Listening with your heart

William Stafford: "Listening"

My father could hear a little animal step,
or a moth in the dark against the screen,
and every far sound called the listening out
into places where the rest of us had never been.

More spoke to him from the soft wild night
than came to our porch for us on the wind;
we would watch him look up and his face go keen
till the walls of the world flared, widened.

My father heard so much that we still stand
inviting the quiet by turning the face,
waiting for a time when something in the night
will touch us too from that other place.

“How do I listen?”

How do I listen to others? As if everyone were my Master speaking to me his cherished last words.”

Words of the great Sufi mystic Hafiz. How do we listen in such a way? Well maybe it begins by listening like the father in William Stafford’s poem above, to be like someone who can listen for what they can hear, far off in the night, “from that other place.” Such people hear so much that they make me want to listen as well. So often in life it has been the example of how others listen and really hear that has inspired me to listen. That said I don’t always listen to others as if everyone were my master, sadly sometimes I don’t listen, or I find it hard to listen.

I have noticed in the last few weeks that I have found it a challenge to listen to others. As a result I have not been as effective as I would hope to be in my work. This is hardly surprising. I am grieving and hurting and deeply concerned for my nearest and deepest. I know well the power that grief has on myself and others being. I have been reminded of this over the last year or so as I have shared deeply with others in the grief group I lead, “The colours of grief: Our shared experience of love and loss”. They have been some of the most treasured moments of my own ministry as we have shared together our own experiences of love and loss, holding one another, listening to each other and beginning to bring some healing. Through our shared experience of suffering we have helped bring healing to one another. Through this deep communion of coming together in love and loss we have experienced what Richard Rohr has described as “dear compassion” which as he has observed “is formed much more by shared pain than by shared pleasure.” In these deeply intimate moments I have heard the Divine Love speak as I have listened with others with my heart open, as we have listened with “the ears of our hearts”.

I found listening particularly difficult at last week’s Unitarian General Assembly Annual Meetings. It was interesting that I found it less difficult engaging in group participation work, but found it impossible to listen to talks and particularly debate in the important business meetings. I tried, but found I just couldn’t sit and listen. So I took the wise move of taking care of myself, spending time in loving company and actually sitting and talking with others in smaller more intimate groups. I heard some beautiful things and was involved in some deeply moving conversations. The Friday morning, the day I delivered “The Anniversary Sermon” was a wonderful example of this. After sharing breakfast with Sue we remained at our table as others left for the buisness meeting. We sat down at 8am after sharing worship and did not move again until noon. Wow! What a beautiful four hours as different people passed by and stopped and shared with us. It was deeply healing, interesting and moving. I laughed and cried and shared, I also heard some pretty eccentric views too. These were Unitarians after all. It was a beautiful morning. Sue enjoyed it too and although the morning had started badly with an unpleasant encounter she met some beautiful and friendly people, with open hearts, minds and souls.

I enjoyed deeply what I heard all morning, I said very little actually. I heard everyone as if they were the Divine speaking to me his cherished last words. I know that it helped to heal something in my heart, it opened my heart and helped me share the anniversary sermon with my heart wide open. It was deeply connective and healing. I listened with the ear of my heart, I let those words sink into my being and as a result began to speak the language of the heart. From what I was told later, this connected with those in the congregation deeply.

The next day my colleague Mark Hutchinson sent the following reflection on my address:

It went by the title “A Danny Meditation”

How many statues
Stare out into the ocean
Wishing only to be
Somewhere else
Not seeing
Or hearing
Or listening

Hold each other
Be held

Not even realising
As the powerful tide is rising
How all statues that wish this way
Are never walking
Or listening
Or talking
Just disappearing
Each and every day.

Hold each other
Be held
This is your domain.

This is a world of pain and joy
For every girl every boy
Everything around and in between
We cannot stop the pain
Nor stem the rising tide
But we can listen
There are things to be said and seen.

Hold each other
Be held
This is your domain
Awaken a new dominion

A man two loving sisters holds
This man is held by them
Not wishing for another place
Despite the seething pain
Just to hold
And to be held.

Hold each other
Be held
This is your domain
Awaken a new dominion
Do your job.

