Cultivating Deep Listening. . . part one

Today Mark Humphrey is upstairs tuning the pianos.  I can't listen. . . . In this photo David Brown is playing a cluster of notes on the piano and asking students to identify how many and what notes he is playing. . . I made a recording of the piece the choir and I are working on and listened to it last night.  When I listened back,  it gave me some ideas of what I need to work on. . . A friend shared that her mother is struggling with a new crop of annoying health issues.  I tried to listen with my heart--while the kids hollered at each other in the back seat of the car. . .

There are so many different ways to listen.  I'm gonna start with the kind of listening I think is the most important: listening to each other.

Mrs. Sipe, Calvin's fourth grade teacher struck a chord with me one day after school.  I was asking her about him.  She said, as always, he has a lot to say in class.  Too much to say.  You might even call it motor mouthing. Then she added, but he deserves to be listened to .  We all deserve to be listened to.  I try.  I tell Calvin, it is all in the timing--right now I have grocery lists and bell choir and gymnastics schedules mixing in my head, I don't have the space to listen about the history of PC and Mac operating systems. . . but if I want to stay connected to this kid, I will come back later and listen, intently.

My grandma Hope was the best listener I have ever known.  She listened on the phone, sitting at the kitchen table, with a note pad to actually take notes on what you were saying.  (Heaven help you if you gossiped--it was there in print forever.)  Still, she listened deeply.   I'll never forget when I called to tell her my dad had cancer.  There was the longest pause on the phone where neither of us could speak, and then she finally said, it's been a hard week hasn't it.  She took the time to sit and listen. Over the years she listened to my mom and my sister and me, and all the family ups and downs, and she never shared a word of it--except to the note pad. . . God bless her.  I miss her.

I read an interview between Oprah and Thich Nhat Hanh in her magazine a while ago.  He suggested that the greatest gift we can give each other is the gift of listening deeply.  He says, "Darling, I'm here for you." Over and over and over.  

Most of the time I am so busy thinking about what I'm going to say next, that I'm not getting the full message.  It takes practice to just listen.  To listen deeply.  What a great thing to practice. What a great gift to give the people we love.