Compassionate Communication | Deep listening 👂

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

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

Compassionate Communication: speaking and listening nakedly with our whole being, connecting with what’s alive in ourselves and each other in compassionate ways.

1. Observations (not evaluations) — When I/you see/hear/remember/imagine…

2. Feelings (not thoughts) — I/you feel …

3. Needs — because I/you need/value …

4. Requests (not demands) — would you be willing

In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

This is the

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

— David Whyte

Words Are Windows

(or They’re Walls)

I feel so sentenced by your words,

I feel so judged and sent away,

Before I go I’ve got to know,

Is that what you mean to say?

Before I rise to my defense,

Before I speak in hurt or fear,

Before I build that wall of words,

Tell me, did I really hear?

Words are windows, or they’re walls,

They sentence