The Living to Listen Podcast

Some more wonderings on whatever love might be . . .

More on the work of loving by listening, committing to "being with" one another and ourselves in all our contradictions and complexities.

Who would you be and how would you be if you knew, beyond all doubt, that you are loved, exactly as you are? Not for what you've done, but for you. Your simple, inexplicable, mysterious, and miraculous presence here. Who would I be, if I lived this way? Who would we become if we saw each other this way, loved each other? This session is a wondering on love.

Love, the end. Love, the way. For God's sake, for mine and yours and all our sakes, give the love you've been given to give. And receive the love that has come for you.

More wonderings about love...

What is relationship? How is separation a critical part of living with anyone or anything? In this ramble, I dive into the etymology for guidance. 

A wondering on sincerity. Why does the prospect of being sincere threaten us? Why is it so rare? What even is it? What becomes unavailable without the audacious, open, and subversive willingness to trust and protect your sincerity?

"To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you." - Henri Nouwen

What are the consequences of believing in mastery? What if our mess were our greatest gift, our most potent teacher, our medicine? In a culture plagued by a mass conscription to the futile and needless enterprise of striving after an imagined and ever-elsewhere state of mastery, we each must name and claim our mess if we are ever to heal and become fully human together. 

The etymological meaning of the word "vulnerable" is "to be capable of being wounded." Is there ever a moment in which you are not capable of being wounded? As humans, vulnerability is not something we can choose to be. It's what we are. Paradoxically, it is only when we are finally willing to be what we are that we are set free from the prison of what we are not. We have been told that it is dangerous to be vulnerable. I'd ask you: What are the costs of pretending not to be?