I dislike discrimination. Truly. Intensely. Viscerally. Age. Disability. Gender. Nationality. Race. Religion. Sexual orientation. Social status. I struggle with the many ways we humans tend to categorize others to keep them out or down or excluded. When we view them as “less than”, not worthy of respect or common decency, or deserving of our scorn,…
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“We learn to listen because we want to learn to love.” ~ Adam McHugh The summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college I needed a job to help pay my way through school. A dad of a very close friend of mine offered me a position as a security guard at a local…
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So that she could more comfortably sleep, the cardiac intensive care room was darkened, and only those lights spilling in from the nurses’ station outside of it illuminated the room. Yeah, and the glow from the multitude of monitors, measuring more vital signs than I could even begin to understand. More than a dozen IV’s…
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Listening & Deja Vu Deja Vu – a French term describing the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before; a feeling of familiarity (the feeling of having “already lived through” something); a feeling of recollection. Deja vu accurately describes how we were feeling when we met her last week. Still, our feelings…
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1. Hiring Abby Turner, Chief Listening Officer, who worked hard to create and publish a training resource endorsed by The Ken Blanchard Companies and led our training seminars in 2018 with several others already scheduled for 2019. Learn more about our compassionate listening training here. 2. We welcomed eight new members to STTIT’s support team:…
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They rose as one. Under a beautifully decorated white tent on a nearly perfect early autumn evening, they rose in a warm standing ovation. They were liberal, moderate, and conservative. Republican, Democrat, and Independent. Evangelical, Catholic, mainline, and agnostic. African American and Caucasian, gay and straight. Millennials and those in their ninth decade. They had…
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We are thrilled to share this guest post from our friend Tamsin Hartley, who is doing incredible work in the UK through The Listening Space. Thank you, Tamsin! Most of us have a natural desire to help others. Seeing someone in distress makes us feel uncomfortable. It triggers our “righting reflex,” that innate desire to…
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Our word ‘radical’ shared its origins with the word ‘radish’; both are concerned with roots and are often bitter. —James Dorsey Not many people would consider themselves radicals. Some would never want that label. While some radicals—Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Malala Yousafzai, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., or even Jesus—receive high praise for their countercultural…
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A police officer stood duty by the cathedral’s front door. In all the times we’d gone inside, we’d never seen a guard before. But Wednesday’s noontime service was no ordinary service. The explosive grand jury report that had been made public the day before made it no ordinary day. Since our office is next to…
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This blog post is a free chapter from our latest book, Someone To Tell It To: Moved With Compassion. If you’d like to read more stories like this one, you can purchase the entire book here. “Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us f
rom being able to fly… and if left…
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