Listening is a sitting back,

A softening away from the pull of doing.

Receiving the sound… or feeling… or words that create a spark within you, no matter how small.

Impatience is there, too, of course.

How long must you wait in silence until something “happens?”

Oh, dear heart. So much is happening if you let yourself receive it.

Noticing the sound each drop of rain makes is a miracle. It’s never the same twice, have you noticed that?

The chill in your toes. The distant memory of a childhood game you thought you had lost.

Even the words that come to you – they seem so simple, you’re embarrassed by counting them as profound.

Stay calm, it says.

Who says?

You’re sure you heard it. Words that landed in your brain so suddenly, like a butterfly perching on your hand, wanting to pause and stay a while, even though it doesn’t belong to you.

Stay calm.

So cliche, you think. These words aren’t anything. They’re far too simple to mean something.

Maybe it’s not the simplicity of words, the simplicity of sound, the simplicity of feeling…it’s the receiving of it itself. It’s the fact there is an available place for that meandering butterfly to perch, even for a moment.

It’s the witnessing any of it at all.

Hope for something larger, louder, stronger and you miss the magic that there is anything to experience at all.

Listening is the gift, not the message.