Being Heard Is So Close to Being Loved

When I am teaching Nonviolent/Compassionate Communication (NVC), I often share something I first saw on the Urban Confessional/Free Listening website:

Being heard is so close to being loved that most of us can't tell the difference.

During the last month I've been doing NVC work with middle schoolers. Whew! I had forgotten what middle school energy was like- I loved being with them and also was worn out by all that pre-teen and young teen energy. Each grade had a distinct feel, but what they had in common with people of any other age that I teach is that they want, like you, like me, to be heard, seen, known, and accepted. Some of them named people who really listen to them- friends, teachers, parents, grandparents. Some of them named people who they really wish would listen to them with more understanding than they currently experience- parents, teachers, siblings.

Being heard is so close to being loved that most of us can't tell the difference.

Listening to them and seeing what they wrote in their reflections made me all the more committed to practicing and teaching NVC. I want everyone to have tools and skills to listen open-heartedly, both to themselves and beyond themselves. I say "beyond themselves" intentionally, because I believe the practice of listening is one that we can, and I hope do, extend beyond humanity. What would our world be like if we people listened more to birds, spiders, flowers, trees, water, rocks?

Would Sparrow feel our love? How might Daffodil respond to our attention? What does Raindrop want us to know?

How would listening to all of Creation shape the way we listen to ourselves and other people?

What do my tense shoulders want me to know? What is underneath that person's disparaging remark? What are the words that other person holds inside, both wanting to share and afraid of what might happen if they do?

How would listening more deeply to ourselves and other people shape our actions?

Being heard is so close to being loved that most of us can't tell the difference.

What do you want to be heard? Who do you want to hear it?

Who listens to you in a way that you know you are heard? Do you listen to yourself with that level of care?

Who do you wish would listen to you and really hear you?

I'd love to know your answers or any of your reflections on these questions.

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Listening to my own heart's longing, listening to feedback from folks who've taken previous classes (thank you!), I am currently working on revising and updating my classes and programming. I'm also getting back into the studio to play and create.

What I can tell you already is that I am excited to offer several in-person classes during the summer that are already open for registration, including Nonviolent/Compassionate Communication classes and Seeking the Shalom of the City. Other offerings... and another bit of exciting news that it's not quite time to share... are still in process. I can't wait to tell you more when it is time!

Blessings,
Cory

Do Not Try to Save the Whole World

Today maybe even as you read this, men (I am assuming the crew is made up of men) are cutting down the large maple tree in my front yard. My house was built in 1900. I suspect the tree took root before or around the time that the house was built. Over the last several years I've been watching it slowly die, limbs falling from it on clear, windless days, other limbs remaining barren through spring and summer. It was time to take it down. I waited as long as I could. I am only slightly comforted by the fact that every person who gave me an estimate told me that taking it down was the right thing to do.

A few months ago the massive tree directly across the street was also cut down. I still feel its absence. I wonder how long I will feel the absence of my tree.

Earlier this year a neighbor had a few extra spiles to tap maple trees so for the first and only time, I tapped my tree, collecting gallons of sap. Yesterday I finished boiling it down to syrup. It is sweet and delicious. In a very literal way my tree is now a part of me.

When the syrup was finished, I took a small amount of it back out to my maple and poured it at the tree's base. I rubbed a perfume of frankincense and myrrh into the bark. I don't have anything to give my tree but gratitude and reverence. I wish I could warn the squirrels that live in it that their home is about to be gone. They'll know soon enough. I hope they can quickly find a new home.

As I mourn the loss of my tree and think about the soon-to-be-homeless squirrels, I also mourn what is happening in the Ukraine. I mourn the collective uncertainty of the people leaving their home and country with no idea when or if they'll ever be back. I mourn for the people who are fighting, who have already lost their lives and those who will in the coming days. I mourn that as masses of people are trying to leave the Ukraine, Black and Brown people, foreign nationals, are facing discrimination and harsh treatment. I mourn that racism seeps through western news coverage in multiple ways, including what news actually gets covered.

There is so much to mourn.

There is so much work to do.

Recognizing this, we may feel so overwhelmed that we shut down, unable to do anything, convinced that we can't make a difference. Recognizing this, we may stir ourselves into a frantic pace, trying to do aaaaalllll the work, convinced that the world's well-being depends on what we do.

The world's well-being does depend on what we do.

AND

The world's well-being does not depend solely on one person's actions. Moving at a frantic pace when we're not fleeing for our lives does not serve us well. It only exhausts us. It is not sustainable.

The world's well-being depends both on what we do and don't do. It depends both on how we fill our time and space and how we clear and empty our time and space.

If you are teetering between overwhelm and franticness, perhaps uncertain about what to do or where your place is, I offer this poem by Martha Postlethwaite:

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worthy of rescue.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even as I mourn that so much of the interbeing of our world is in need of rescue, I also feel joyful that right now the song that is my life seems to have fallen into my hands. I cannot save the whole world, but I can give myself in the ways I know how. Writing is one way I know to give. Offering classes and programs is another. I am excited to be starting Seeking the Shalom of the City next Monday, March 7 and to be working with Onyxe Antara to offer Expand and Activate Your Vision on March 19! Perhaps the most unique part of my song is creating Heart Portraits and Sketches. All of these are heart work.

Today is my 49th birthday. As I begin this square number year with both mourning and gratitude, my hope for me and for you is that we find our songs, that we keep singing them, and that we give ourselves to this world in the ways we know how.

