Dream World
“Generous listening is powered by curiosity, a virtue we can invite and nurture in ourselves to render it instinctive. It involves a kind of vulnerability – a willingness to be surprised, to let go of assumptions and take in ambiguity. The listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other, and patiently summons one’s own best self and one’s own best words and questions.” ~Krista Tippett
I have this dream where humans spend less time getting to know what’s wrong with the world, what we disagree with others about, and more time sitting down to eat a meal. More time together finding out about each other’s families. More time asking questions without an answer expectation, without a response on the ready. More time finding out about lineages and histories, about origin stories and unfulfilled desires. More time considering one another’s longings, joys, griefs, hard-won wisdom. A lot more time believing we don’t already know what we think we do.
I have a dream in which we sit around tables and clink glasses, discover the favorite foods of our neighbors. A dream in which we listen well enough to know how to live close to our ideals, yet not so close that we don’t see the forest for the trees. Around this table, phones are turned off, the ding of messages and global news doesn’t ring as the loudest sound in the room, nervous systems are able to relax.
In this dream, politicians and religious leaders get to live in a way in which they’re no longer posturing to popular opinion. Perhaps they, too, learn to listen, to ask questions, to discern wisdom and guidance that looks less like a social media feed and more like a quiet stream.
In this dream, humans know they are valued so they value each other. They value the land. They are willing to be interrupted from their frantic pace by the presence of the holiness of creation. To sit. To listen to the birds. To walk in the grass. To remember that discernment and deep wisdom takes time. Patience. Quiet.
I woke one morning this week with a residual feeling of anxiety after a dream that recalled some old grief. The rest of the week had been generally lovely, though, and so while I could feel the flutter of anxiety, I also could sense the remainder of gratitude as I remembered the whole of the week. Sitting still to feel this, to name it all, I imagined the fluttering movement of paradox inside me as a compass needle bouncing from state to state. If I’d pushed against this paradox, kept moving and trying not to notice, the compass needle, I realized, would also keep moving. Compasses are like that—they can’t rest in center if we don’t pause and hold them still.
Often I feel like this with people these days. Perhaps it’s age or the amount of opinions that are offered through social media and via news channels, but many times I experience the needle bounce feeling in conversation, the paradox of experiencing a person as a human I want to know how to love and as other with opinions that create in me anxiety, anger, or confusion.
I heard a Kate Bowler podcast episode recently in which she speaks to Alan Alda about the nature of empathy, human connection, and staying curious. It’s worth every minute of the listen: Staying Curious with Alan Alda
His desire to know people, to connect with people, not to catch them or best them was one of the many lovely parts that stuck with me. He said, “I’ve talked with a lot of people on [my] podcast about how they talk to people who don’t agree with them. And it seems that the most common, practical approach is to first establish what you agree on, truly agree on. Would you live your life that way? Not just a principle or an idea, but something that you give your heart to?”
This feels like the way it might be possible to let my inner compass needle rest with others—patiently discovering the “what we agree on” so that we might get past the rhetoric of human opinion and divide to the availability of human connection and discernment.
If podcast listening isn’t your thing, try watching this less than 3 minute video experiment in which people are brought together over a table: Eat Together. Watching this, I realize my dream world is not mine alone. There are people dreaming this same land into being. Perhaps you, too, friend.
Author Margaret Silf gave this instruction, “In the silence of our hearts, we must wait patiently for the compass needle to steady. Then it will point to true north, the still center…and we will be enabled to move forward again.” Before sensing this with others, see if you can steady into yourself. I love this recommended practice from Kate Bowler and find the image helpful and true: “Imagine that needle within you shaking and then starting to still. Breathe. Listen.”
Perhaps you start there, friend. Curious about your own inner state and the way your inner directionality might start out shaky, but with stillness and patience, move toward true north. This might become the quieter, more curious and discerning presence that you bring to the world today.
What a great idea and video on the Shared Plate in the airport. We need more of these in our airports! Thanks for sharing it and to Jet Blue and Coke for making it!