Today I was reminded that listening for something may never help someone ever hear more, or potentially any better. The question of “if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?” must be understood in part about having someone there to begin with, but also about whether that someone has the ability to hear the sounds that can occur from trees that fall. Hearing is not necessarily about willfulness to hear, but a developed competency to receive specific messages that occur in a particular situation, or relationship.

Each of us hear the sound of things sometimes long after the event, or for the first time even though it has occurred many times. In our relationships of love, we have received the petition for us to hear a need or a want that can seem for the other that things largely go “unheard.” Sometimes things aren’t heard even when the cry is loud. Therefore, I believe that listening ALONE is not enough to hear those things that are most important to hear. We need others to find the patience and skill to not speak louder or more often necessarily, but to teach us a new vocabulary, or use symbols that open our ideas and beliefs to the new . . . or sometimes the old that has never been heard. We need a quality of presence that isn’t screaming at us, but loves us as we need to be loved, so that we expand ourselves to attending and responding to what is before us.

The price for greater consciousness and personal responsibility is never cheap and never a solitary act. Meeting ourselves, a deeper truth, or another has less to do with intent and values clarification as it has to do with what we do with our power, and how we manage our pain. Listening, understanding, meeting, leading, sustainable impact is about letting go of a lesser form to allow a greater one to emerge. It is about shared grace that offers peace, charity and service in replace of want, certainty, and the illusion of safety.

“When lost in the woods what do you do? When lost in the woods what do you do? Listen to the trees, they know the way.”