Embedded Files
“Listen like you might learn something”:
That sounds like our Partnership!
This spring’s student commencement speech at Harvard got a lot of press attention. The speaker, Noah Eckstein, comes from a family made up of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. He encouraged his classmates to “go against the grain of our culture” and “listen to others like you might learn something… like you might be wrong.”
My immediate thought was: That sounds like our grant; that is what our congregational partners have been doing!
Eckstein said that reflecting on conversations in his family, especially conversations involving his grandparents, makes him hopeful that we can change the way we engage one another in our often-toxic culture. Here’s part of what he said:
One of my grandfathers was a Pakistani Muslim who grew up in the middle of the Indopakistani war of 1947; the other was a Jewish refugee of the Holocaust. They met many times over the course of their lives. They disagreed on a great many things. And yet, one of the main memories I have of them growing up was seeing them sitting together at a coffee table, discussing everything under the sun. Of course, there are many differences that they never resolved. But they acknowledged each other. They cared for each other. They stayed in contact. Their vast disparity in life experience, viewpoints, ideology, faith, and beliefs were points of contention, yes, but not a point of division.
And yet, somewhere in between their generation and ours, something in the conversation shifted. The debates got louder. The noise got louder. The listening stopped. It all got harder. People speaking without listening. People arguing, having already decided their own allegiances. People debating not to listen, understand, or to learn, but to win, to humiliate, to be right. Somewhere along the way, the person sitting across the table stopped being a person and became an obstacle.
(See: https://etcjournal.com/2026/06/02/transcript-of-noah-ecksteins-may-2026-harvard-commencement-address/ )
“The listening stopped.” In our partnership, we are twenty-six Christian congregations—diverse in denomination, language, race, and culture—and the listening has not stopped. Listening is what our partnership is for.
Having experienced that our listening to one another has only increased, we recently renamed our grant work from being an “Initiative….” to being a “Partnership for Contemplative Discipleship.” We at St. Kate’s came to realize that we don’t have any particular discipleship program or plan for our congregations. How could we? When they listened to each other, they learned from each other and came up with plans and programs we couldn’t have imagined in our wildest hopes. The grant’s role is to keep offering openings to listen: to the Spirit in ourselves, within our congregations, and among us all.
For example, about a dozen congregants from seven or eight different congregations participated in a once-a-month pilot “inter-congregational discipleship support and discernment” program this spring. After four months of listening to each other, member after member said they had begun the experience overwhelmed by the ICE-anti-immigration occupation of winter 2026. They said being with each other opened their hearts to the reality of racism that is the context in which we live. They wanted to respond, and the group gave them courage to do so. They asked for the group to keep meeting so they can discern how to move further out into the world here and now. Group members listened each other into clarity and courage.
Or, another example: white suburban Lutheran pastor and spiritual director Karen Wight Hoogheem (from Maple Grove, MN) met Black spiritual director and practice leader Dr. Janet Johnson (from Wayman AME Church in Minneapolis) when a change in plans brought them together as co-leaders of contemplative practice leaders in both their congregations. Congregants from the large suburban Lutheran congregation and from the urban congregation began talking with each other about the “heresy of the white Jesus.”
Or, yet again: pastoral ministers Christine Sorensen and Carmen Marin had worked alongside each other for years at Risen Savior Catholic Church in Burnsville, alongside each other but largely with separate groups in the congregation, Carmen largely with the Spanish speakers and Chris largely with the English speakers. For the past two years they have consciously tried to help build bridges between the two groups. In fall 2025, the congregation held its first-ever bi-lingual women’s retreat: women spoke and listened across languages to share their faith stories. This spring the congregation decided to continue on in the grant partnership, hoping for more bridging.
Really listening to one another leads us to follow Jesus further out into a world that is large and scary, but also our one shared world. This is what happens when we “listen like we might learn something.” I think Noah Eckstein’s grandparents would be proud of what has been happening among us!
As we are about to start a new practice year, I am anxious to see, to be a part of what comes next from our listening. Thank you again for our shared work; it is a privilege for us at St. Kate’s to be in this with you. May the listening within, between, and among us continue. As it does, the Spirit of Jesus will surely do new things among us, in and for God’s world.
Posted 7.15.26
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