The lost art of listening
What makes listening such a powerful gift? In this blog post, Brendan McManus SJ reflects on his time accompanying pilgrims in Santiago de Compostela and the profound impact of simply being heard. Drawing on the wisdom of St Ignatius of Loyola and the work of the Camino Companions, he explores why genuine listening matters, how it creates space for deeper understanding, and what it can teach us about the way we connect with others.
The Lost Art of Listening: uncovering a superpower
Brendan McManus SJ :: Earlier this summer I spent over three weeks in Santiago de Compostela as part of the team of Camino Companion volunteers listening to pilgrims talk about their Camino and this is the surprising superpower I learned.
Imagine that you’ve spent some weeks or even months travelling by foot to reach the ancient pilgrimage site of Santiago de Compostela. Often it has been a long and challenging walk where you have endured heat, dehydration, hunger and exertion to the point of exhaustion. Sometimes you have been impelled to walk through grief, illness, personal crisis or trauma. Often it has been a transformative journey where you have gotten insight and peace, through slowing down and turning within, but sometimes not. Arriving in Santiago can be a very emotional moment finishing the pilgrimage, and you can often feel a whole mixture of emotions: relief, sadness, elation, sorrow, anti-climax, loss, and bitter-sweet ambivalence about finishing a special journey and facing back into daily life. There is a certain level of vulnerability, openness and desire for connection. More than anything though, is the need for a safe place to be able to speak about an extraordinary experience and process some complex emotions.
What pilgrims often need most in Santiago, therefore, is a warm welcome, a safe place to talk about what has happened, where their experience is reverenced and there is someone to listen to them. This sounds so simple and in some ways it is, but it needs some awareness, specific skills and planning to create this safe place where pilgrims feel at home and encouraged to open up about their experience. Ignatius Loyola, the 16th Century saint was the archetypal pilgrim, giving up everything to go on the road in search of his heart’s desire. He stumbled across this way of speaking of important things, the ‘spiritual conversation’ which has a “deep reverence for [people’s] freedom”[1], where he learnt more humbly listening rather than speaking. This creation of a ‘sacred space’ where people are listened to is the essence of this pilgrim ministry. It employs the Ignatian tools of spiritual conversation, personal accompaniment[2] and group discernment[3]. Essentially it is about opening a space where pilgrims have a chance to express what is in their heart and hear themselves come to important insights.
The risk of course, is that they get ‘lost’, that they don’t come across the space, that no one listens and pilgrims return home without appreciating the depth of the process they have lived. It’s the classic ‘having the experience and missing the meaning’. Human beings are by nature ‘process’ beings, in that they need time and space to express what is happening inside and help in coming to insights and understanding. Having someone listen to them tell their story in their own way and ask the right questions is the single most helpful thing. Especially in our consumerist, ‘transactional’ world, it’s hard to believe that someone would be ‘free’ enough to make themselves available and open to listen.
Yet this is exactly what the Camino Companions ministry seeks to do. Many are spiritual guides and directors, or counsellors and understand the notion of ‘holding space’ and the importance of ‘active listening’. They are trained in being present, being self-aware, open to others and allowing them the space to safely express themselves. A lot of this is based on Ignatian wisdom, the Spirit is busy working in people’s lives, and listening creates the conditions for people to get insight and interpret their own unique experience. There is a spiritual dimension to this process, but it is essentially life affirming, incarnational and integrative. It really helps people put words on an often ineffable experience, express the myriad of emotions around it, and gain some personal and unique insights. Some people find they have to come back more than once, and people often have a lot of ‘unpacking’ of their experience when they get home.[4]
In terms of facilitating this process, there is a real skill involved, and it takes a lot of work. It is harder than most people imagine and there is an ‘active’ component to it that is about being present to someone, really hearing what they are saying, and facilitating them ‘processing’ or understanding their experience. Often asking the right ‘open’, follow on question, is a great gift. The modern world often tends to devalue listening as passive, ‘worthless’ and pointless, but the irony is that there is a real ‘superpower’ in it. Done well, it is enormously empowering, affirming and assists greatly in people coming to their own insights, an integrated and personal wisdom. Again, the Ignatian wisdom is that people have the capabilities and insights within them, and they can be facilitated to come to their own profound insights.
The great problem however, is that mostly people don’t understand listening, are used to jumping in and interrupting, and it needs some good facilitation and guidelines. Often the real work of the facilitator is to ‘protect’ the space from people jumping in with their solutions and making tangential comments. A lot of contemporary communication is often one way, there is the temptation to not really listen, to rehearse one’s own contribution, to offer solutions, to attempt to control or short circuit the process by making facile comments. The other problem is that a lot of people have an agenda whether they know it or not. Often it can be something as harmless as ‘I want to ease the suffering of others’ or ‘I can’t bear hearing pain’, but it impinges on the quality of the listening. Then there are the overt and directive agendas of dominant ideologies, especially religious ones, that insist on interpreting everything in line with the listener’s views. Very quickly there is no listening going on, rather a fight for power or control, and the real tragedy is that the speaker quickly learns to be silent, guarded or circumspect, which is the death of meaningful interaction. Unfortunately, this is often the default especially in a social media dominated world which encourages reactionary responses, cancelling and shutting people down.
Some of this listening is very subtle and paradoxically often about non verbal communication (incredibly over 50% of communication is non-verbal[5]). We often say, ‘it’s not just about the words’, in fact it’s almost never about what people say initially as they struggle to formulate complex experiences into words. People need time and encouragement to process what has happened and work out the implications for themselves, often there is a call to change in their lives. Accordingly, it is often more about the persons’ body language than what they actually say initially, it’s the facial expression, the tone of voice, the gestures, the bodily disposition, this takes time and effort to ‘read’ correctly and resists any facile attempt to shortcut the process.
The Camino Companions offer a recovery of this active listening and creating a safe space to share personal experiences. This is quite a unique place of openness and real listening. It is a real haven for searching or wounded pilgrims who just need a safe place to listen without judgement. It is empowering and facilitative; it genuinely helps pilgrims to process their own unique experience without interfering in any way or bringing any ideology. This is a place with a team of trained ‘listeners’ who have the skills and the process to be able to create and protect a safe place. It is wonderful to be part of it and consoling to watch people unfold and blossom.
[1] Nicholas Austin, The Ignatian Art of Spiritual Conversation, The Way, 62/3 (July 2023), 9–23.
https://www.theway.org.uk/back/623Austin.pdf
[2] Also called spiritual direction: https://www.artsd.org.uk/what-is-distinctive-about-ignatian-spiritual-direction
[3] This is a process of listening together in a group situation: https://jesuit.org.au/the-importance-of-communal-discernment
[4] The Camino Companions signpost various options for pilgrims on returning home. https://jesuit.ie/news/living-the-camino-back-home/
[5] https://online.utpb.edu/about-us/articles/communication/how-much-of-communication-is-nonverbal/
