
Oct 2, 2024
Episode #267
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David Mains shares the Introduction to Karen’s—his wife’s—latest book on the topic of “Listening.” Then, he discusses how he has endeavored to help her bring this book to completion. Karen offers her own observations on how the topic of “Listening” can motivate the church to reach out to people, who need to be listened to and to be understood.
Episode Transcript
Karen: And I’m at the stage in my life where I know that I’m approaching the end of my life. While there’s an urgency, I used to always have people coming to me and asking for me to write certain things. Or do you have a book in the works? But I’m out of that publishing circuit. There are no Christian bookstores to speak of anymore.
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David: My good wife Karen is with me once again on this visit, but you won’t hear from her quite yet. And there’s a reason for that.
Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.
David: Karen is working on a new book. I want to just share the prelude that she’s written, which will give me context for what I will say with her afterward. Just kind of relax and sit back and listen, okay?
Karen writes, “Before Christmas one year, I was waiting on Chicago Midway Airport at the Southwest Airline’s gate for my 10-year-old grandson who will arrive from Phoenix. He decided he was going to spend the holiday with us and amazingly his parents had agreed.
David, my husband, was in the car park waiting for my signal to begin circling outside the terminal. And suddenly, my attention was grabbed by a sort of a wild woman who marched to the ticket counter and announcing she had just flown in. Came from the maritime prophecies and demanding when her flight was departing for Detroit. It was impossible to overlook this human in disarray. Her guttural voice, horse, and sexy, mumbled something about having been one of the top two swimmers in the world. Though no one inquired about this of her, these two comments flying from the Maritimes and being a world-class competitor were indiscriminately mentioned to those who were listening and to those who were not.
She was dressed in spiky, heeled boots and black leather pants with a stripe of chrome buttons slithering down the outside seams. Her hair was wild and proxied. The long extensions looking as though she might have slept for several nights, not been able to find a comb or a brush in the mornings. A modicum of style flirted from the black leather jackets. There were several layered on top of each other as though she had no place to leave them behind, and the two were glammed with sequins.
“Can you watch my bags?” She asked the counter attendant, and when told that was not allowed, she wheeled her cases to a seat, then leaned over the back-to-back chair and asked two young boys accompanied by a college sister if she could have some of their McDonald French fries. The boys, being boys and finding nothing strange about this request, quickly complied, “Sure,” offering their bags.
This compliance was the same as any two well-behaved children would give to an adult with a request. “I like kids,” she explained to the sister who was obviously not feeling so compliant, all the while munching away on the requisition fries. Then repeated her comment to everyone at the gate, most of whom by this time were deep in their newspapers, pretending not to gauge how close she was coming. All determined not to make eye contact. “I like kids.”
When I returned from checking the arrival monitors, two security guards had been called by the disc clerk, and I watched them gently but professionally assess the situation, then engage the woman in conversation. She answered their questions rationally.
This December day, to their consternation, I imagine, was just a week or so away from the incident where two air marshals had fatally shot a manic-depressive man who rusts the jetway, supposedly declaring that he had a bomb. And now that sure inner push said she hasn’t taken her meds this morning.
I intentionally moved closer to the woman sitting across the aisle from where she was seated, our knees facing. Another woman sat beside me, we exchanged significant glances and began to chat. I discovered she was a Mennonite, also awaiting the arrival of a grandson from Phoenix.
Our chat was interrupted by the words loudly spoken in that husky, Kathleen Turner-like voice. “He stayed all night, didn’t even touch me.” That was accompanied by a disbelieving kind of gurgle.
She repeated as though this information was something we were eager to know. “He stayed the whole night and didn’t even touch me.” This time the words and the ironic laugh were addressed to me, like I was the kind of woman who would get it.
Our eyes connected. The woman expected me to be amazed. In an attempt to be conversational, I said something sympathetic to the effect of, “Well, maybe he was cold or tired or just needed a place to be safe.” What was I saying? Not the kind of conversation I usually engage in with strangers. I lost track of the Mennonite grandmother, but I moved as though propelled toward this locus of disorientation. As gently and as calmly as possible, having no way to anticipate her reaction, I questioned, “Have you taken your meds today? I’m wondering because you’re acting like you haven’t taken your meds.”
