Compassionate Communication | Deep listening 👂

“Every conversation, as its foundation, has an invitation in it. When the invitation stops, the conversation really stops.”

— David Whyte

I invite you into this ecology of communication. Pick the flowers, pee in the bushes, throw the stones, watch the clouds, sleep in the shade, and eat the fruit. I welcome you to wriggle and scratch in these pages and find rest and revolution.

At first, it appears that it is the parts of the system that must be made better or fixed.

Then, it becomes clear that the system is not in the parts — it is in the relationships between them.

So, it seems like it is the relationships that need to be made better or fixed.

But relationships, it turns out, are made of communication.

And then —

The communi

Although a few of these pieces have been previously published in other places, I never meant for any of them to stand alone. Nothing in an ecology stands alone.

It is necessary to have an ensemble of all sorts of communication to meet ecology—intellectual, emotional, storied, non-verbal, and physical. The communications must be diverse enough to mee

Both communication and community have the same Latin root, communicare , meaning to impart, share, or make common.

Communication implies a recognition of self and what lies beyond it — the existence of other selves. Communication is the forming of threads between individuals. It’s a way to make one life useful to other lives, to make oneself important to other selves. It turns individuals into a community. If it is true that a whole forest or field is in commun