David: Why don’t we take turns and we can flip to see who goes first? How long has it been since you heard those words? They bring back memories of childhood. But they’re not how we decided that last week I would read a chapter from the book I’m working on in this visit. It would be Karen’s turn. What actually happened was that Karen said she could use the extra time getting ready. So it would be my privilege to be in the leadoff spot. Anyway, it’s now a week later, which means it’s her turn and I’m looking forward to hearing what she’s been working on at that writing desk.

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 working on a book is a lonely process and you’ve been working on two of them.

Karen: It’s the same time. How crazy can you get? Nutsy.

David: So what are you going to share with us?

Karen: Well, I’m going to talk about a chapter I’ve been working on in the book on listening. And so I’m going back and forth between titles. Of course, that’s always a problem. But I think it’s landing with Tell Me I Want To Hear And I Want To Understand is a title. Tell me. We have a friend who’s a neurosurgeon. His name is Dr. Roger V. And they had come up to Chicago. He and his wife, we love it when they come to visit. We spend time with them.

David: He’s from Chattanooga.

Karen: And so somewhere in this process of gathering my thoughts on listening, he said, “Do you know that when a person feels heard and understood, this actually changes the brain.” I can’t use his neurological language. But for me, it was like the brain does a little happy dance in that sense. This neurological surge in the entire body.

David: It’s a funny picture. I feel listened to.

Karen: I feel listened to. I feel heard and I feel understood. But the more I began to work on it, the more I began to see that there was a lot of literature. And this has come out because we have studies now that can study the brain. Actually, before we had MRIs or means to observe the brain as it was functioning. We didn’t know what was happening with it. So that’s been a really interesting journey for me. And I’ve got all kinds of things I’ve written on this that I’m trying to pull into a cohesive whole in a book called Tell Me, I Want To Hear, I Want To Understand.

David: That’s a good title. I’m not sure you’ve used that before.

Karen: Yeah, it’s one I’ve been working on. So there’s one thing I want to explain. And then the thing I want to focus on today is called listening autobiography. But before I do that, this whole learning experience began out of what I call listening groups. I’m trying to go back and figure out why I even started them. And I’m not sure I have much of a record, but over a period of 10 years in my life, I led, gee, is it 250 listening groups? It was 250 listening groups.

David: That’s consistent with what I’ve heard you say.

Karen: Yeah, and there were all kinds of listening groups because we were sort of experimenting with what happened when you felt heard and understood. I wanted to see it for myself. But the classic form of a listening group that I led for 10 years was three to four people who would gather together once a week if they wanted or twice a month.

David: It wasn’t once a week.

Karen: It was when I started. In fact, I had five groups that were meeting and I loaded them into one per week. We went on like that for a while and that’s exhausting. People can do that if they want to. It’s three or four people. This is what a listening group is. Three or four people who come together and they spend a couple hours, two hours, maybe two and a half. And we begin in silence and we go into silent prayer and we stay there for a while. And then I’ve sort of the guarding of the what we call the architecture or the form of the listening group.

And then at a certain point in time after we’ve been silenced, I feel like we’re calmed and put the busy day behind us or whatever it is. Then I’ll say who wants to go first? And then one person will speak maybe for 15 minutes depending on what’s going on in their life, maybe 20, and they’ll share just what it is that’s happening in their life. And the rest of us listen. We don’t interrupt. We don’t ask questions. We don’t say, you know, sometimes it’ll be painful things. Someone will begin to cry. We don’t rush to them and pat them or hold them or pray for them or give them a little sermon.

Not that those things are bad, but in the list.

David: Can you give them a Klennex?

Karen: We’ll pass the box. The box is on the table because it’s very needed because that interrupts their thinking process. They’re telling process.

David: Okay. Now these are people who know each other?

Karen: No, none of them knew each other. I sent out a notice through my little part of our ministry called Hungry Souls and saying, we’re not really sure what we’re doing here, but we want to start listening groups where you come help us. And people respond to that because they realize they’re going to be part of a process, a learning process.

David: So they’re just people who have said that sounds fascinating to me or helpful to me, whatever.

Karen: Well, I think they have a need for it somehow. So we do the first person and then we go into silence again. And then once we’ve come out of silence, I call them out of silence. The only way that the people in the listening group can respond to the one who’s shared is by asking questions.

