Member-only story
“Let your clay be moist.”
on practicing deep listening, openness, and community
It is hard to tell your story. It is challenging to be open to the story of another. Yet this is what we are attempting to do.
A group of us in the context of a Sunday School class in a downstairs room are sitting, chairs in a circle, in silence together. We have the time of silence, a short discussion of the text we are reading together, Parker Palmer’s A Hidden Wholeness. We talk about the safety of the circle, of listening without trying to “fix” or “correct”, of waiting on that person’s own soul (or “light” as Palmer might say) to show the way.
Our first exercises have been in twos, turning our chairs opposite from one other in the circle, so that the chairs are not back to back, but placed alongside.
We are beside each other, but not facing each other. You can turn your head toward the person you are speaking to, but you can remove the pressure of the direct contact by staring ahead while you speak and the other listens.
And my thoughts keep going back to this quote from Saint Irenaeus: “Let your clay be moist.”
My first encounter with this quote and the prayer from which it comes is in a training program for spiritual directors from Shalem Institute. There too we would sit in…
