serve, the harder time I had letting go of a preconceived yet dynamic outcome that I had in my mind on any given day. I had experienced varying versions of success by helping to win contracts for my business, buying a house, or going on nice vacations with my wife. If anything, these material wins confused me more on my journey and provided static that made listening to the voice of God difficult. “Status or material success. One may be conspicuously successful and at the same time may be destroying oneself and everything that is personally important. One might achieve the status of material success and entheos would flourish too. But the former would not be a valid indicator that the latter was present.” (Greenleaf, 1996, p. 83)

One day, as I was saying the Lord’s prayer, I made a conscious effort to concentrate on each word, each phrase and its meaning. The phrase, “Thy will be done” rang in my ears. I realized that I had been saying these words my whole life, but living in conflict with the prayer. I had been trying to fit a round peg in a square hole by serving my will rather than the will of God. I started to repeat “Thy will be done” both out loud and in my head while going about my days. 

As I was beginning to try and truly listen to what God’s plans for me are, I was simultaneously watching the small business startup to which I had devoted six years of my life begin to slowly die. In my heart of hearts I had known that this was inevitable for probably at least a year, but it took multiple months of not being able to take a paycheck to force me to let go of the dream. I was based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the time, but took what I considered to be a step backward to work again as an engineer for a large aerospace company. My wife and I relocated to Utah for the job. As jarring as it was for our lives, it only reinforced for me the idea that St. Paul shares in his letter to the Ephesians , “Glory to God, who is able to do far beyond all that we could ask or imagine by his power at work within us” (Eph 3:20). The life-changing event of relocating and restarting a career served as the wake-up that I needed to listen to what God was trying to tell me. “If our soul does not go through a time of preparation and purification, which may be a long time, we will form no capacity to enter and explore the intricacies of this landscape” (Sardello, 2008, p. 10). 

Thus set the stage for my encounter with the elderly woman at the concert. Throughout the collapse of my business and resetting of my career, I had been hurt, my pride had been wounded and I had learned the hard way that pursuing my definition of success was a fool’s errand. My ego was damaged, to be sure, but probably for the better. Sardello (2008) states that the guardians of the realm of Silence “intend to keep us from wandering into Silence without the inner soul work needed to ensure that we do not use this experience for our egotistic needs” (Sardello, 2008, p. 19). For the first time since being married, after countless attempts by others that cared for me and wished the best for me and my wife, I was finally ready to truly listen. That night at the concert, in the elderly woman I was able to see myself, see my wife, see our future filled with both challenges and with joy. These things were all available in countless other conversations I had had with others, but I was deaf and blind to them until that night.

How do I listen better going forward?

I have always considered myself to be a good listener because of my ability to recall what somebody said. I have now realized that this is less an ability to listen, to learn and to empathize as it is an ability to memorize, which is far less useful for someone trying to become more human. Without being able to recognize the context and work to comprehend the true meaning of what I am hearing, I am at risk of missing the true meaning. Through listening, “we find that the center of the universe shifts from our self-interests, even our spiritual self-interests, to the larger world, even to the cosmos, which we now begin to perceive as a spiritual reality” (Sardello, 2008, p. 10).

Sitting in silence is not doing nothing, in spite of what my internal wiring and the connected world that we live in tell me. Through doing it wrong for so long, I have now learned the power of listening. “We now have to learn to invite the Silence, and having invited it, we now have to learn to enter it” (Sardello, 2008, p. 12). Making time for silence, making time for God’s voice, and listening to what has been said both verbally and non-verbally are ways that I intend to learn from my prior mistakes and invite more fortuitous encounters. Awareness of my faults has been helpful, as has becoming aware of my ego. I intend to continue growing in my skills to comprehend what is being presented around me. “Growth not in terms of external achievement but in terms of the things that are important in the quiet hours when one is alone with oneself; growth in terms of the capacity for serenity in a world of confusion and conflict, a new kind of inner stamina, a new kind of exportable resource as youthful prowess drops away” (Greenleaf, 1996, p. 85).

I look forward to the opportunity to serve as both an example and a sounding board for my children. I am striving to be an empathetic listener that can remain off of the drama triangle completely. “At this level, listeners refrain from judging the talker and place themselves in the other’s position, attempting to see things from his or her point of view” (Burley-Allen, 1995, p. 14). Burley-Allen (1995) goes on to note that people tend to repeat the listening behavior that they were exposed to as children. By seeking to understand, rather than simply hearing, I hope to show my children a path toward being more empathetic. 

The irony is not lost on me that because of a fortuitous encounter with an elderly stranger where I finally listened, my house is now filled with a cacophony of noise from my children that sometimes make listening to Silence seem impossible. The sound of my children playing, crying, and learning can be heard during all hours of the day (and night). However, by listening, I have introduced a joyful noise throughout my house for which I will forever be grateful. In moments of human weakness, when the noise from my children seems to be too much, too chaotic and seemingly without reason, I try and remind myself to be quiet, to be present in the moment and to trust that I am fulfilling a role in a universe that is much bigger than anything I could have planned for myself. I remind myself of Psalm 46:10: “Be still, and know that I am God”.

References

Burley-Allen, M. (1995). Listening : the forgotten skill. John Wiley & Sons.

Common American Bible (2022). Bible Gateway. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians%203:19-21&version=CEB

Greenleaf, R. K., Frick, D. M., Spears, L. C., & Drucker, P. F. (1996). On becoming a servant-leader. Jossey-Bass.

Hesse, H. (1971). Siddhartha. Bantam Books.

New International Version Bible (2022). Bible Gateway. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2046:10&version=NIV‌Sardello, R. J. (2008). Silence : the mystery of wholeness. North Atlantic ; Enfield.