The Art of Conversation
Rev. Dr. Linda Hart
July 27, 2025

Readings

Excerpt from A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer
	We all need other people to invite, amplify, and help us discern our inner teacher’s voice for at least three reasons:
The journey toward inner truth is too taxing to be made solo: lacking support, the solitary traveler soon becomes weary or fearful and is likely to quit the road.
The path is too deeply hidden to be traveled without company: finding our way involves clues that are subtle and sometimes misleading, requiring the kind of discernment that can happen only in dialogue.
The destination is too daunting to be achieved alone: we need community to find the courage to venture into the alien lands to which the inner teacher may call us.	

Excerpt from "Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics,
Religion, Hope" by David Tracy

	When human beings converse, they may converse, of course, about themselves.  They may exchange their narratives, expose their hopes, desires and fears.  They may both reveal and conceal who they think they are, and who they think the other may be – the other now becomes the conversation partner . . .
Conversation is a game with some hard rules:  say only what you mean; say it as accurately as you can; listen to and respect what the other says, however different or other; be willing to correct or defend your opinions if challenged by the conversation partner; be willing to argue if necessary, to confront if demanded, to endure necessary conflict, to change your mind if the evidence suggests it. . . [These] good rules . . . are merely variations of the transcendental imperatives elegantly articulated by Bernard Lonergan:  “Be attentive, be intelligent, be responsible, be loving, and, if necessary, change.”

Sermon “The Art of Conversation”