Trusting statues
Talking listening holding,
Stepping back from the tide
Have laughed, sung and cried
And not once tried
To be away
From this very necessary day

In trust and love
Hold each other
Be held
From your domain
Awaken a new dominion
Do your job
Let us hold
Let us be held
Let us all
Do our job.

Mark listened and absorbed every word and created something beautiful from it. It has certainly touched me deeply. He seemed to be listening with his heart and responding with his heart. To me this is what it means to truly live religiously. It is to listen and to live with “dear compassion.”

To truly live religiously is to live in communion with one another, it is to live in “dear compassion”, this is about inviting others truly into our lives and I have come to understand that is about truly listening to each other with our hearts, with the ears of our hearts.

Listening is about invitation. It is about inviting the other into our lives; it is about making space for the other. This is not always easy to do especially when engaging in conversation.

As I have shared many times before “Listen with the ear of your heart”, is one of my ministerial mantras. It comes from “The Rule of Benedict” a set of ancient principles for monastic orders. The foundation of the rule is listening, deep attentive listening. It begins, “listen carefully, my child, to the instructions...and attend to them with the ear of your heart “.

This is no easy task. It is so easy to get wrapped up in so many other things, particularly our own pain and troubles. That said in order to make space for the other we do need to learn to listen; to listen “with the ear of our hearts”.

Ernest Hemingway once said "When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."

How many of us can really say that we listen to one another? When we begin to converse do we take time to truly listen to what the other person is saying? Or are we merely waiting for our turn to make our point? When we engage with one another are we really attempting to make space for them or is it all about us? Is it about our need to be heard? Are we engaging with others in the hope that they will agree with us?

In “Forgotten Art of Deep Listening” Kay Lindahl asks us to:

“Think of the difference it would make if each of us felt really listened to when we spoke. Imagine the time it would save to be heard the first time around, instead of having to repeat ourselves over and over again. Envision a conversation in which each person is listened to with respect, even those whose views are different from ours. This is all possible in conversations of the heart, when we practice the sacred art of listening. It takes intention and commitment. We need to slow down to expand our awareness of the possibilities of deep listening. The simple act of listening to each other can transform all of our relationships. Indeed, it can transform the world, as we practice being the change we wish to see in the world.”

By listening we can begin to transform the world; by listening we begin to practise being the change we wish to see in the world.

Listening is about making space for the other, it is an invitation; an invitation to create true spiritual intimacy. Listening is one way to release ourselves from the treadmill of own ego centric little worlds. It can release us from hell.

Yes sometimes it is hard to listen, particularly when we are caught up in our own pain. It happens to all of us, it’s been happening to me of late. I thank God that I have not run and I have not tried to hide, I have simply let others share their time and space with me, to listen to me when I have been ready to speak my own pain and fear and love and truth.

I have lived faithfully, indeed I have lived religiously in intimate company with others. I have lived with others in “dear compassion”

To truly live religiously is to live in communion with one another, it is to live in “dear compassion”, it is about inviting others truly into our lives; it is about making space for the other. It’s about listening with our hearts, with the ears of hearts. It’s about living with others in “dear compassion”

Let us live in “dear compassion”.

A Second Anniversary Waltz

To mark the second anniversary of this blog I thought I'd post some words that have inspired me these last twelve months. I hope that touch your soul, the way they have touched mine.

The first is a short tale on the difficulty of silence...

Four monks decided to meditate silently without speaking for two weeks. By nightfall on the first day, the candle began to flicker and then went out. The first monk said, “Oh, no! The candle is out” The second monk said, “Aren’t we not suppose to talk?” The third monk said, “Why must you two break the silence?” The fourth monk laughed and said, “Ha! I’m the only one who didn’t speak.”

Here are some words by my hero Forrest Church on the courage to be who we are...

"No one needs to try to be unique. Nevertheless, being who we are remains a daily challenge. The three things required – self-acceptance, integrity, and the courage to be – don’t happen on their own.