Let me make you try to understand how unlike me this kind of behavior is. I am an introvert, reluctant to initiate connections, careful about letting people too close on first meetings. Some have accused me of this after many meetings, particularly those who are humans in disarray. The ragged and wretched of the earth dismays me, moves me to compassion, but I’m generally confused and clueless as to how to approach them. But approach I did.
It was then I began to suspect that some kind of seismic shift had gone on in the fundamental apparatus of my personality. Perhaps the aging process had finally caught up to me, mellowing me. There are markers in every human life, markers of maturity. Something happens and we realize we’re different than we had been. Anger no longer rises within. We feel comfortable and confident in our own skin when once this location had been all too familiar and awkward friend, we think, “Well, look at me. I didn’t realize I could do this. Be this way. Say these things so truthfully without umbrage.” Irritations that used to trigger us no longer irritate. We are no longer annoyed by the people who once annoyed us. We find conflict useful rather than terrifying.
This moment at Midway Airport was such a one for me. Perhaps I had suffered profoundly, and this was making me tender toward all who also suffer. Perhaps it was because I’d spent ten years listening to hundreds of other people in the listening group format I had helped design and refine, some 250 listening groups in all. Perhaps I was reaching that attunement that professionals have been studying; that stage of compassion for and unity with all floundering humanity about which the wisdom writers speak.
I was not afraid, just a little uncertain, but still obedient to that inner nudge I might have once ignored. Do something. Say something. Get closer. Something kept pushing me to interact with this woman who everyone else at the gate was avoiding. The intriguing thing about listening scientists tell us about listening deeply is that the listener as well as the teller experience congruent shifts in their brains. Eventually, if the listening practices are continual and regular, result in noticeable and measurable feelings of well-being.
Though I had been interviewing group members to see what changes they could identify after months of listening and I was frequently amazed by the profound growth I witnessed, I had overlooked the benefits that it accrued to me. I might steer five listening groups in one week for two and a half hours each and not have time to share, but I always felt listened to. The words researchers use to describe this sense of being heard are feeling felt or knowing that you are known. Turning attention to my own growth trajectory, I realized I had attained a feeling felt status. Knowing that I was known for me had become a state of being.
Later, while reading the words of neuroscientist Daniel Segal, I was able to find a professional assessment of what was happening to me. “When a person tells her story and is truly heard and understood, both she and the listener undergo actual changes in their brain circuitry. They feel a greater sense of emotional and relational connection, decreased anxiety, greater awareness and compassion for others suffering. Others might call this state empathy.”
And now that I am finally paying attention, understanding that I am my own Chief Case Study, I realize that ten years of intentional listening and others have altered how I react and behave. As usual, the one who designs a methodology or adapts it, as in my case, is the one who benefits most from it.
Instantly, upon hearing my question, “Have you taken your meds today,” the woman’s demeanor shifted. She became a changeling child, soft and compliant, abandoning the persona of a tough biker gal or the faded movie star who survived on shots of vodka, cigarettes and pickup guys. A soft voice, not the look at me, tones of the braggadocio answered. Her eyes gentled. She was no longer on guard. Either another personality had emerged, or she suddenly felt safe, noticed and not avoided. No longer feeling the need to project so loudly that everyone in the gate could hear, she quietly replied, “No, but they’re way packed up in my suitcase. You don’t want me to open that, do you?”
None of her cases were very large. “Well, I heard, actually everyone had heard, that you have four hours before your flight to Detroit. That’s certainly enough time. You get out your meds and I’ll watch your things.”
Her hands fumbled with a zipper, and I could see the fake nails littered with gold polish, beneath them her real fingernails nod to the flesh. About ten prescription bottles all labeled with pharmaceutical instructions were on top of her belongings. She began to separate out the medications she needed to take today, and I hurried to get her a bottle of water.
Upon returning, I waited to make sure she swallowed the pills. “Someone meeting you in Detroit?” I’d inquired nonchalantly. “Sure,” she answered, gulping the hand-filled down all at once. “My mom.” “Well, then you really do want to be in good shape when she picks you up, don’t you?” The little girl lost, wearing very stress-up clothes nodded her head, stood from fussing with her suitcases, put her arms around me, gave me a big hug. The jangling earrings and her hair strands and the mind-corroding from thought to thought, all enfolding me. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
A wave of compassion pushed me to do more than hug her back. I held her. “That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?” I said patting her back. “Sure, we’re here for one another.”