	When was the last time you had a really good conversation?  Not that chat you have while sipping a cup of coffee after service, or the one where you and a family member are working out details for how you’ll tend the chores around the house, but one where you were able to dive into something that was close to your heart, something that moved you, something that opened you up in unexpected and meaningful ways?
	I have a pretty high standard for those meaningful conversations.  Ralph Waldo Emerson is responsible at least in part.  In seminary I read his Divinity School Address as do most all students for ministry.  Emerson, if you don’t know, was a Unitarian minister, and he was invited to offer an address, obviously, at Harvard Divinity School, the school where he and all other Unitarian ministers did their training. A brief aside: there’s a description in there it strikes fear into the hearts of all of us who step into the preaching life as he recounts attending a church on a snowy Sunday morning.  And he reports: “A snow-storm was falling around us. The snow-storm was real, the preacher merely spectral.”  That’s the single line that every UU colleague of mine can quote.  He only lasted a short while serving a congregation and went on to have a career as an essayist and lecturer, and an author, and it was probably just as well.
	There’s another line from that same essay that has stuck with me for the 40 some years since I read it that is relevant to the topic today.  It’s this:  
	We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had with souls that made our souls wiser, that spoke what we thought, that told us what we knew, that gave us leave to be what we inly are.
	So, let me ask again: when was the last time you had a really good conversation, one that opened vistas for you, one that allowed you to discover something or remember something of yourself, some time when in conversation with another that you discovered who you inly are?  
	As an extrovert and in the work that I have done over a few decades, I often find myself in those sorts of conversations in all sorts of settings.  
	Also, as an extrovert and that means when I process things I have to do it “out there.”  That is, I have to talk until I figure out what it is I think.  I gather that there are people who do that within.  I find it a bit mystifying and know that those of you out there who are more introverted find us a little perplexing.  In fact one friend of mine went to a conference for the Meyers Briggs system of personality assessment.  That’s the thing we did before we did the enneagram to get conscious about how we process information and relate to each other.  
	In the Meyers-Briggs, you’re either an introvert or an extrovert.  At one point in the conference, the people with an I designation were invited to identify a question that they wanted to ask the other type.  According to my friend, the burning question the introverts wanted to ask the extroverts is when they should start listening.  I’ll note that when this friend – a romantic partner – told me that our relationship was over I said, “OK, let’s talk about this....” and he reiterated that he was finished.  And I tried again, to start a conversation in which we would process it.  But he had finished processing it.  I finally really understood how that worked.
	Recognizing that we all process differently and find insight in a variety of ways, I still think that Parker Palmer is right when he says “We all need other people to invite, amplify, and help us discern our inner teacher’s voice...”  I do think he’s right: to find, and hear our inner voice, to uncover wisdom, to deepen into our hearts we need one another.  Yes, even introverts.  
	The journey of discovery and exploration of our inner life is one where we are well served by having companions.  
	We all need other people to invite, amplify, and help us discern our inner teacher’s voice for at least three reasons:
– The journey toward inner truth is too taxing to be made solo: lacking support, the solitary traveler soon becomes weary or fearful and is likely to quit the road.
– The path is too deeply hidden to be traveled without company: 
– Finding our way involves clues that are subtle and sometimes misleading, requiring the kind of discernment that can happen only in dialogue.  
– The destination is too daunting to be achieved alone: we need community to find the courage to venture into the alien lands to which the inner teacher may call us.
– We need companionship on our journeys to grow and learn.  
	It takes disciplined listening.  We often talk about deep listening, being as fully and honestly present as we can be.  Disciplined listening is ask us to listen deeply, to seek to understand, to relinquish the urge to formulate your response and be fully present, to ask questions, to empathize.  Look for underlying needs, motivations, and perspectives that may not be explicitly stated. 
	I suspect it is this kind of conversation that can create that experience that Emerson suggested: “We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had with souls that made our souls wiser, that spoke what we thought, that told us what we knew, that gave us leave to be what we inly are.”
	Here’s what I love most about this new to me idea of disciplined listening: the recognition of the gift that we receive when we listen with openness and attention.  And there are at least three kinds of gifts that come to us: 
•	of comfort – perhaps a recognition that you’re not alone in a sorrow or discomfort, not alone in an experience of joy that is deeply intertwined with loss;
•	of challenge – a different perspective or interpretation of a common experience, an idea that requires that you reconsider how you’ve thought about it;
•	or of memory – when you are taken back to a moment in your life, experience a resonance, something so familiar because you’ve been there, too.  
	On this last one, I’ll note that there’s an informal rule that we preachers not mention dogs in our sermons because a large percentage of the gathered community will be immediately transported: “I had a dog once.  She was a good dog....”
	Company and conversation are essential to leading a life of meaning and purpose, at least that’s how it seems to me.  We need each other to discover the truths that inspire and comfort us, we need one another to, in Nelle Morton’s words “hear one another to speech,” to discover those truths that we inly know.  
	And, it strikes me in these days that continuing to hone our conversational skills has become more necessary as the our communities polarize more and more.  How do we continue to be in dialog with people who are so vastly different than we are?  
	I travel in reliably liberal circles, and that includes my family, and so don’t often find myself in conversations with folks who hold more conservative views than I do.  But when it happens, I strive to hold to what David Tracy suggests:
say only what you mean; say it as accurately as you can; listen to and respect what the other says, however different or other; be willing to correct or defend your opinions if challenged by the conversation partner; be willing to argue if necessary, to confront if demanded, to endure necessary conflict, to change your mind if the evidence suggests it. . .
	And the words of  Bernard Lonergan are essential:  “Be attentive, be intelligent, be responsible, be loving, and, if necessary, change.”  
	I know with certainty that we have gone through times that have felt this perilous, times when disagreements created deep divisions.  My mother’s parents, both raised in Georgia in the early years of the last century couldn’t neither understand nor tolerate that their two adult daughters were civil rights activists, and while love abided with us, they fled the Washington DC suburbs for a small town in the Georgia where they weren’t required to watch the world that made sense to them – that world where everyone knew their place among their own people –  disappear.
	We won’t be one big happy family as we find our way through these frightening and difficult times, but in conversation with one another, saying what we mean, hearing what others have to say, seeking to understand and be understood will stand us in good stead as we find our way.