Self-acceptance demands that we aspire to be, not disdain , who we are; it rejects disguise, knowing that it is neither helpful or necessary. Integrity is oneness – being in harmony with ourselves and neighbour. The courage to be is nothing more and nothing less than a fundamental affirmation of our own uniqueness conditioned by the limits imposed by life and death. Practiced together, self acceptance, integrity, and the courage to be lead to human freedom. In contrast, fear disguises reality, trades in duplicity, and rejects human limitations, thereby making freedom impossible..."

"The courage to be" Forrest Church

I've been thinking of these words by Wordsworth all year. My favourite "spot of time" occurs on the M62 as I travel back to Yorkshire it starts to happen as I pass the White Rose symbol and ascend towards "Stott Hall Farm" 

“There are in our existence spots of time,

That with distinct pre-eminence retain

A renovating virtue, whence–depressed

By false opinion and contentious thought,

Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,

In trivial occupations, and the round

Of ordinary intercourse–our minds

Are nourished and invisibly repaired;

A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,

That penetrates, enables us to mount,

When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.”

 William Wordsworth, The Prelude (Book XI, ls 258-278)

And here are some words on the importance of listening...

In “Forgotten Art of Deep Listening” Kay Lindahl asks us to:

“Think of the difference it would make if each of us felt really listened to when we spoke. Imagine the time it would save to be heard the first time around, instead of having to repeat ourselves over and over again. Envision a conversation in which each person is listened to with respect, even those whose views are different from ours. This is all possible in conversations of the heart, when we practice the sacred art of listening. It takes intention and commitment. We need to slow down to expand our awareness of the possibilities of deep listening. The simple act of listening to each other can transform all of our relationships. Indeed, it can transform the world, as we practice being the change we wish to see in the world.”

I recently came across the following story in Bill Darlison’s wonderful book “The Shortest Distance: 101 Stories from the World’s Spiritual Traditions”

It is simply called “Dandelions”...

A certain man took great pride in his new lawn. He mowed it regularly, watered it daily, and sprayed it with all kinds of substances to make it grow thicker and look greener. One day he woke up to find his precious lawn covered in dandelions! What could he do? He dashed into the shed, took out his lawnmower, and gave the grass a thorough mowing, cutting off the heads of all the dandelions in the process. “That should do it,” he thought, feeling very pleased with himself.

Gazing out of his window the next morning he discovered that the dandelions were back! Down he went to his garden, but this time, instead of mowing the lawn, he pulled out each dandelion by the roots. Surely that would be the end of it.

But he was wrong. In a few days, dandelions were there once again; their little golden heads were completely ruining his beautiful green lawn. He hurried off to the local garden centre and told one of the assistants about his problem. “What you need is some weed killer,” said the young man. “Take this”, he said, handing him a bottle.” It is the most powerful weed killer we have. Mix it with water, spray it on your lawn, and tomorrow all your dandelions will be gone.”

The man did as instructed and sure enough, the next day there were no dandelions in his lawn. Success!

But his joy was short lived. Within a week the dandelions were back. He returned to the garden centre. “What can I do about those wretched dandelions now? he asked the assistant. “I’ve tried mowing them, pulling them up by the roots, destroying them with weed killer, but they still keep coming back. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Yes,” replied the assistant. “I suggest you learn to love them!”

I first heard the following by colleague Rev Margaret Kirk at our General Assembly Anniversary service a few years ago...

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” by Rev Margaret Kirk

We see barriers erected between people of different lands,
We see sheets of steel and towers of concrete called Protection.
We see boundaries policed,
watch men, women and children running from hunger and persecution,
looking for a gap in the wall………

Something there is that doesn't love a wall…………

We see walls of fear –
Fear of the young, fear of the stranger,
Fear of sexuality that is different, fear of the educated, fear of the poor,
Fear of the Muslim, fear of the Jew –
Fear upon fear, endless and perpetuating,
And we offer our silent prayer that solid walls of fear will crumble to dust.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall…………

We hear the language of separation,
The jingoistic chant, the racial slur,
words of indifference and dismissal,
words arranged for the purpose of exclusion,
words that sting and taunt,
words that lie.
Let us find words that ring with love and truthfulness,
that reach out through the emptiness of separation.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall…………

We see the deluded barriers of the mind protecting self,
We see relationships stripped of affection
as one person becomes closed to another.
We see people trapped in misunderstanding,
old hurts re-ignited,
bricks placed higher on the wall,
goodwill and trust suspended.
and we ask for boundaries that are not impenetrable,
through which light can shine and distance be dissolved.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall………….

