Chrysalis is about developing leadership in a spirit of servanthood. This sort of leadership requires a practiced ability to listen, as E. Glenn Hinson develops in his book, Spiritual Preparation for Christian Leadership, pp. 50-53:

On Listening
Douglas V. Steere, one of the leading Quakers of the twentieth century, was a mentor and teacher in the spiritual life for many. A Harvard Ph.D. and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, he spent much of his life in a quest to know God . . . .

In his classic On Listening to Another (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955), Douglas Steere has listed four qualities of a good listener. The first is vulnerability. Vulnerability comes from the Latin words meaning "capable of being wounded," "able to be hurt." Douglas reminds how much better the people with leprosy on the island of Molokai in Hawaii heard Father Damien that morning he began his sermon, "Brothers, we lepers." And, I should add, how much better Damien heard them after he contracted leprosy!

The second is acceptance. This does not mean, Douglas says, toleration born of indifference. Acceptance comes very close to what agape-love means in the New Testament. Agape is the kind of love that does not try to shape and mold the other person into its own mold. It accepts the other just as that person is.

The third is expectancy. Expectancy has to do with hopefulness. Douglas Steere was the kind of person who inspired hope in others. Many are those who would say that, until Alzheimer's disease impaired his faculties, they never met Douglas without feeling buoyed up and encouraged. In writing his biography I spent much time trying to discover the secret behind such experiences. I found two clues.

One is an optimism that pervaded his life. He could always see a ray of light penetrating every dark cloud. He looked at life from the bright side. Teilhard de Chardin possessed that same optimism grounded in a conviction that God, Divine Love, is at the very heart of things . . . . Yes. That is true. And I could go on to add, "We overcome sickness, we overcome grief, we overcome life by finding God in it."

The other is a sense of mission Douglas Steere had. It was something he learned from Martin Buber in a Quaker meeting at Haverford College in 1951. During the meeting, the remarkable Jewish philosopher said that the greatest thing one person could do for another was to confirm what was deepest in the other. That thought constantly recurred in Douglas's speech and writing, but more important, it pervaded his relationships with others. He wanted, above everything, to confirm what was deepest in other persons, arousing the hope that was in them.

The fourth is constancy. The Latin and Greek behind this word mean "to stand with" or "stay with" another. Douglas speaks of "Infinite patience." Really to listen to another, you have to exercise patience. You can't "ho hum" and start saying, "Oh, you mean . . . ," when you don't know what someone means but are saying, "If you will say something like this, we can get on with this and I can go on to something else." To listen is to "stay with" the other.

Listening is more than hearing words and distinguishing sounds. Seeing is more than looking at objects. Douglas Steere cited a story from John Woolman, the eighteenth-century Quaker saint. Following a Native American rebellion, Woolman undertook a dangerous trip to visit the Delaware Indians at Welialoosing on the Susquehanna River. Initially, he tried to communicate with their chief, Papunehang, through a Moravian missionary. When that seemed unsuccessful, he asked the interpreters to let him pray without translation. Before the meeting closed, he was told that Papunehang had said, "I love to feel where words come from." (1) The object is to get beyond words and thoughts. Communication has many levels, and you want to reach the deepest of them.

Within every exchange, moreover, there is more than the speaker and the hearer. There is also the Eternal Listener, Kierkegaard's Eternal Spectator. God is there. Douglas Steere cited Psalm 139, that wonderful poem about God's inescapable nearness. In the first seven verses the psalmist told how intimately God knows each person: "Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely" (v. 4). Then in verse 8, this one who wanted so desperately to escape God summed up his experience of God's unavoidable presentness: "If I ascend to heaven, you are there." That, of course, is where you expect God to be. But the other half, "if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there," that is what rolls over you.

Two things in that jump out at you. First, the psalmist said, "If I make my bed," not if I trip and fall in. You can't mess up your life so badly that God will not be there. Second, Sheol is by definition in Hebrew thought where God is not. But for our psalmist there is nowhere God is not.

If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,"
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you. (Ps. 139: 9-12)

What do you do with your listening and your seeing? Douglas Steere contends that, if you really listen, you may listen another person to a condition of awareness of the Eternal Listener's presence. And if you really listen, you may become aware of the Eternal Listener.

Excerpted with permission from Spiritual Preparation for Christian Leadership by E. Glenn Hinson. Copyright © 1999 by E. Glenn Hinson. Published by Upper Room Books. All rights reserved.

If you would like to learn more about Douglas Steere, read his classic book Dimensions of Prayer: Cultivating a Relationship with God.

NOTES
(1) John Woolman, The Journal of John Woolman (New York: Corinth Books, 1961), p. 151.