{"id":1186,"date":"2019-08-26T17:30:54","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T23:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=1186"},"modified":"2019-08-21T18:21:38","modified_gmt":"2019-08-22T00:21:38","slug":"am-i-listening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=1186","title":{"rendered":"Am I listening?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[To follow The Ewellogy<\/em><\/strong>, please click on Leave a Comment<\/em><\/strong> above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email<\/em><\/strong>. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.] <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had dinner recently with a friend from out of town, only an acquaintance, actually, and I\u2019ve never heard one person talk more and listen less. My wife is a saint. In a 2.5-hour \u201cconversation\u201d our friend might have responded to something June said twice, only to immediately go back to what she wanted to talk about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m reading an intriguing book, not finished with it yet, called The Art of Racing in the Rain<\/a> by Garth Stein, narrated by a dog. Here\u2019s what the dog said about conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cannot speak, so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another\u2019s conversations constantly. It\u2019s like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street. For instance, if we met at a party and I wanted to tell you a story about the time I needed to get a soccer ball in my neighbor\u2019s yard but his dog chased me and I had to jump into a swimming pool to escape, and I began telling the story, you, hearing the words \u201csoccer\u201d and \u201cneighbor\u201d in the same sentence, might interrupt and mention that your childhood neighbor was Pel\u00e9, the famous soccer player, and I might be courteous and say, Didn\u2019t he play for the Cosmos of New York? Did you grow up in New York? And you might reply that, no, you grew up in Brazil on the streets of Tr\u00eas Cora\u00e7\u00f5es with Pel\u00e9, and I might say, I thought you were from Tennessee, and you might say not originally, and then go on to outline your genealogy at length. So my initial conversational gambit\u2014that I had a funny story about being chased by my neighbor\u2019s dog\u2014would be totally lost, and only because you had to tell me all about Pel\u00e9. Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listen to other people rather than steal their stories<\/em>. A good word, which I have been known to violate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My dearest brothers and sisters, take this to heart: Be quick to listen, but slow to speak.\u00a0(James 1.19, Passion Translation)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A different context but the same in principle…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And [Jesus] said, \u201cHe who has ears to hear, let him hear.\u201d (Mark 4.9, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He who has an ear let him hear.<\/em>.. (7 times in Revelation 2 and 3) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had dinner recently with a friend from out of town, only an acquaintance, actually, and I\u2019ve never heard one person talk more and listen less. My wife is a saint. In a 2.5-hour \u201cconversation\u201d our friend might have responded to something June said twice, only to immediately go back to what she wanted to … Continue reading Am I listening?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-j8","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1186"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1188,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions\/1188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}