Listening Generously
Another great program by Krista Tippett on Speaking of Faith.
“Dr. Remen is a clinical professor at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine and a leader in the growing field of integrative medicine, bringing together the best of modern knowledge both scientific and spiritual. We speak about her art of listening to patients and other physicians, the difference between curing and healing, and how our losses help us to live.”
Krista says, “The longer I do this work, the more aware I am of listening as a discipline and vocation — and something I do with and for all of you. This is a great privilege, and a gift.”
We, at City House resonate with this understanding. Our identity is grounded in being a listening presence among the poor. We experience it as gift, for the sake of the world.
“Rachel Naomi Remen would offer “prescriptions” that are somewhat countercultural. She would not have us neatly resolve to move beyond our failings and build on our successes. She would ask us to attend gently and patiently to the fullness of our lives — including and especially the losses large and small that define human experience.”
“Living well, Rachel Naomi Remen says, is not about eradicating our losses, wounds, and weaknesses. It is about understanding how they continually complete our identity and equip us to help others. She’s seen time and again how even deep pathologies and failures become the source of unsuspected strengths. She believes that however difficult our lives become or how fraught our choices, most of us never lose our capacity to be whole human beings. We may forget that potential in ourselves, yet it can reappear full-blown in times of crisis.”
“The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily and not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet. This sort of denial is no small matter. The way we deal with loss shapes our capacity to be present to life more than anything else. The way we protect ourselves from loss may be the way in which we distance ourselves from life… We burn out not because we don’t care but because we don’t grieve. We burn out because we’ve allowed our hearts to become so filled with loss that we have no room left to care.”
I believe that there is not only great spiritual wisdom here in how to deal with pain and suffering, but it captures the way in which we are in solidarity with the poor. It is universally human to experience pain and suffering, regardless of class. If we open ourselves, it becomes our crucible leading to a deeper spiritual life and character development.
