Monday, August 11, 2014

The Lost Art of Listening



Sacred spaces are all around us; by journeying to Laos, experiencing the culture, and encountering the people, I have had the privilege of bearing witness. Being present. Listening is a confessional; expressing experience absolves the past. A knitting together of disparate strands into kindred spirits. Where irreconcilable differences are perceived, the great human themes of human existence emerge: thank you, I love you, I forgive you. Listening is a daily art, a social technology, unearthing the soul. Through my pilgrimage to Laos, I have discovered poetry in the margins. Listening is a practice, a discipline; it is a debt that we owe one another to lend your ear. Sometimes, listening takes place in the silences, in the spaces between the words. In the euphoria of walking along pavements laced with unknown smells and incomprehensible words, rhythm of our feet carry on their own conversation, if we will be still and bend our ear to one another and to the places our feet have borne us. (Inspired by the podcast On Being and novel Ten Things I've Learnt About Love)

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