For Wilshire Baptist Church
In case you didn’t read the news, the birds chirping at each other from either side of the birdbath are having a two-way conversation. So are those dogs sending barks back and forth across the street. According to a new study published by scientists in Europe, elephants, frogs, birds, fireflies and many creatures large and small perform what is called “turn-taking” conversation – like what we do across the dinner table if we’re actually taking turns, if we’re actually listening to each other instead of checking our texts or looking at the ballgame on the video screen.
More interesting to me than the fact that birds and bees are doing it is that the gaps between turn taking are so small. For example, while sperm whales are considered slow talkers with up to two seconds between their turns at making clicking noises, some songbirds are more impatient and wait less than 50 milliseconds to reply to one another. But that’s nothing compared to we humans who typically pause a slim 200 milliseconds before responding.
I should be impressed with our ability to hear, understand and respond in a flash but I’m not because I don’t think we always do that. Maybe we’re that smart, maybe our brains are that developed, but I wonder: While the other person is talking are we really listening or are we working on our to-do list or jumping ahead to another topic? Or are we instead already working on our response? If we’re doing that, then we’re not paying attention and getting all the information and context, and that can be a game changer.
I know we do that with emails and social media. A week doesn’t go by that I don’t send a message to someone regarding a business matter or scheduling of some sort and I get a response that lets me know my message was skimmed and wasn’t fully read. Like when I set up an interview for an article and we go back and forth and finally lock down the day and time and then the person at the other end says, “Great. See you then.” And then I say, “Uh . . . but where?” It’s hard to have a face-to-face meeting when we don’t have a location. I’ve also shown up at these appointments and find that the other person thinks I’m there for an entirely different reason.
As for distracted conversation, I’m guilty for sure. Sometimes – very often, actually – LeAnn will tell me something and I say, “Could you repeat that last part?” It’s me acknowledging that my thoughts drifted for a moment. It’s good that I caught myself and asked for a rewind, right? But better yet if I would pay full attention all the way through. Part of that may be what I’ve self-diagnosed as “late-onset attention deficit disorder,” because I’ve found that I can’t concentrate on multiple things at once like I used to. And in a turn-taking conversation, I may need more than those 200 milliseconds to respond; I may be on more of a pace with the sperm whale – even slower perhaps.
Which is ironic because I’m also guilty of being impatient – pushing a conversation forward without giving the other person time to think. Thankfully, most people don’t respond to me like the black-capped chickadees and European starlings that practice “overlap avoidance.” According to the researchers: “If overlap occurs, individuals become silent or fly away, suggesting that overlapping may be treated, in this species, as a violation of socially accepted rules of turn-taking.”
We’re guilty of overlap with each other and we do this to God. We pray for something but don’t wait for God’s reply. We ask for a plan but get impatient and start working on our own plan. It’s not in the 10 Commandments but maybe there should be an 11th bullet point that says, “Thou shalt wait for further instructions.” I think it’s pretty rude to cut God off when God is working on something on our behalf. But then again, I’m guilty of being rude so who am I to talk.
There’s no denying that we are creatures who like to speak. In his sermon at Wilshire recently, Christian author and blogger Jonathan Merritt said, “Through speaking, God made us creatures who speak.”
Fine, but earlier in the service we read from the book of Samuel where the boy who would become a prophet was taught by his mentor Eli that he first must listen to God. Talking and listening are two sides of the same coin, but we tend to shortchange the listening part. Often it is in that gap known as listening where we learn what it is we need to talk about.