And when we need these boundaries for our own well being,
Let us know them for what they are,
Use them wisely and kindly,
Recognising our own vulnerability and that of others –
So each of us can find the space for retreat and succour,
find that peace that passes all understanding
and be renewed with strength and love
for the task of living life joyfully in communion with all others. 

The following is by that famous author anonymous...how many of us truly take time to pause...

There is a story told of a workaholic businessman who decided to take an African Safari. He plotted a course and determined a time-table. He hired workers from a local village to carry the various containers and cases. On the first morning, the entire party roused early, travelled very, very fast and went very, very far. On the second morning, they roused early, travelled very, very fast and went very, very far. On the third day, the same. On the fourth morning, the local tribesmen refused to move. The man gestured irately and fumed at the translator to get them going. “They will not move,” the translator relayed.

“Why not?” the man bellowed, thinking of all the time wasted and dollars spent. “Because,” the translator said, “they are waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies.”

Extract taken from Letters to my Son by Kent Nerburn

"I can measure my life by the moments when art transformed me—standing in front of Michelangelo’s Duomo pieta, listening to Dylan Thomas read his poetry, hearing Bach’s cello suites for the first time.

But not only there.

Sitting at a table in a smoky club listening to Muddy Waters and Little Walter talk back and forth to each other through their instruments; listening to a tiny Japanese girl play a violin sonata at a youth symphony concert; standing in a clapboard gift shop on the edge of Hudson Bay staring at a crudely carved Inuit image of a bear turning into a man.

It can happen anywhere, anytime. You do not have to be in some setting hallowed by greatness, or in the presence of an artist honored around the world. Art can work its magic any time you are in the presence of a work created by someone who has gone inside the act of creation to become what they are creating. When this takes place time stands still and if our hearts are open to the experience, our spirits soar and then our imaginations fly unfettered.

You need these moments if you are ever to have a life that is more than the sum of the daily moments of humdrum affairs.

If you can create these moments—if you are a painter or a poet or a musician or an actor—you carry within you a prize of great worth. If you cannot create them, you must learn to love one of the arts in a way that allows the power of another’s creation to come alive within you.

Once you love an art enough that you can be taken up in it, you are able to experience an echo of the great creative act that mysteriously has given life to us all.

It may be the closest any of us can get to God."

And here is a little more from Forrest Church...

“In every field of human inquiry, ignorance increases as knowledge grows. The Greek philosopher Socrates once said, “I am the most ignorant man in Athens.” He wasn’t indulging in false modesty. He was pointing out that others, knowing far less, had no idea how ignorant they were. Socrate’s ignorance, the knowledge of how much remained for him to learn, expanded in direct proportion to his learning. Of both belief and knowledge, the same is true for us. When reflecting on several years of contemplation on the origins of the cosmos, one cosmologist sighed, “It’s not only queerer than we imagined; it’s queerer than can be imagined.”

“Whether informed by religion or by science, our minds cannot unwrap life’s mystery. This is why, in offering evidence to corroborate religious truth, true believers may more honestly be accused of being too rational than too irrational. They are not alone. We all use our minds to figure out things that can’t be deciphered by anything as small as our minds. On the one hand, the attempt is a noble one. Trying to decode life’s mystery is what makes us human.

Balancing these two apparent contradictions. I base my own theology on contrasting principles: openness and humility. No ceiling limits the expansion of the human heart. Yet, humility teaches that when death visits, we will have attained only a flickering notion of what life and death are all about. The light we discover will be framed by darkness. But, when we ponder the nature of our shared mortality, meaning may begin to emerge. Not unlike when we leave a warm, brightly lit room, go outdoors, and contemplate a dark winter sky: one by one the stars come out.” 

Forrest Church

The following by May Sarton touch me deep in my soul. While our loved ones may no longer be physically with us, they reside with us permanently. There spirits live on in our souls, touching us and speaking through us...

All Souls by May Sarton

Did someone say that there would be an end,

An end, Oh, an end, to love and mourning?

