In Another’s Shoes
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church
October 18, 2020
Let’s begin this morning by digging into our memories. Some of us may have to think hard, to dig deeply. Others of us may have a fresh memory right on the surface. I’m going to ask you to think about a time when you were ignored. When a store clerk didn’t see you or hear you. When a parent didn’t listen, or a partner, or a child, for that matter. How about a time at a meeting when you offered an idea and minutes later your suggestion was attributed to someone else? Have you ever been interrupted repeatedly? Has a doctor or nurse ever dismissed some symptoms you were experiencing as nothing?
I’ll pause for a moment to let you think about this.
If you’re remembering something now, I have another question for you: how does it make you feel? What emotions go through your mind right now?
I remember an ankle injury years ago. It was diagnosed as broken in the ER, and as instructed I put no weight on it until I finally got an appointment with an orthopedist over a week later. She looked at new X-rays and told me it was just a sprain. When I left the examining room a couple of minutes later I overheard her making a joke about it to the intern who had joined the exam. They laughed dismissively. When I think back to that episode, it’s not the pain I recall. It was the feeling of humiliation, the feeling of not being taken seriously, that I had wasted their time. It made me furious.
I’m quite sure that all of you here know that exact feeling, and the hurt and the anger that result. It’s a painful experience, to not be listened to, to be dismissed. What we are being told in those moments is that our experiences and feelings don’t matter, that our stories either aren’t important, or aren’t believable.
Our theme this month is Listening. It’s quite a topic for right now, just over two weeks to a presidential election. We are assaulted by voices talking at each other; loud voices trying to make their own point, prove their case. All this incessant talk is not about listening, about connection, trying to find common ground. It’s about broadcasting personal opinions and facts. It’s about being right. We are called right now to notice this, and to remember how it feels to not be heard, and how much better we feel when we are heard, or when we successfully listen to and hear someone else.
I asked you a minute ago to think about your own feelings when you are dismissed and unheard. I asked you to do this so that you could then take this one step farther, and imagine how this feels for all the people on the margins of our society.
For 400 years, attempts of African-Americans to tell their truths have been ignored, suppressed, or punished. Laws were passed to keep Black people from an education, from citizenship, from voting. This has been a centuries-long effort to silence Black people. When they do tell their stories, often the response is dismissive. “Well, he shouldn’t have been walking down that street, or at that party.” “He shouldn’t kneel during the National Anthem. We’re here to enjoy the game.” “All lives matter.” Tell that last one to people whose ancestors were originally counted as three-fifths of a person.
How angry would you be? How frustrated, how close to the boiling point would you get if every avenue of speech or protest was denied you?
Dr. Martin Luther King had this to say, in a speech in 1967: “…I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? … It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity.” (speech, “The Other America,” Stanford University, 1967. (Accessed: https://time.com/3838515/baltimore-riots-language-unheard-quote/ )
To refuse to listen, to hear the stories of Black people, demonstrates a persistent cruel side of American culture. To refuse to listen to others is a rejection of connection, a refusal of relationship. It is based in fear, in avoidance. Why don’t we want to listen? What don’t we want to hear? Ignoring someone is a violent act, really, and it begets a violent or angry response – again, think back to your own emotions when you are treated dismissively. You might respond by shouting. You might think about striking someone, breaking something. Imagine how much more anger, rage, can boil up after 400 years of systemic silencing?
And so here we are, decade after decade, stuck. We are apparently more afraid of our guilt feelings than we are open to love.
To listen, to invite connection and relationship, is an act of courage, a willingness to be uncomfortable. And ultimately, to listen is an act of empathy. To be willing to listen, we must be able to recognize the other person’s shared humanity. It is what is meant by the old saying of walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. How will we ever know what that mile will feel like if we don’t listen?
Natalie Fenimore, in our reading earlier, wrote, “We must listen to our stories. To reconcile, we need to make peace with the past, not by ignoring it, but by looking at it clearly from many sides…We must gain and grow from our knowledge of each other.” (“Welcome and Listen,” in To Wake, To Rise, Skinner House Books, 2017, p. 18.)
My friends, explore your own memories, your own feelings. Use those to grow in empathy and in the courage it will take to invite other people’s uncomfortable feelings into our hearts. This is hard work, and it is hard to start. But if we grow in empathy, we can grow in our ability, our tolerance, of hearing painful truths. We can grow in love and connection. The road to reconciliation, so long overdue in these United States, travels from empathy to listening to relationship. I hope we can all walk this road.
A few minutes ago we heard one of the songs from our turquoise hymnal: “When our heart is in a holy place.” Let’s finish now by remembering these words: “When we tell our story from deep inside, and we listen with a loving mind, and we hear our voices in each other’s words, then our heart is in a holy place.”
May you find your heart in this holy place, and may it guide you forward along the road to caring and relationship, and love.
Blessed Be.
Amen.
