The Gift of Listening: Finding Home 2.3
Hello, friends! Welcome to October’s not-so-scary edition of Finding Home! Whether this is your first letter from me or you’ve been reading since the beginning, I’m glad you’re here.
This month, I have a lot of thoughts about listening to each other and a personal Hutchmoot recap that’s been a long time coming. And as usual, I’ll share some things I loved this month and links to writing you may have missed. Settle in with a snack and blanket, and let's catch up! And as always, feel free to reply about any of this... I'd love to hear from you!
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I went for a walk yesterday... probably the first outdoor walk alone I've taken all month? Yes, I think that's right. As the days of October have ticked by, I've driven from home to work, home to coffee shops (to do more work), home to the grocery store, home to events. And somehow one of my favorite months has become a string of things.... all good things. But things that distract me from listening.
And it's funny, because listening is a theme I've returned to again and again this year.
The world is full of noise. I don't need to tell you that. You feel it in the air, you see it on Twitter and Facebook. It's even hard to find a waiting room, a restaurant, a hotel lobby that doesn't have a television blaring the news at you. It's hard to find the quiet.
I'm a big advocate of unplugging from the noise and seeking quiet, but this is not going to be about why you should ditch Facebook and Twitter for a month. This is actually about seeking voices. Digging through the noise. Tuning in to the signals, particularly the ones that don't speak your native language.
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Let's go back to the start of October: Hutchmoot. I love this weekend. I love that there's no agenda for the visitors, that there's a lot of room to take what you need and leave the rest. If I'm honest, this year's Hutchmoot was a hard one -- it was a quick in and out of Nashville. There were many people I wanted to talk to and missed. And on top of all that, the seasonal change at home was putting me in a slight funk.
I wanted to be invisible. I felt like I had nothing to give. During the opening concert on Thursday night, I ducked out of the sanctuary and hid in the bathroom long enough that my mom came looking for me, just to make sure I was okay.
I didn't have a session to lead this year... only co-hosting poetry open mics with Chris. So in that way, it was the perfect year to simply receive. And if Hutchmoot is what you make of it, 2018's was, for me, a weekend about listening.
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Listening was at the core of Mark Meynell's talk Balm for Broken People, where we openly considered the struggle of depression, the ways art and beauty meet people in mental pain, and what we need from each other when we find ourselves in "the cave of depression." I left the room almost in tears -- partly because I know what it's like to sit in the cave with someone I love, and partly because art has been a light to me when I've stumbled into that cave now and then.
In Betting on the Dark Horse, Doug McKelvey and Rebecca Reynolds discussed the secret powers of the weakest among us. "Perhaps we will not know the diamond-hard foundations of our faith until we are pushed to doubt," said Doug. Being weak with one another allows community to form. "It's powerful thing to walk through a culture unseen,” said Rebecca, citing the literary appeal of invisibility cloaks. “Until you conquer the fear of being invisible, you won't know what you can do in the shadows."
And finally, Mary McCampbell, a first-timer for Hutchmoot that I desperately hope will come back year after year, spoke on Prophetic Imagination in Hip-Hop, and I swear it's one of the best HM talks I've ever been to. Not just because of the topic, the construction, and how much I learned about lament, identity, and joy in hip-hop music, but because of the conversations afterward.
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I haven't talked a whole lot about this, but I've been trying my best this year to intentionally listen to people who don't look like me, to hear the voices outside my own experience. And to participate in a loving, but brutally honest conversation about race and experience after Mary's talk -- even if I was doing less conversing and more listening -- was a gift.
It would take way too much space to detail the conversation here. It's probably not even appropriate to detail it here. (Sitting with thoughts without immediately turning them into a tidy public essay is part of the listening, I think.) But those moments in conversation were a reminder that, more than ever, listening is vital to healing our culture, working for justice, and doing the business of God's Kingdom on earth.
Bearing witness is a phrase I have written down in my notes from Mary's talk. Maybe that's why this phrase has been lodged in my mind all month.
It's why I've made a deliberate choice to follow more people of color (especially women) on Twitter. It's why I trot on over to All Sides and read news stories from a variety of perspectives when political conversation heats up. And yeah, it's why sometimes I need to step out of the feed for a bit and regroup, why I accept that it's okay to mute voices that don't add life to the conversation, why instead of criticizing others for their anger we should dig for the pain underneath.
Can we fix everything? No. But bearing witness to pain -- in the lament in a Kendrick Lamar song, in the discomforting illustrations of I Had a Black Dog -- is the first step of healing. Bearing witness means listening without judgment, without argument, without interjecting your own knowledge.
And perhaps, though I've taken all month to realize it, that was the gift I needed to receive from this year's Hutchmoot.
It's true. I didn't have much to give this year. But I had everything to receive.
And I'm listening.
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And now for news and lists...
HEY, MY HUSBAND HAS A NEW BOOK!
It’s true! Chris has a new book of poems out in the world! I have done a terrible job at promoting it. Sorry, Chris. #wifefail #publicapology
But truly, I’m a big fan of Chris AND his poems. Like his last book, A Child’s Year is a season cycle, but this time it’s anchored by a four part poem recalling the journey of seasons through childhood eyes. And according to my friend Kirsten’s 7-year-old son, Chris gets it right. ;) It’s lovely. Buy one for you and one for someone you know who thinks they don’t like poetry.
Or a kid. Buy one for a kid. (Lulu / Amazon / Barnes & Noble)
THINGS I WROTE IN OCTOBER
Wow, I blogged almost every day this month. Insane! And satisfying. So yeah, the whole JRY blog was all short posts about Holding Space… for God, for ourselves, and for each other. Check out the whole series here, or my most popular post of the month At Least I Won’t Go Alone.
Over at CCM, I wrote a couple of articles for a series called Pardon the Introduction, five song introductions to lesser known artists. Check out my playlists for Jenny and Tyler and The Gray Havens. Have a favorite artist you’d love to see covered? Hit reply and tell me!
And finally, I captured a phone recording of my reading at Silence the Stones 2018, and you can listen to it here! I read a few poems that haven’t been published yet and rambled a little in between. Give it a listen!
5 THINGS I LOVED IN OCTOBER
1) The Good Place is back, benches! This show, man. I don’t know how an absurd comedy about death, philosophy, and ethics still exists on network TV, but I am here for it. Still frequently impressed that something like this can continue to be so sweet, funny, and humane. Also, I will now use Jeremy Bearimy to explain complicated metaphysical concepts.
2) A Very Harry Halloween. The Yokels love their Halloween parties and nerdy costumes, and this year we turned our apartment into a magical budget Hogwarts! (and also disturbed our niece with Moaning Myrtle sound effects in the bathroom.) So fun! I am scared we can never top this party, even though I've already come up with themes for like the next five years. Costume pics on Instagram if you're into that!
3) Finding a solid/easy butterbeer recipe for said party. Use a good cream soda and skip the extracts... the homemade butterscotch whipped cream is where it's at. 🍻
4) Marc Martel made the Queen covers album the world has always needed. And Kevin Max sings the Bowie part on Under Pressure. AND Kevin Max retweeted my no chill tweet about it and suddenly high school Jen is very impressed with me.
5) Starting a class in Transformational Listening / Spiritual Direction. I'm sure I'll have more to say about this in the future, but... yep. This is a thing I am doing. There will be many books for the next 9 months. Diving into the homework like:
As always, thanks for letting me into your inbox. Now go eat some candy and read some ghost stories! 👻
Peace,
~Jen // jenroseyokel.com