{"id":1947,"date":"2014-06-26T00:25:52","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T04:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sermonsfromthemound\/?p=1947"},"modified":"2015-02-19T16:06:43","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T21:06:43","slug":"listening-is-an-act-of-dilation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/sermonsfromthemound\/2014\/06\/listening-is-an-act-of-dilation\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening Is an Act of Dilation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This day is crushing me.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m overcaffeinated, hanging at the library while my son attends a class. My kids have been bickering for what seems like days on end and I am no Mary Poppins. My daughter\u2019s bored and keeps interrupting my work. \u00a0I doodle and draw random arrows shooting at the margins of the page.<\/p>\n

And this is random too but last night I went to the Madison Community Foundation dinner and heard Dan Rather give a keynote address on \u201cphilanthropy\u201d and \u201ccommunity\u201d and he mentioned the importance of being a good listener, in our communities and in the leaders we elect.<\/p>\n

Which was a little strange, because today I planned to say something in here about listening as creative act. How it\u2019s sacred, even, to listen fully to another being. How we\u2019re co-creative not just with our gods and gardens, but with each other.<\/p>\n

And how that gets lost too often here in the online world. It gets lost too often in general, because we\u2019re trained by our education system and our sports heroes to zero in on weakness, on flaw. We object, deny, challenge. Christine Hoff Kraemer recently wrote about \u00a0the harmfulness of negative comments<\/strong><\/a>, but even at our best, it seems dialogue becomes a sport.<\/p>\n

I suck at sports.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to cancel debate team but shouldn\u2019t there be other models of discourse too?<\/p>\n

I was going to write about how listening is at its best a form of compassion, and then I was going to bring in Milan Kundera\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> beautiful words on the subject: \u00a0how com-passion is \u201csuffering with,\u201d a radical empathy with another, much different from pity. He goes into this in The Unbearable Lightness of Being<\/em><\/strong><\/a>discussing Tomas\u2019s character. <\/em>Which used to be my almost favorite book in the world. Then I got a little older and realized that Immortality<\/em><\/strong><\/a>just may be better, even without Daniel Day Lewis and Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin.<\/p>\n

And anyway the book is missing from the shelf.<\/p>\n

I was going to write how, instead of Emerson\u2019s transparent eyeball, I try to stretch myself into a gigantic diaphanous tympanic membrane every morning, just barely quivering against the surfaces of the day, trembling at the slightest fricative. Because I tremble.<\/p>\n

Not that we shouldn\u2019t call out bigotry, blindspots, assumption, privilege when we hear it or see it, but we may be failing each other if that is all we do. We can hear each other to our best selves. I\u2019m convinced of this.<\/p>\n

Listening is a creative act. This I believe. It is the poet\u2019s first act, before pen ever touches paper. What I hear says a lot about who I am\u2014what you read when you read my poem or my paragraph here says a lot about you and not maybe so much about me. In a strange transformation I don\u2019t really understand, the poem becomes the mirror, the still pond. The poet becomes that non-paradox that is paradoxical only because our go go go yangsoaked extroverted culture doesn\u2019t recognize active and interactive receptivity<\/em>. In 1862, Emily Dickinson wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson \u201cMy Business is Circumference.\u201d I see my work as dilation, opening.<\/p>\n

If that sounds sexy, it\u2019s supposed to.<\/p>\n

As a mirror shows not just your face but whatever or whoever is behind you, over your shoulder, so active listening hears a comment and tries to suss out what is behind the words. Listening not so much for ulterior motive as for ghost. Mind, I\u2019m not saying I do it well.<\/p>\n

I was going to write all this, and it was going to be lyrical and pensive, persuasive and if I got lucky maybe even provocative. But\u2026it\u2019s summer. Humidity and heat, lawnmower drone. These days even the squirrels take some hours out just to hang, stretched out flat on a branch.<\/p>\n

Maybe they\u2019re listening too.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested in thinking and learning more about sacred listening, try The Listening Center<\/a>. I haven\u2019t taken any classes but I did listen to one of her lectures. Good stuff.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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