That’s the hardest part of this for people. It’s really hard for them to know how to ask those questions in these listening groups. So I will say to them, “Alright, you’re listening on three levels. You’re listening to a prompt that comes from you as far as a question that’s often from the Holy Spirit. You’re listening to what that person says and their answers. And then you’re listening to how you’re reacting. How are you reacting to what they’re saying to the questioner that’s been asked of them by other members of the group?” So we spend some time with that. And then we go back into silence again. We’re quieted. We’re thinking maybe of what’s been said by this person. And then I will say to them, “Alright, now who’s ready to share?” And we’ll do that whole scenario until we’ve done all three out of four people in the group. So most people have 20 minutes to share and then they have 10 or 15 minutes where they’re responding to questions.

David: Is this intimidating?

Karen: It’s not intimidating. In fact, I had a friend who was a trained psychological counselor and I said, “Would you just come and be a member? Don’t be an expert sitting there. But come and go through this with us for two or three months.” And she debriefed the first meeting and she said, “Do you know how soon those people went into safety with each other?” Now this is group of strangers and I not having been trained the way she was trained had never thought, “Well, they’re feeling safe with one another.” I said, “No, tell me about that.” She said, “They were in safety with one another in that first meeting.”

David: That’s really fascinating.

Karen: So something about the architecture of this makes people feel safe. And I haven’t had any inappropriate personality that I had to ask to leave or correct their behavior, which, you know, David, over 10 years, that’s just very unusual. So the architecture of the listening group that we’ve designed sort of prohibits the kinds of things that can happen in small groups.

David: Are there shy people who talk for two minutes?

Karen: Yeah, well, they’re always shy people, but they all have something to say when they’re given a chance to tell who they are.

David: Interesting.

Karen: So I haven’t had anyone who’d say talk for two minutes and then not think of anything. They wouldn’t be in a listening group if they couldn’t do that. But I think the formula of the group encourages people who are less verbal to go ahead and share. So it’s been an extraordinary journey. Okay, the thing I want to talk about today, and I had to explain that background, is creating a listening autobiography, because this is one of the exercises I’ve developed that developed out of the small group listening experience.

David: And is this like the main theme of the book you’re working on?

Karen: No, it’s a chapter. So, in the listening autobiography, I asked people to go back through their life from the time when they were little child, grade school years, summer camp, junior high years, you know, if they went to college or the older teens, the young adult years, until their present time. And then just sit with a paper and pencil and say, who was there in my life who listened to me at those stages?

David: It’s impossible for me to…

Karen: You can’t remember before third grade.

David: No, I’m processing all of this, and it’s impossible to not want to do that. But nothing comes to my mind. Somebody who listened. So that’s not a common thing. You know, I try to do that with grandchildren.

Karen: To listen to them.

David: And it’s hard work, you know, because they don’t have long thoughts, and they tend to be silly.

Karen: Well, this is an extraordinary tool, and I would recommend it to any of the listeners that we have now. You don’t need a format for this. I mean, you don’t need a book to tell you how to do it, or, you know.

David: So you’re just writing down, and remember, these are people who listened to me, or this was a time I felt like somebody really listened to me.

Karen: Who are the people in your life who listened to you? Okay? So they do that, and then…

David: Give me an example of somebody who listened to you.

Karen: Well, I’ll tell you about that in a little bit. Okay. So, because for years I didn’t do my own listening autobiography. It was an idea I tested in the groups, or gave the group to work with. And they take it home, and they work on it. Ten minutes maybe, or maybe a morning or an hour. It doesn’t matter. And then they would come back and report on what they had learned. When they reported, that’s when I began to get the idea that there were a lot of people who didn’t have folk who listened to them, and the one or two people in their lives were remarkable.

So then I began to ask this question. This probably came out of my conversations with Dr. V. Choose one of those people, or the only one that you can remember. How do you feel now when you think back on that one person who listened to you? Describe how you’re feeling right now.

David: Probably feel like the happy dance again.

Karen: The happy dance again, David. As they thought back on that person who had listened to them, and I’d see, well tell me who the person is, and they’d name who it was. It was often a high school teacher, or a Sunday school teacher, you know, grandmother. Then they’d describe their feelings, and there was the, you’re exactly right, the happy dance again, or neurological response, or whole body leaned into it. They would use words like, “I feel warm. I have this warm, flush. I feel loved. I feel like someone’s put a flannel blanket around me and wrapped it around me. And I’m safe.” I mean, don’t you think that’s just, it was just remarkable, just remarkable to me.