She stuffed the last of the bottles back into her bag. By this time, the plane had landed, and my grandson disembarked with a stewardess eager for me to show my identification so she could offload him into my care. I was caught up finding my ID and signing the release papers and greeting this child and getting him something to eat while notifying my husband that he could begin circling at the arrival ramps outside.
When I turned to look around, my new friend had disappeared. “Helping that lady?” Nathaniel, my grandson growing taller and taller, asked, “Perhaps,” I answered, “Sometimes people just need a little help.”
But I wondered. Wondered why I felt such compassion for this stranger. A woman who had emptied the seats in the gate area. Yes, she did. Why had I moved close when almost everyone else had moved away? Why was I able to do this now when I would never have been able to do this just a few years before?
You see, I have met this lady before. She or her likeness has often inhabited the territory within me. At times I have been displaced. A woman in disarray, though never as openly so. We shared a simpatico. She and I, an understanding, a communal confusion, just hanging in there, just holding on for all it’s worth. We both know what it is for someone to take courage in hand and move close. Have you taken your meds today? Can I get you some water?
The question can be asked in a thousand ways. A friend and artist leaned gently toward me this month to inquire, “How are you a year and a half since your son died?” “How’s your shoulder after the rotator cuff operation” another friend inquired. Adding, “Are you keeping up with your home physical therapy exercises? You know, if you let that rotator cuff feel bad, it’ll throw your whole body out of sync.” “Let’s see your scar from the tracheotomy,” several doctors asked.
I served on the board of a worldwide health organization. “Good scar,” several of them pronounced. Another friend said to me today, “After we had stuffed 200 invitations for a fundraiser we’re planning, I’m holding you accountable to self-care.” My husband’s daily habitual question is always, “Is there anything I can do for you today?”
Care has been granted me from friends and family, but more, much, much more. Now a mercy has come to me from outside the normal range of my capabilities. I care, dear woman in disarray. I care that you think you have been the second best swimmer in the world. Something has radically altered in me. A deep identification with others has meandered my way. Notice that I’m ready and cozied in to stay. And it is welcome.
So welcome. I’m tired of the cautious, careful observer I have often been. An incident like this at Midway Airport, a marker in my life has shown me that I am becoming more than I knew. I bear in me a love for the world and for the people in it. A more monody has come to me as a gift. Indeed, I know, and I’m convinced. This is why we’re here. We’re here for one another.
Now I wanted people to just be filled in on care. You said to me probably a couple weeks ago, “I need help. I can’t write. I want you, David, to help me, but I’m not sure what help I need.” But you were too blockage. This doesn’t look like you don’t know how to write.
Karen: Yeah, I think it’s organizing all the things I’ve written that I haven’t published. There is a block in me that I’ve written a lot of things I’ve never sent out to publish. And I’ve been going through those files thinking, “Why haven’t I sent this out?” This is beautiful work. So that’s where I need help. I need people to pray that I’ll get over that hurt on. It’s probably one from the criticism I’ve had in the past that came my way. There were several people who mounted a diatribe. So, it could be some reaction to that. Not wanting to face any of that again.
David: Yeah, that was very painful.
Karen: And I need to find an agent. So, people who are listening to us, if they would pray that I would find an agent, you need to have an agent who takes your work.
David: Because you’re a good writer, doesn’t mean you’re necessarily…
Karen: Skills at that sort of stuff.
David: Yeah.
Karen: And I’m at the stage in my life where I know that I’m approaching the end of my life. While there’s an urgency, I used to always have people coming to me and asking for me to write certain things. Or do you have a book in the works? But I’m out of that publishing circuit. There are no Christian bookstores to speak of anymore.
David: And the world has shifted too.
Karen: So, the whole thing in Christian publishing is shifted. I probably will have to find a place to publish in the secular markets. If people are listening to us now, and we do have lovely feedback from our listeners, if you just put my name down, your prayer journal or your prayer reminder cards, I ask you to pray that those helps will come to me or I will be able to find them. And we can get this plethora of articles, and I have a couple of unfinished books.
