By Lara Schopp, Director of Communications
Andrew Forsthoefel had just graduated from college when he decided to walk across the country. He had no goal – he wasn’t raising money or awareness. He was walking to listen.
He literally carried a sign that read “Walking to Listen,” and along his journey he found that indeed, people along the way had stories to share. He became sort of a mobile one-man talk therapy session, and as people talked, and he listened, he found what he called the “extraordinary in ordinary folks.”
Drawn to him, mile after mile, strangers fed and clothed him, celebrating his trek and sharing the stories of their lives.
One day, deep in the desert near a Najavo reservation, he met another young man walking, and asked his story. It was the young man’s first day in the desert but he seemed determined. “You’ll think I’m delusional,” the man said, “but there’s this Hopi prophesy, about the coming of a Messsiah, a white man to lead the people and well, I think it’s me.”
Indeed Andrew thought he was crazy, but they continued walking together, until the young man revealed deeper, crazier layers of delusion, and suddenly Andrew realized he did not have the bottomless well of patience and compassion he thought he did, and decided to walk on alone.
Later, though, Andrew ran into the young man again. Now sunburned and looking totally dejected, the young man shared more of his sad life story. “And I realized that the feeling that he was something great, that was the thing I was walking to listen for,” said Andrew. “That’s what people were giving me as I walked.” Andrew realized that somehow this young man had slipped through the cracks; he had no community. He was alone, delusional in the desert.
The art of communication requires a sender, a message and a receiver. It’s a two-way interaction that involves talking and sometimes more importantly, listening. If you’ve heard Carla’s Vision of Ministry presentation, you know that listening is imperative in this ministry we share: the church staff listening to our congregation; pastors listening to individuals who are hurting; all of us listening to each other when we’re feeling lost and alone, when we have something to celebrate. Those listening moments bring us into each others’ stories; help us share our humanity.
Or, as Andrew Forsthoefel puts it: “I realized that the burden and privilege of listening to people in this way had to be shared among all of us… and until it was, there would continue to be people alone in the desert. It had to be all of us. It has to be all of us.”
More on Andrew’s adventures here.