Such voices speak when sleep and waking blend,

The cold bleak voices of the early morning

When all the birds are dumb in dark November -

Remember and forget, forget, remember.

After the false night, warm true voices, wake!

Voice of the dead that touches the cold living,

Through the pale sunlight once more gravely speak,

Tell me again, while the last leaves are falling:

"Dear child, what has been once so interwoven

Cannot be raveled, nor the gift ungiven."

Now the dead move through all of us still glowing,

Mother and child, lover and lover mated,

Are wound and bound together and enflowing.

What has been plaited cannot be unplaited -

Only the strands grow richer with each loss

And memory makes kings and queens of us.

Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.

When all the birds have flown to some real haven,

We who find shelter in the warmth within,

Listen, and feel now new-cherished, new-forgiven,

As the lost human voices speak through us and blend

Our complex love, our mourning without end. 

Another great hero of mine is Viktor Frankl. This is short extract from his essay on "Tragic Optimism" found towards the end of "Man's Search For Meaning"...

 “By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic "the self-transcendence of human existence." It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”

And finally another piece form that famous author anonymous. It talk of that most precious gift, time...

Imagine if you had a bank that credited your account each morning with £86,000 that carried over no balance from day to day...Allowed you to keep no cash in your account, and every evening cancelled whatever part of the amount you failed to use during the day, what would you do? Draw out every pound every day, of course, and use it to your advantage! Well, you have such a bank, and its name is TIME! Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it rules off as lost whatever of this you failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balances, it allows no overdrafts. Each day it opens a new account with you. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against tomorrow.

Listening: Making Space for the Other

A man approached Nasrudin and asked him, “how does one become wise?”. To which Nasrudin replied: “listen attentively to wise people when they speak. And when someone is listening to you, listening attentively to what you are saying!”

Ah Mulla Nasrudin, the wise fool. The “Holy Fool”. We can learn so much from listening; we can learn so much from really listening; we can learn so much from really listening not only to others, but to ourselves too.

Listening is about invitation. It is about inviting the other into our lives; it is about making space for the other. This is not always easy to do especially when engaging in conversation.

“Listen with the ear of your heart”, has become one of my mantras. It comes from “The Rule of Benedict” a set of ancient principles for monastic orders. The foundation of the rule is listening, deep attentive listening. It begins, “listen carefully, my child, to the instructions...and attend to them with the ear of your heart “.

This is no easy task. It is so easy to get wrapped up in so many other things. That said in order to make space for the other we do need to learn to listen; to listen “with the ear of our hearts”.

Ernest Hemingway once said "When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."

How many of us can really say that we listen to one another? When we begin to converse do we take time to truly listen to what the other person is saying? Or are we merely waiting for our turn to make our point? When we engage with one another are we really attempting to make space for them or is it all about us? Is it about our need to be heard? Are we engaging with others in the hope that they will agree with us?

In “Forgotten Art of Deep Listening” Kay Lindahl asks us to:

“Think of the difference it would make if each of us felt really listened to when we spoke. Imagine the time it would save to be heard the first time around, instead of having to repeat ourselves over and over again. Envision a conversation in which each person is listened to with respect, even those whose views are different from ours. This is all possible in conversations of the heart, when we practice the sacred art of listening. It takes intention and commitment. We need to slow down to expand our awareness of the possibilities of deep listening. The simple act of listening to each other can transform all of our relationships. Indeed, it can transform the world, as we practice being the change we wish to see in the world.”

By listening we can begin to transform the world; by listening we begin to practise being the change we wish to see in the world.

 There is an old Buddhist proverb that roughly translates as “when the pupil is ready the teacher will appear”. I can vouch for the truth in this statement. That said I can’t always vouch for another well known cliché “first impressions count”. Looking back at my life there have been times when first impressions really got in the way. My first impressions have proved to be way wide of the mark at times.

I often talk of this wise man I met in Oldham eight or nine years ago. Now when I first met him I did not like him at all. I certainly didn’t want to listen to what he had to say. I quickly built some barriers between us, barriers based purely on unfounded fear. I’m extremely grateful that those barriers came a tumbling down because I am pretty sure that if I hadn’t learnt to listen to what he had to say, I might not be here today. I am not understating things when I say that he saved my life.

