“You invited them in?” I’d chuckled to my mother-in-law. Visiting from Brooklyn, I’d found her, teapot in hand, deep in conversation with proselytizing strangers who’d rung her Cincinnati doorbell. “That wouldn’t happen in New York City.”
“Why not?” she scolded. A devout Presbyterian, her table always had room for other faiths. “God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason.”
Her wisdom to listen twice as much as you speak has been top-of-mind lately. This year’s Lent — normally a gentle season of charity and reflection — was punctuated by disruption and conflict. The world’s trauma visited our tiny doorstep. As we approach Easter, looking back, so many folks were yelling that few could hear.
Lent came early in Brooklyn at Plymouth Church’s migrant coat drive. Scores of neighbors offered warmth to new arrivals. “Come quick, police are here,” cried teenage volunteers, as I ladled homemade soup. Migrant families waiting hours for gym doors to open had reported line-cutters, tussling in many tongues.
To their credit, NYPD officers hung back, de-escalating, advising volunteers, including students practicing Spanish, French and Arabic, about crowd control. “Careful, a baby,” cried a female officer. Jammed against the church’s edifice was a young mother, bare-legged, protecting a rickety stroller, drowned out by the fray. “Gracias,” she whispered as I pulled her inside for diapers and warm layers.
Another night, we shared stew with homeless guests at the shelter that rotates through neighborhood churches and synagogues. My husband and son slept over on cots. Brushing teeth before bed, a Bronx shiftworker lamented softly “some people forget New York’s working poor.”
In March, Lent was louder. Pro-Palestinian protesters thwarted Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s Brooklyn Heights Association keynote speech. Activists rose like clockwork to drown out her remarks. Neighbors who’d cordially introduced themselves, now hollered “shut up,” cursed and chanted “let her speak!”
Many in the crowd were sympathetic and sought dialogue. Gillibrand offered to shift topics from the BQE and infrastructure to hostages and ceasefire. She even volunteered a face-to-face. But no takers. She challenged: “you are not here to hear, you are here to speak.” Ultimately, the only winner was a heckler’s veto.
“Mom would have hated that,” said my husband afterwards, clanging leftovers into the microwave. “I know it’s life and death, but protesters had the ear of a U.S. senator. Instead, they just yelled.”
Later, at the Public Theater, during “The Ally,” Itamar Moses’ play about campus speech, there was commotion several rows ahead. Two elderly women, who nodded passionately during a rabbinical student’s powerful antisemitism speech, refused to listen to a Palestinian undergrad’s moving tale. They noisily departed the theater, shouting “Never forget Oct. 7!” “Was that part of the play?” the audience whispered. It wasn’t.
I considered these women as the remarkably balanced drama continued. In fiction, every point of view eventually had its say. Act I’s sweeping, elegant monologues gave way to Act II’s jagged, human dialogue.
Real life was harder. By curtain, the audience was exhausted, slumped, spent, from the exertion of listening.
“I wish those ladies had stayed,” I lamented on the subway leaving the theater. They’d have liked the ending. Spoiler: the professor, after visiting the campus rabbi — a Black woman — skips a loud, performative protest, choosing softer contemplation. Turns out, “The Ally” was thoughtful discourse.
Like my mother-in-law, this Lent, I tried empathy. Following her example, I opened my home each Friday for community dinners. There was much to talk about. Some guests shared hopelessness, aching for migrants in shelters and traumatized families in the Middle East. Others confessed a lost confidence in leaders. The world’s problems seemed too big for our table. Some found inspiration in tiny gestures, scripture and faith.
Remarkably, the more I listened, the less I had to say.
No teapot or stew will heal humanitarian crises that hurt us all. No coat drive will forever warm today’s cold world. Noisy theater grandmas are a far cry from silencing a senator. A disrupted neighborhood meeting is a laughable inconvenience to any community ravaged by death, hunger and war. A shelter night with a poor New Yorker has a short shelf-life. My community curry won’t save a soul. Diapers and sweatpants will be used up by summer.
But as we move through Easter, Ramadan and Passover, we can swap disruption for compassion and listening.
These long Lenten weeks reminded me that any prayer for resolution surely starts with God’s gift — whichever one you worship — of two ears and just one mouth.
Koster is a New York attorney and writer.