The Art of Listening
“If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.”
Faded, flowing morning light.
Invariable kyanite skies and hushed bird hymns.
Bouncing Ghanaian music in a hustling, weaving taxi.
The crunching of dirt beneath the springy, thick Jeep wheels carrying supplies and its squeaking halt.
Currents of communal prayers and psalms, resonated in a Ghanaian church, inescapably rising in dozens of dialects.
The peaceful tone of “Akwaaba, you are welcome”, with a touch from an elderly woman with deep-rooted eyes.
The soul-deep stare and gentle, absorbed breathing from a toddler with her almond eyes and dark obsidian hair, looking back at my unusually golden hazel eyes and rose copper hair.
The piercing ringing in my ears after shots being randomly fired during a village funeral for their paramount chief, as shell casings and smoke fall from the sky.
Women of every age collectively dancing and singing anthems to the pounding of the drums—to the upmost, Heavenly Chief who has safeguarded them all in all of their joy and grief.
A confident pose from a girl on our walk through a village. Photo by sweet Katie Greenough.
I am still working to listen. I’m still working to be present. I’m still learning to properly love across cultural boundaries and pour love back out. I’m walking confidently with hope, a future filled with possibility because of these sounds in Ghana being used as God’s instruments of love. I’m still being effortlessly filled here in Ghana. I’m still learning that all I have is what Christ has given me, and it’s more than enough. I’m still working to know that I am a foreigner—a small girl in a big world—to work with design that empowers local communities and including them to create their own messages. I’m still working to recognize and avoid solutions that patronize or assume our audiences are of a lower intelligence than we are, or solutions that prey on the vulnerable or take advantage of the audience or their weaknesses. And when you know how hard you listened and worked for something, it just makes success that much sweeter. And when you are grateful that you have these opportunities in the first place, somehow fear falls to the wayside.
Drumming at the funeral of the Paramount Chief Oseadeeyo Addo Dankwa III of Akuapem village, where I stayed for some time in January. Photo by bubbly McKinley Lewandowski.
As I flag down a small 15-seater van of mass public transit that we call a trotro, it’s no longer based on confusion and adventure-based fear. It squeals its way to the shoulder of the road, kicking up red harmattan dust and hazy dirt. I yell over a market crowd, pay a cedi, climb in, and a woman smiles at me in her kente peplum top, on her way to work. I’m finding more and more peace on the communal air of the trotros—our shoulders, thighs, and for a while our lives and worlds, touch. I relish the people whose worlds overlap with mine, if only for an instant.
I have grown to be exponentially more introverted in my moving to the African continent. Flashes of culture shock I don’t know how to describe because I can’t unearth the words. But while I’m exploring and taking the time to listen, I’m unfolding my jumbled thoughts and love whispers from Christ—they’re keeping me thrilled to wake up every morning.
I’m finding more responsibility in not being disheartened in the poverty here. Being encouraged that my calling of design will work here. Being encouraged in the aspects of Christianity that have been lost in the currents of Western Christianity. And if I fail and find discouragement to the point of shame—giving up and underestimating the gifts Christ has given me—He will take me back a thousand times again and sing me songs of grace and goodness until the morning comes, until the rain of comfort covers me. Being encouraged to stop my thoughts from being on the run and slow my mental breath. Being encouraged through the blinds of fear that can overwhelm and limit the progress of my journey, preventing me from learning the vitally important lessons that are anxiously waiting for me. Through listening, I’m realizing how small I am in the massive workings of the social order. The more I realize how minute I am, more mammoth Christ is, and how much I must listen, and listen, and listen.