Listening is an act of love
10-02-2023
As more faith leaders look to engage with their communities in new ways, listening well becomes an important asset for strengthening relationships with those they serve. At this year’s McCormick Day, Dr. Dominica McBride, will share what it means to listen for the collective yearnings of a community and its role in helping communities create the reality they desire and deserve.
Growing up in a small town in Michigan, Dr. Dominica McBride experienced both the cohesiveness and hospitality of her community as well as its rejection and racism. Some experiences caused her to cry, and others produced a desire to be part of a cure. Today, as a community psychologist, Dr. McBride helps communities that are affected by injustice to create the reality they want to see.
“Often our focus is on the individual as the entity,” says Dr. McBride, the founder of BECOME, an organization that works at the intersection of relationship, research, and restoration. “It’s also important to look at the community as an entity in and of itself…communities are interdependent systems.”
Part of understanding that interdependency is realizing how each of us affects the reality of others. “We’re not just individuals; we’re not totally separate,” she explains. “What you do affects my reality and vice versa. Just realizing that and stepping more intentionally into that understanding can allow us to get to an underlying oneness.” As communities acknowledge the constellation of strengths that come from their interdependencies, the people, the organizations, and the agencies that shape their community, she adds, “they can start to work together, enhance each other’s strengths, and compensate for each other’s gaps. That’s how we can start to bring to our physical reality what had only been a desire.”
One of the ways Dr. McBride has found to better understand these interdependencies is by “going into the community, walking around, talking to people to see what they are feeling, what are they experiencing, and what is happening because they live in that space,” she says.
While the efforts of organizations such as BECOME are multifaceted and include research, evaluation, needs and asset assessment, strategic planning, coalition building and other capabilities, listening, observing, and trying to understand what is happening in a community are critical first steps that any community leader or organization can use to start to bring about the transformation it wants to achieve.
“Listening to the multiple voices in a community helps to see the connections…what the communal desires are,” she says. “Listening is about paying attention to the collective passions…noticing the collective momentum…what the community dreams for itself. We listen for that and then think about how the work we do can support the collective dream. That kind of listening is a process of love because it supports, uplifts, and helps a community manifest what it has long desired. Listening becomes an act of love and in the process people can experience the justice and goodness of God.”
Dr. Dominica McBride