“I found it shelter to speak to you” – Emily Dickenson
Today I simply want to share a passage that matters, a few questions, and one of my treasures from Anasazi. All of them center on the powerful gift of listening.
A few years ago, I ended up with a copy of a book called If You Want to Write. The giver of the small volume told me it would change my life. The author, Brenda Euland, a prolific essayist and beloved teacher of writing, believed that everyone was creative, original, and had something important to say. In an excerpt from one of her essays, she gives her take on listening:
“I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don’t listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all – and which is so important, too – those we don’t love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. Think how the friends that really listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius as though it did us good, like ultraviolet rays.
This is the reason: When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. You know how if a person laughs at your jokes you become funnier and funnier, and if he does not, every tiny little joke in you weakens up and dies. Well, that is the principle of it… when people are listened to, the creative waters flow. It makes people happy and free when they are listened to. And if you are a listener, it is the secret of having a good time in society (because everybody around you becomes lively and interesting), of comforting people, of doing them good.”
Now the questions: Who are you safe to speak your heart freely with? Who do you unfold and expand around? How can you create safety for others to do the same? How will they recognize it? How could safety or listening from you invite others in your life to walk forward?
Here’s one idea – one of my treasues, actually, for giving the gift of safety and listening: Ask for a sitting. On the trail at Anasazi, we have a glorious tradition of “sittings.”
During their first few hours on the trail, Young Walkers learn that at any time, they may ask for a sitting. In a sitting, a Young Walker and a TrailWalker sit quietly together, perhaps under the shade of a tree, or a patch of grass in early morning sun, or on a slab of rock near the river. The setting is quiet and each child knows that for the time of that sitting, he will have the undivided attention and true listening of a trusted guide and friend. In a sitting, we speak from our hearts and know that we will receive a listening of the heart. Since Anasazi, the words, “Can I sit with you?” will always warm my heart.
This listening with openness and a conscious choice to give the gift of safety may at first take effort or seem unusual, but there are those who will “find it shelter” to speak to us. There are those who will blossom because we listened. And there are hearts that will begin to heal simply because we asked, “Will you sit with me?” 