Listen...with the ear of your heart
A reflection on listening -- and then a listening reflection.
As we near the end of March, I’ve realized there are some threads of connection between the various posts from this year so far. Re-listening to individual pieces, I wondered what they might sound like in conversation with each other. So that’s what awaits in the recording below. An exercise in audio reflection.
Speaking of audio reflection, the last few months, I’ve run into several speakers and writers who are talking about changes in the quality of our collective attention1. To handle all the vast information available to us (mostly via screens) we’re forced to skim the surface, anxiously narrowing our focus, rushing and forcing to get it all in.
There are precious few places where our attention can expand and relax.
Listening has often been a vital way for me to slow down, to open up, to deepen and rest. But we rarely listen like this anymore — immersing ourselves in something fully, for its own sake. Instead we think of music, podcasts, audio books as a way to multi-task, to fragment our attention further.
And so, we don’t really listen much at all.
My hope in offering Shrine of the Real was to offer pauses through listening. In a media landscape and world inundated by noise, I wanted to open spaces to help people step into slow quiet.
So, can I ask you to try this? Give yourself 10 minutes of undivided attention. Get your headphones, pour a cup of something to sip. Find a private space to sit for a few minutes, all the better if it has a lovely view, but if not, close your eyes. Then, when your body had found some ease, … just listen.
And after you listen, just sit for a moment and let whatever you heard sink in.
The recording below is not designed to compete for your attention. It won’t give you a burst of adrenaline or dopamine. It won’t shimmy or demand. Nor can I promise listening will make you more efficient or focused. It’s not a means to some other end.
It’s just a gift. A gift of sound and story and open space. I hope you’ll make a little room to receive it.
This audio collage is grafted together from the following whole pieces, if you’d like to listen to the full versions (all of which are shorter than this “remix”):
Really Listen: Reverence for the Unseen (with Richard Posadas)
This, of course, is not a new topic or a new idea, but it’s one I perpetually care about. The things I’ve encountered recently are “The State of the Culture, 2024” and some ideas for breaking free from “dopamine culture” by Ted Gioia, thoughts on why the way we live is not normal by Kristen Powers, and the book “Reader, Come Home” by Maryann Wolff.
buzzards don't hunt they are there to witness and to clean up the mess.
help us oh humility when we are in the proximity of suffering.
It is uncanny how the words you choose often are revelatory, healing, and fortuitous. Maybe the pursuit of truth and purity creates only language of the flow of life for the good. Dante? Milton? Job?
I think I'd just rather listen to Nicole.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Randall. Just thank you.