Picture your heart with an ear attached

At the Hospice, toward the end of our training, we are asked what comes when we think of Deep Listening. We speak, passing around a heart-shaped bean bag:

Rob says, “I remember as a kid dropping stones into a well. It’s the interval between when a stone is released and when it hits the water.”

Heather receives the heart and says, “It’s standing under a choir of liquid static falling from the aurora borealis, science says it’s an auditory hallucination, but I’d challenge that.”

Gloria says, “I see a mom at her daughter’s piano recital. The daughter poised, lifts her hands above the keys, no one dares to clear their throat.”

Miyo holds the heart and says, “A room, not a square room, a room the size and shape of earth, with rivers and trees full of birds, white-throated sparrows, for example — oh, such singing!”

Stephanie says, “I live close to a forest trail, you’ll often find me there. Sometimes I put my arms around an aging hemlock, place my ear on the rough bark and go still — up through the roots … the pulse of the sun.”

I say: “I’m in grade nine and my French teacher is explaining how nouns ending with double consonants are feminine, as her flaxen hair — that old kind, the flaxen you can still find under Romance at a used book store — falls over a partially exposed shoulder.”

Wendy says: “I read that a coral reef needs fish to keep it clean and healthy and it plays a kind of crackly wooing song. The fish listen with their whole colourful bodies and come to the reef. Music. Survival.”

Aaron says, “There was a time we had to call an ambulance. I heard the siren go right by our yard and fade over a hill; I knew they’d correct themselves, turn back, still, I stood at the approach like an antenna pitched to the siren’s frequency.”

Holly says, “Sitting beside moving water, any water, a spring, a brook, a tide or a trace of tributary tumbling over pebbles, congregating in eddies then spilling down a stone ledge, released into a turquoise lake.”

Lois says, “I love lakes like that. I remember stepping out of the camper early in the morning before anyone was up, the lake’s surface was a giant mirror with mountains in it and everything was so quiet I could hear water dripping off a canoeist’s paddle.”

Nadia receives the cloth heart, closes her eyes and breathes. We wait and wait … then understand. She says, “I see our hearts with ears attached.”

Cornelia and Lisa, our trainers, say, “Anywhere there is listening at depth, love is present.”