Mosaic of Voices: Listening to One Another
A SERMON BY REV LINDA A HART
I am surprised more often than I can tell you by the people who teach me things that I need to know, things I need to remember.
For example, the culture of celebrity is all around us all the time. On the television there are more shows than I can count that follow the lives of people who are only famous because they are famous, not because they are particularly wise or gifted but because they have caught some portion of the public’s eye, and now have the ability to command the attention of the media. We watch the bad boy antics of people like Charlie Sheen (who at least has had a career in acting), and are disgusted by his over the top behaviour. Unreasonable demands and pampered lifestyles seem just a matter of course for those on whom the spotlight shines.
But sometimes even celebrities have something to teach us.
Years ago there were stories about the group rock and roll band Van Halen and their outrageous demands when they were on tour. Here’s the bit that most people got indignant about: they required that there be bowls of M&Ms backstage, but there could not be any brown ones in there. Can you imagine? There was a story that circulated for a while about how when one of the band members, David Lee Roth arrived at one concert venue, he found brown M&Ms, and went on a rampage backstage that wound up costing $85,000. Outrageous.
The real story behind all of this is rather different. In a memoir, Mr Roth tells more of the story:
Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets.
We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors — whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through.
The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment and so many human beings to make it function. So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say ‘Article 148: there will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes. . .’ this kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: ‘There will be no brown M&Ms in the backstage area upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.’
So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl . . . well, line-check the entire production.
Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error. They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem.
Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.
In Pueblo, Colorado at the university, they had just replaced the flooring in their sports arena, but even with this brand new flooring, they hadn’t fully paid attention to what the contract stated was needed for the show. When Roth arrived and found brown M&Ms, he went out of control, broke doors and walls, knocked over buffets and did, by his report $12,000 worth of damage. However, the weight of the equipment that was resting on this brand new flooring made it sink, and the whole new floor had to be replaced, at a cost of $80,000, because the people who didn’t bother to take out the brown M&Ms also didn’t bother to actually calculate what the weight would do.
As I am not a detail person – there would have been brown M&Ms galore in the bowls if I had been in charge – I am impressed at how clever the contract writers were. They found a way to see how carefully the venues were reading the contract: a simple, visual cue that told the band straightaway if what was needed had been tended.
The biggest lesson to learn again, though, is the importance of listening, the importance of hearing another. In the case of the band, knowing that the promoters were really listening could have meant the difference between life and death. In the case of the rest of us, it could very well mean the same thing.
One of the characteristics that set Unitarians aside from other faith communities is that while all faith communities are diverse – that is, even among those with the strictest of doctrine and dogma there will be differences between people who proclaim the same belief – even though all faith communities are diverse, ours is one of the few who affirm that there are many truths that inspire our members. We explicitly acknowledge that there isn’t a unity of belief among us, and we recognise that as a strength that we have.
It is a strength, in part I believe, because it means that we can learn from each other. Recognising that each of us brings some small fragment of the truth that we have found, examining it with others means that our own view – our own always limited view – can be expanded. When we hear from each other those, sometimes fragile, dearly held hopes and hear the persistent faith, the trust that we have about humanity, about God, about our own capacity for good – when we really hear this from one another, it can only serve to help in our own transformation, in gaining clarity, in learning to be the best that we can be in the world.
When we listen to each other with curiosity and with love we will learn.
I had this happen a few months ago when visiting with my brother. We lost our mother 27 years ago at just this time of year, and in the intervening years at times Michael has mentioned that he has ‘known’ that Mom was with us, with him. And I’ve always understood this to be something outside my perception. I’ve never had a sense of there being an existence after death, and never had an experience of her presence other than the sort that happens when I hear her voice in my own, her inflection when I say something sharply to my daughter. Yet I always trusted that Michael was having a true experience of her presence even if I had no idea what it was.
Visiting at Christmas, in conversation about something else, I mentioned that I had always been moved by his sense of that otherworldliness, if you will, that he could feel her, and though it wasn’t my experience, I trusted totally that it was real and true. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘I understand that Mom lives on within us, I’ve always known that Mom lives within us.’
A new world of understanding opened up for me as I saw truly what it was that he meant when he said, ‘Mom is here.’ He meant the kind of immortality that I do, that the people we love abide within us because their lives have shaped our own, and they are there within us, never gone, though sometimes even more alive in our hearts and memories. So when he shared a picture of azaleas on the anniversary of her death just a few days ago, I could say that I loved her and know that she is with me always, just as she is with him, and just as all of our beloveds abide with us.
When we really listen to each other, new understanding emerges, sometimes as our own perceptions and hunches and ideas are given fuller voice, sometimes as new ideas take root in our own hearts, sometimes, even, as we recognise our differences. You see, it’s not that we’ll all agree on everything, goodness no. Part of the worth of truly listening is that it can also help us to discern our own beliefs in contrast. I am often pleased to find that as another speaks, by the light cast from their own clarity, my clarity is enhanced, too. ‘That is not an affirmation I can make,’ is a fine, fine response, and helps us to see our own ideas.
At our Building Your Own Theology group on Thursday, I was struck when reading a collection of quotes about human nature that my immediate response to some of them was a simple, ‘no’, which itself can become an affirmation.
Really listening to another speak about what is important, what matters in our lives, where our struggles are is the work of coming alive in the world, and is a part of what we gather for here in this place. Over this next month, we will have opportunity to hear four of our friends and members speak about these: the beliefs that shape them, where their spiritual journey has taken them, or perhaps a question that I’ve not been able to answer. It is the start of creating a more explicit mosaic of the beliefs that inspire us as individuals in this community, and each of us will have opportunities to share over the course of the year. (And don’t be frightened, you won’t have to stand up in front of God and everyone, but will have a variety of opportunities to explore and to share.)
Back at the beginning, I said that for that band all those years ago, that the promoters were paying attention, were really listening could be a matter of life and death for them. They had to feel certain that all the important things had been heard and that they were safe. Listening to each other, paying attention to what it is that inspires another is also a matter of life and death, and is part of the purpose for our coming together. For, you see, the better we know what it is we are living for, the better we know what is essential, what it is that resides in our innermost heart, the better we are able to live it. And the more we live it, the more abundant our lives will be in what we love.
For us, there will be no brown M&M test to see if we’re safe. The test will be seen best and most in our lives well and truly lived.
So may it be. Amen.
Prayer
Spirit of love and life,
we enter a time of stillness
and open to your presence.
In these moments and in the days to come
may we pause to listen,
listen to the lives of those around,
the life of the world,
that we may find some portion of truth,
some glimmer of meaning,
in the rhythm of days,
the turning of the world,
and hearing it,
hearing the beating of our own hearts,
hearing our own truth, our own meaning.
may we turn
and offer it back into the world,
by using our hands to build up what has been broken,
by using our words to offer comfort,
by giving our hearts to the work of justice,
by living our lives truly: in truth, in wisdom, in compassion.
These moments will speed by,
but may our intentions abide within us,
this day and in the days to come. Amen.