Of the many things that he taught me one of the greatest was how to listen. This all began by practising and noticing when I wasn’t listening, especially when others were talking. He taught me to observe when my mind wandered off or to notice when I was listening how much of my time was spent on working out what “brilliant” response I was going to make, in an attempt to refute what the other person was saying. He taught me that when we are listening to another we are extending ourselves to that person, we are giving them a gift; a gift that we can both share in. In making space for the other, we create a sacred space, we make space for God and we get a taste of heaven.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said “There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening, we shall hear the right word”

When we listen to others and when we truly listen to ourselves when others speak, as the “Holy Fool” Nasruddin suggests, we may just uncover what the root of the things that are troubling ourselves are and even better what the solution to these troubles might be. As that wise man in Oldham taught me we can uncover what the problem is, we can discover its root cause and we can cut it out and discard it and move on with our lives. We can remove the barriers that are blocking us from living the lives we would like to lead.

He taught me that when we listen to another we truly give of ourselves. Whereas when we only appear to be listening and are in fact judging or comparing ourselves to them we are in actual fact judging ourselves. He taught me that if we learn to listen to others, without judgement, we can begin to learn to accept them for who they truly are. By doing so we are learning to love them; by doing so we give them the dignity to be themselves; by doing so we dignify ourselves. We create a sacred space in that relationship between one another.

Now of course not all the great sages come from Oldham. Those of ancient times taught similar lessons to this ordinary man. That said I am not sure that I could have accessed what they taught eight or nine years ago. It required simple language from an   ordinary man. He spoke the language of the heart and I was prepared to listen. I learnt a valuable lesson that day; I learnt that the language of the heart is universal, it can break down any barrier.

Karen Armstrong has highlighted that human dialogue has tended “...to be aggressive, a tradition we inherited from the ancient Greeks.” If we look at our world today we tend to debate competitively whether we are public figures or just talking in the playground, the pub or through social media. Often when we are engaging in conversation we are trying to trip one another up, or prove one another wrong. How many of us can truly say that we are truly listening to one another?

Since ancient times the great sages have offered solutions to this competitive and aggressive way of communicating, but I’m not sure they have ever won out.

As Armstrong has highlighted:

“The Socratic dialogue was a spiritual exercise designed to produce a profound psychological change in the participants - and because its purpose was that everybody should understand the depth of his ignorance, there was no way that anybody could win.” The key as Plato highlighted “...is to ‘make place for the other’ in his mind and to listen intently and sympathetically to the ideas of his partners in dialogue...” Can you imagine this happening during Prime Minister’s Question Time?

Other great sages such as the Buddha and Confucius conducted discussions in a similar manner. Confucius always developed his ideas in conversation. He did this because he felt that in order for anyone to achieve ‘maturity’ required this kind of friendly interaction. The Buddha taught his monks to converse kindly and courteously with one another. His lay disciple King Pasenadi of Kosla observed the contrast between his Royal Courts and the Buddha’s communities. In the courts everybody seemed to be looking out for themselves and were always quarrelsome. Where as he observed the monks were “...living together as uncontentiously as milk with water and looking at one another with kind eyes...smiling, courteous, sincerely happy...their minds remaining as gentle as wild dear.” They were showing reverence to one another.

Listening is about making space for the other, it is an invitation; an invitation to create true spiritual intimacy. Listening is one way to release ourselves from the treadmill of own ego centric little worlds. It can release us from hell.

Listening is a loving practise and as such it requires discipline, it requires spirit and it requires devotion. It begins by being aware, mindful, of when we do not listen and re-committing to listening once again. It is one step towards living more empathically, more compassionately with one another. This is a lifetime’s project. As Karen Armstrong herself says “...the attempt to become a compassionate human being is a lifelong project. It is not achieved in an hour or a day - or even in twelve steps. It is a struggle that will last until our dying hour.”

It begins with us listening, by us attempting to be the change we want to see in the world. We can turn away from judgement toward empathy and understanding, we can truly invite the other into our lives.

Here is a link to a "Talking Head" reflection I recently recorded based on these ideas