David: This book, you’re probably, I would say…
Karen: That book is done. It needs to be organized some. It’s a book on listening.
David: When you say it’s done, the chapters are written.
Karen: They’re all written. I don’t need to do anything more to the book particularly. I don’t need to do any more writing.
David: I would say that when you came to me, you gave me this big pile of chapters. There is repetition in chapters.
Karen: And that’s what a good editor who steps into your life. I’ve worked with some really fine editors in the past. They catch all that stuff for you because when I read it, sometimes I can’t tell the material so familiar if this is a repeat or, you know, it’s just to the point where I need objectivity from that listening book project. And frankly, it’s pretty much all written. It just needs now for a fine editor to go through and rearrange the chapters and tell me what I haven’t made clear and so stuff like that. That’s just part of the writing process.
David: Can you say in just a very brief time what the thrust of this book is?
Karen: I think who you mentioned were read in that article on that short thing you just read.
David: That’s the prelude that you gave to me. I have led 240 listening groups, and the architecture of the listening group is just that. Three or four people gather and we go into silent prayer and then one begins to speak, etc. And they all get out of the book. But the neurological impact of being heard and of being understood was outlined to me by Dr. Roger Veeth, who is a neurosurgeon and a friend of ours. And he said, “Do you know what happens when people feel heard and understood?” And that was a whole journey into learning for me with him as a professional guide for me to comprehend what happened.
But these are the results in a person’s life that you’ve just read. When you have felt heard and understood as a human, safe and known, it does actually change the neural system in your brain. I mean, we have a place in our brain that is made to listen to others and then to be heard. God created us to be people who need to hear and understand and need to be heard and understood. This is actually a huge gift to Christian faith if we would begin to hear others.
Sometimes just listening to them, they’ll talk their way into articulating their spiritual need because it’s part of their lives. I feel empty. I feel like God doesn’t love me. He doesn’t answer my prayers. I can’t get to him. I don’t believe all that sort of stuff that comes up in those kinds of conversations.
And knowing that you’ve been listened to and understood, and I watched the results of that in these 240 groups, it inevitably happened. I had never had one person quit those groups. Can you imagine that?
David: That’s amazing. When you came to me and said, “I need help, I’m now trying to help you.”
Karen: Right.
David: Okay. So, we’ve just given a feel to people and part of me being able to help is rallying others to say, this is not something that’s been made up. You have a felt need. I don’t know that apart from the prayers of others, and at the same time, certain key people coming into your life.
Karen: For instance, someone listening may know of an agent. I’m working with one. He’s great or she’s great. I mean, all this sort of stuff happens when you have a listenership. Be kind. Could be four or five people. It could be several hundred people, such as listen to the podcast.
David: Yeah.
Karen: Thank you.
David: Okay. Well, I wanted to say now you’ve given me something that I need help with as well. Help me help my wife. That’s where we are.
Karen: He’s started the way. It’s kind of the human condition.
David: You’re being vulnerable.
Karen: Yes.
David: It was just great because you’re saying we’re aware that our days are numbered, but at the same time, it doesn’t mean we stop being servants of the Lord and doing what he wants us to do. And sometimes you can’t do it alone. You need others to come in.
Karen: And I do feel like I need to be responsible to God to get this work out there. I mean, we don’t just write it for ourselves.
David: No, it’s because loneliness is a huge, huge problem in the culture.
Karen: And David, I’d like to talk about that a little more in the next podcast, because I think this isn’t, it is huge dilemma in our culture. And this is something that the church can really make as an outreach. The church would take parishioners and challenge them to seek out and find those people who are lonely and invite them into your home, invite them to activities in the church.
David: You’re reminding me of another chapter, the loneliest man I’ve ever known. That’s the name of your chapter. I’ll read some of that next time we get together. Okay?
Karen: Okay, that’s great.
David: Yeah, because that’s somebody. I remember him. And I remember when I read what you wrote, I knew immediately who it was. And yeah, loneliest man I ever met. I’d say the same thing. Loneliest man I ever met.
Karen: Yeah, right. So, we’ll talk about him next time.
David: Okay, that’s fine. Thank you.
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