Something Exciting!

I wonder, with all this COVID-19 isolation, if you could help me with something exciting.

I’m beginning to write (or co-write) the book on listening that I’ve been gathering material to do for the last several years. My co-author will be Dr. Roger Vieth, a neurosurgeon who has been my brain-science coach and mentor. I love this collaboration.

What I need to find are comments, evaluations, input and ideas from those of you who have been in listening groups, either those offered through Hungry Souls or in other settings.

Read through the copy below, which is being sent to our most faithful financial backers. It explains why I’m so excited about having developed into a “listening specialist.” Comments can be sent to me via this email.

I’m about read out on the topic, fascinating as it all is. I don’t think I need to do any more research, but if you have a title that really has changed your thinking on the power of being heard and understood, please send it along to me as well.

At any rate, to save myself time and to not have to write both a Mainstay Ministries donor letter and a separate Hungry Souls Soulish Food, I’m including below my July 2020 letter to the friends of our ministry. It gives friends a handle on where I’m going with this listening project.

July 2020 Donor Letter

Well, good friends, do they?

Without any forethought and with little planning to speak of, I have become a listening specialist. Over the last seven years, I’ve conducted some 70 listening groups. Meeting once a month for seven months, most of the groups have been made up of three to four people. We generally meet for two to two-and-a-half hours.

What I call the “architecture” of the listening group is this:
1. We gather and chitchat just a bit.
2. We go into silent prayer.
3. The first person who shares, answers the question: “What’s going on?”
4. Then, we go into silent prayer again and the person who has shared says: “I’m ready for your questions.”
5. At this point the group responds with questions—AND ONLY QUESTIONS. The listeners (each of whom will eventually talk themselves) cannot respond with words of wisdom or with sympathetic wise counsel or by quoting Scripture or by saying, “Let me pray for you.”

We cannot do any of the above things in a listening group because most of the social interactions we employ to connect with others actually interrupt the deep listening process to such an extent that we rarely really feel heard and understood.

Consequently, we NEVER discover the healing power that God has planted in our brains designed to restore us from the impact of
(1) bad parenting in our past, (2) abuse in our lives, (3) the sins of others against us, or (4) the often-unspeakable trauma that many of us endure and survive.

Now allow me to make this clear: I did not say that I had become listening proficient. David, my husband, is a much better listener than I. But through all this listening, I have become listening efficient. I have witnessed the results of a carefully designed listening practice in the lives of literally hundreds of people.

AND in all our years of ministry,
I had never seen so much rapid growth,
so much healing and maturing as in the lives of those
who participated faithfully in the listening groups.

Consequently, I am convinced that one of the greatest powers on earth, God-created, is the gift that others can give to each other of feeling heard and understood.

At this point of my journey into becoming a listening specialist, Dr. Roger Vieth, a brain surgeon who has been a friend to us and to our ministry for many years, began to guide me from his vast experience in the field of neuroscience.

Dr. Vieth is now co-writing a book with me on this remarkable capacity,
tentatively titled Tell Me: I Want to Hear and Understand.

Here is part of the letter that Dr. Vieth wrote that began our collaboration:

“Daniel Siegel in his book The Developing Brain states that there is a genetically driven need to be understood located in the frontal lobe. This need is shown in the theory of attachment—that is the psychological connection first between child and caregivers that then becomes the basis for relationship with others for the rest of one’s life. If the attachment is secure, then our relationships will tend to be secure, and we will reach out. The part of the brain that negotiates this is the orbital frontal cortex. However, if the attachment is ambivalent, avoidant, or disorganized, this area of the brain—orbital frontal cortex—is atrophied. But with deep listening these pathological states can be resolved, and in time this orbital frontal cortex will ‘grow’ and return to normal size. These changes have actually been monitored on MRI testing.”

In the following months, I will be immersed in this project.
Of everything I have done in 59 years of marriage and ministry,
I suspect that this may be the most important.

So, I bid your prayers. Joel Mains, the filmmaker in the Mains family, pow-wowed with me about the possibilities of creating a video that would demonstrate the how-to’s of deep listening. A website is certainly under consideration. But the most important work to be done is finishing the book, Tell Me: I Want to Hear and Understand.


Listening intently to the God who always hears (and understands),
Karen Mains

P.S. The bibliography on the insert page [SOULISH FOOD readers: see the Book Corner] may give you additional references if you are fascinated and want to become a listening practitioner yourself.

Karen Mains

Reminder!

The Soulish Food e-mails are being posted biweekly on the Hungry Souls Web site. Newcomers can look that over and decide if they want to register on the Web site to receive the biweekly newsletter. You might want to recommend this to friends also. They can go to www.HungrySouls.org.

Hungry Souls Contact Information

ADDRESS: 29W377 Hawthorne Lane
West Chicago, IL 60185
PHONE: 630-293-4500
EMAIL: karen@hungrysouls.org

Karen Mains