from Kitchen Table Wisdom

When we listen, we offer with our attention an opportunity for wholeness. Our listening creates sanctuary for the homeless parts within the other person. That which has been denied, unloved, devalued by themselves and others. That which is hidden.

In this culture the soul and the heart often go homeless.

Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.

Not long ago I was walking in the rain in the place where I was born, New York City, thinking of the green place where I now live, grateful for the ease which things grow there. Not all things have room to grow and fulfill themselves. The rain made me intensely aware of the hardness and grayness of this world of cement and brick and the awesome capacity of human beings to prevail over what is natural and bend it to their will. For miles and miles there seemed to be nothing living that could respond to the rain. But the important thing is that the rain comes. The possibility of growth is there even in the hardest of times. Listening is like the rain.

-Rachel Naomi Remen Kitchen Table Wisdom (pp220)