Blessings,
Cory

Holding the Complexity, the Humanity, the Whole

All week I’ve been thinking about Craig Greenberg, Quintez Brown, Annette Karem, and a friend of mine. These four and more are bound now by events of last Monday morning when Brown allegedly went into Greenberg’s mayoral campaign office here in Louisville and shot at him and his team members. Thankfully, no one was physically injured.

I don’t know Greenberg and I wish him no harm. I can’t imagine how scary it was for him and his team members to be shot at. I met Brown a few years ago when he spoke at a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event. I was impressed at the time by his strength, clarity, and leadership. I was shocked when he was the one arrested for the shooting. He pled not guilty at his arraignment. The friend I mention had a studio next to Greenberg’s campaign office and was there Monday morning when the shooting happened. He was, as you might imagine, quite shaken by the events. Karem, who I also know personally and really like, was the judge for Brown’s arraignment Tuesday morning.

I’ve heard and read a number of thoughts and opinions about the shooting Monday, the arraignment Tuesday, and the release of Brown from jail Wednesday. I’ve seen reactions ranging from care and concern to anger and vitriol directed in multiple directions. Knowing several people who had very different experiences of the event, I am reminded of the complexity of our human interconnection. My own work right now feels very clear: keep my eyes, ears, mind, and heart wide open. Wide open. Wide Open. Especially my heart.  

When I teach Nonviolent Communication, I often say, “The primary goal is connection. The primary tool is curiosity.” In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown writes, “Choosing to be curious is choosing to be vulnerable because it requires us to surrender to uncertainty. We have to ask questions, admit to not knowing, risk being told that we shouldn’t be asking, and, sometimes, make discoveries that lead to discomfort.” Right now I choose curiosity and the possibility of discomfort. I also want to claim wonder, because wonder feels more heart-centered to me than curiosity. I choose them both.

After days of wanting to write but not quite being able to, I’m finally going to try to type out some words.  

Mostly questions.

I’ll admit here that I think I have answers to some of the questions. I imagine that some of you may answer differently than I. If that’s the case, I want to stay curious, to keep my heart wide open to you, regardless of your answers. Even if the only tangible connection between us is that you are reading what I’ve written, we are interconnected. Ultimately, our well-being is tied together.   

Others questions I offer with genuine curiosity and wonder. I want to keep my mind and heart wide open to whatever expected and unexpected answers may come. I hope that I will continue to turn to curiosity and wonder even about my own assumptions, beliefs, and current answers.

And so, I wonder…

Is it possible that we don’t know all the intricate details that led up to last Monday’s events?

Is it possible that we don’t know all the intricate details of Monday’s events?

Is it possible that we don’t know all the intricate details of what is happening with Brown after his release?

Is it possible that he is receiving mental health care that wouldn’t be available to him in jail?

Is it possible to open our hearts to the possibility both that Craig Greenberg, his campaign team, and their friends and family are hurting and in need of care and healing AND that Quintez Brown and his family and friends are hurting and in need of care and healing?

Is it possible for someone who’s primary concern is Greenberg to be open to the idea that someone else’s primary concern is Brown and that’s OK?

Is it possible for someone who’s primary concern is Brown to be open to the idea that someone else’s primary concern is Greenberg and that’s OK?

Is it possible that people are complex and that the same person can do things that heal and things that harm?  

Is it possible to refrain from labeling such a person as “good” or “bad” based on whether we witnessed more of their healing or harming actions?

Is it possible to notice the labels that we and others use that may oversimplify and narrow the boundaries of understanding?

Is it possible that systems we live in are complex and that they are serving some people much better than others?  

Is it possible that the effects of systemic harm over generations is rippling through these events?

Is it possible that accountability is not only about responsibility but may also include restoration and healing?

Is it possible to open our hearts to the possibility that the judge, the lawyers, and everyone involved is doing the best they can, even if we really, really, want(ed) them to do differently?

Is it possible to imagine that if we were in their shoes we might take the same actions, even if we find the actions problematic from the shoes we’re currently standing in?  

Is it possible to keep our hearts wide open to the possibility that a multiplicity of seemingly contradictory perspectives may all hold truths?

 Is it possible to keep our hearts wide open to the complexity, the nuance, the discomfort, the messiness of this human life?

I am sure there are more questions to ask.

Miki Kashtan often talks about the work of caring for the whole. This doesn’t mean a person takes responsibility for everything and everyone. That’s not a one-person job. Caring for the whole does mean taking into account the well-being of more than just whoever or whatever we are tending to as we make decisions. It means considering how our actions will affect our interconnected web here, now, everywhere and in the future.

I deeply long for all of us to have both the desire and the capacity to care in this expansive way.    

For a whole slew of reasons, we don’t all have the desire.

For a whole slew of reasons, we don’t all have the capacity.

But some of us do.

Currently I have both desire and some capacity to give. I wonder who else is willing and able to try to hold the complexity and the humanity of all parties involved and affected by last Monday’s events.  

I wonder who else is willing and able to do the experimental work of trying to hold the whole.

My prayer is that those of us with the desire to care for the whole find each other and that we harness our collective capacity, wisdom, knowledge, and creativity, so that we may nurture healing and hope.

However you receive these words, I wish you well. I welcome your thoughts, challenges, questions, and insights.