So, in the listening autobiography, then I, after years of conducting this with everyone else, I need to take my own listening autobiography. I wrote down, I’m doing it very diligently and like that little, when I was a child, when I was in grade school, and I’ll go through it. David, there was not a stage in my life, I’m almost teary about it right now knowing that many people are never listened to, or rarely listened to, when I didn’t have full attention of everyone I was around. You know, I mean, they didn’t give me full attention all the time, but I was listened to as a young child. I was listened to as a grade schooler. I was listened to by my parents and my grandparents and my parents’ friends. And you know, you just name it. This is a lady who has been listened to.

David: You’re very fortunate.

Karen: Well, what the Lord did.

David: Married a good man who listened to you.

Karen: I did, and you do listen to me. If I, once I get your attention, you do listen to me.

David: You just had to grab my head and look in the eye.

Karen: Yeah, both cheeks with my hands. “Are you paying attention to me?” But the Lord said to me, “Karen, to whom much is given, much is required.”

David: Okay, so now I’m getting the motivation behind the book you’re working on.

Karen: Yes. So, my calling at this stage in my life is to get this book written. Tell me. I’ve done a lot of listening groups. Like I said, there have been hundreds of listening groups, maybe 200, two people here, groups on the retreats we took overseas. We’d have a listening session.

But I am, before the Lord, called then because I had been gifted with so much listening, and because I know that so many people are not listened to because of this process I’ve just described, to do something so that they feel heard and they feel understood, and to teach people how to do this for one another.

David: You’re speaking with great emotion now. Do you understand that?

Karen: I feel it strongly. Yeah. That’s what my calling is.

David: So, there’s a driven sense in getting that book.

Karen: It’s a feeling of love and care. You know, I want to get this out so we get listening groups started all over. Because a listening group is easy for me to lead, I assume that it would be for everyone to lead. But there is some training that needs to go on for the listening group leaders.

David: Are you relating this at all to the church? Because the church is not a listening organism. It’s more a telling organism.

Karen: It’s a telling or preaching or telling you what to do organization for the most part. And the most powerful thing it can do is begin to set up this listening process. I’ve often said with non-believers, if you just begin to ask them questions about their experience with faith, and you often will say to someone who is violently or adamantly a non-believer, “Did you have some experience in the past with the church that was toxic?” And there it is, right there. They did. So they had a relative who was a spiritual haranguer. So I do think this is a great gift that can be given to the local church.

David: Has anyone written on this that you’re aware of?

Karen: Oh, I’m sure there are. Dr. V gave me a whole shelf of books that I need to listen. But perhaps not as succinctly as a book on listening groups, or maybe not. I haven’t found anything yet. It would be nice if there were, because just one book out there doesn’t get it across. There are some that come in the psychological arenas. I started this because there was a book I did read written by a Catholic nun on growth groups, but she insisted that you had to have a trained spiritual director. Well, how many of those do we have running around? Not a lot. And my instinct was that the ordinary, average, intelligent person could be trained to be a listening group leader, and that the listening group, once you understood the organization of it, was not hard to maintain. But I do think there is some training that needs to go on with leaders.

But I do think it’s minimal. You don’t need to be qualified with a course that goes on for months to learn how to do this. And that was my goal, that it would be something that the ordinary, average, average person could do.

David: Are you going to read from what you’re writing?

Karen: Not really. Let me give you why I’m writing it, though.

David: Okay, then I don’t have to worry time-wise.

Karen: Are we up to time? Okay, this is from Roger V. It’s the scientist. It’s a magazine.

David: And Roger is the…

Karen: He’s the neuroscientist, the brain surgeon. He’s my friend. He’s sort of coached me in this. According to European Union statistics, when Theresa May was the Prime Minister of England, she realized there were high, high incidences of loneliness in the English culture, and she actually established only a woman, I think, would do this, a cabinet place for a Minister Of Loneliness. We need that here. We do. More than 7% of residents in the European Union say they meet up with friends or relatives less than once a year. Surveys in the UK, meanwhile, show that half a million people over the age of 60 usually spend every day alone. Now, what the social scientists are discovering is that this causes mental disability.

