From The Spirit of Home Visitation
Another item of the legionary code – dealing chiefly with the visitation of praesidia by their curiae – prescribes that the visitors be sparing with words of criticism; that they must earn the right to say one word of criticism by speaking at least ten words of appreciation. In this matter of talking in the homes I would venture to go even further and to say that we should buy our right to utter one word by listening to fifty of them – perhaps more.
If you show yourself willing to listen in the right way, people will eagerly avail of that chance. They want to talk and to be listened to. If you find a person who seems to exhibit the opposite characteristic, be sure he is abnormal in some way. Because people cannot secure interested listeners, they retreat inside themselves. This means unnatural frustration. They can become hardened and this may produce disastrous results in their characters. In certain of our works we have had demonstration of this. Persons who were absolutely reckless, seeming to have no anchor in life, just plunging wildly into waywardness of every kind, finally fell under the influence of a legionary who offered what they recognised as friendship, who listened patiently to them and tried to enter into their point of view. Almost at once they changed. The hardness melted and the frenzy abated. That true interest was the anchor which the poor ship needed.
If people do not talk to you – worse still if they are prevented from talking by the running tide of your words – how can you know them? A current American character is credited with the following phrase: “You ain’t learnin’ nothin’ when you’re talkin’.” If you do not know people, how can you hope to influence them except in a surface way? There is not the liking and mutual respect on which alone solid building can be done. Absolutely everybody desires that interest. Down inside himself everyone craves for affection. Everybody is inwardly soft and idealistic, no matter how case-hardened they may be, no matter how inhumanly they talk. I have in my time known many tough people – the toughest that could be got – and on innumerable occasions I have had the experience of seeing that crust collapse, and the hidden softness and idealism gush forth. So believe always in that possibility and cater for it. We have been hearing of the young man of 20 on whom one of our legionary priests was lavishing great kindness. He asked the boy to tell him his history, whereupon he broke into tears and said: ” This is the first time in my life that anybody has wanted to know anything about me.” Very dreadful – if one thinks it out and reflects that the Christian characteristic is supposed to be that very interest
