Official Report 203KB pdf
The first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Leo Cushley, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh.
Thank you, Presiding Officer. First of all, many congratulations to you and to the members of the new Parliament. I am confident that all Scots wish you well, and we hope that your work will build up the fabric of our society and promote the common good among us all.
A long time ago, in a very different incarnation, I spent a lot of time going to meetings that required a lot of reading, a lot of speech making in public and a lot of taking important decisions and positions. Nearly 200 people in the room had the right to speak, which was fine, except that it meant that some speeches were being delivered after midnight.
Everyone had the right to speak, but not everyone was really being heard, not least because once people had made their own speeches, they started to drift home, especially as the evening wore on. That was not a failure of organisation or a failure of the right to speak, but when others went on and on, the right to speak meant that some speakers did not get the right to be heard.
I should add quickly that I am describing not any institution in the United Kingdom, but rather part of my experience while burning the midnight oil as a diplomat at the United Nations in New York. There was important work to be done and we all took it seriously, but the right to speak occasionally overcame the right to be heard. That was a pity and—dare I say it—a shame, too. When we were too busy talking about ourselves and our own bright ideas, we occasionally missed the other side of communication, and that is the listening bit.
There is an art to speaking well, especially in public, and all of you know that. We are here to try to convince others that we have something worth considering—something that we think could promote the common good. However, the corollary of that is that we also need to develop the art of listening. A friend of mine liked to say, “Best idea wins.” Of course, he said that because he was sure that he had the best ideas. Okay, the best idea wins, but we will not know what the best idea is if we are not listening as well as speaking.
In my own church, we have recently been trying to remedy that listening deficit. The remedy has various names, one of which is “synodality”. That need not detain you here, but it has become a reminder not to talk all the time and instead to find time to listen, and to do so consciously, actively, willingly and humbly. Good listening will go a long way towards finding what the best idea actually might be. It might be found in obvious places, but it might instead be found in an unexpected voice. Let the best idea win, and let us be listening out for it.