We’ve seen a really growing body of evidence, says one of the researchers, that’s showing how isolation and loneliness are linked in with incidences of different types of disease, and they can tell you what those diseases are, and premature mortality or early death.

David: So, this means even more so during a time of COVID.

Karen: We are going to have raging problems when this is over. We have raging problems now. The diseases include poor physical health, including obesity and cardiovascular problems. A range of possible effects on the human brain have now been documented. Social isolation is associated with increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia. Alzheimer’s also. As well as mental health consequences such as depression and anxiety. Whereas social species is one of the researchers who’s from the University of Chicago. She says we really need others to survive. I’m saying that God has made us to be a social species, and part of the calling and work of the churches to heal this loneliness culture, and we’re going to do that through connecting with one another and one of the most natural ways to connect. Human to human is through this listening group process.

David: How do I help facilitate this book getting done?

Karen: Well, you keep bugging me, so that’s always great.

David: You don’t always like it.

Karen: I do not like it. It’s very close. It’s just a matter of, you know, three or four or five hours every day for probably a month. And I think I would have this thing written. I find that I’ve been writing pieces of this for maybe 10 or 12 years without knowing that I was writing it for this book. But they fit in the book. After a Sunday I wrote something on listening to the dying. Just in response to who I wish I had done more questioning of Jeremy as he was in that cancer scenario of “How do you feel if this leads to death and what are your thoughts about that?” Of course you’re going to have those thoughts. But I was hesitant to go that way. But that’s what people who are in that scenario need. They need someone to hear and understand. So there’s a chapter on that. You know, just every time I turn around there’s another one that can be adapted to this book. So it’s probably almost already written. I just have to find those pieces and massage them and make sure they are coherent. And that’s my work for the days ahead.

David: Okay. How do people listening to you be supportive in their prayers?

Karen: Well, I need prayers because I do think this is a godly work. And when we have godly work there’s always ungodly resistance to a thousand reasons why you can’t get to the works. I would appreciate their prayers. One of the things I’m looking for are stories about people who listen to you. I mean, if they would do their listening autobiography or think about in the past, who is that listener? Who is the listener who heard you and asked questions in a way so that you felt that you were heard and listened to and understood. Tell me those stories. You know, write a little story. I have beautiful little pieces that have come through for my listening groups and my, I have memoir classes that I teach in those memoir classes. But I need more. And particularly for men because a lot of these listening groups are women who’ve been a part of the hungry soul ministry.

It’s been great, but I could use some pieces of that from men. So the question it would be this, who were the people in your life? Who was someone who listened to you? What kind of a difference did it make for you? So those, if they could be sent in to us or emailed to us, that would be fabulous.

David: The conversation is just sparking all kinds of responses. And I quit listening to you about 20 minutes ago because I’m working on my…

Karen: Your autobiography.

David: My listening autobiography. Well, could you repeat what you just said? The list?

Karen: You had a band teacher who made all the difference in your life because he believed in you. I don’t know how much he listened to you, but that’s also very powerful. Someone who sees some kid who doesn’t know how gifted they are, who speaks into their life and says, “You know, you could be much more than you realize you could be.” So it’s a little bit different than what I’m looking for, but you have had that. And I think as you go back and do a listening autobiography, you may find more. And you certainly married a woman who listens to you.

So that may be one of the great gifts that God gave you in our marriage was that I am someone who’s interested in you, believe in you, and want you to tell me what you’re thinking. So that would be one I can name for you right there. I don’t want to take undue credit, but…

David: I give you a vast amount of credit. You’re wonderful that way. And I needed you. I needed you. It was marvelous. And you still do. You’re a very good listener.

Karen: Well, thank you.

David: Okay. I’m back into the conversation. I didn’t really drop out. I promise I didn’t.

Karen: Well, I hope everyone started to think about who was that listened to them, because that’s what I’m looking for.

David: Would you make a promise to me? Would you promise to read a part of the book sometime?

Karen: Sure. I’ll be happy to.

David: Okay. I will hold you to that promise. It’s fun, isn’t it, to be able to do these podcasts. It’s a gift from the Lord during these times. And we’re grateful. Grateful for you as well, sweetheart.

Karen: Thank you.

Outgo: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go Podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address: hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all lowercase letters. hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2021 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.