Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

     "In this healing space, we share from our hearts in an atmosphere of acceptance and we are learning some new tools for healthy dialogue. It gives me hope" – Liz Wessel, speaking about her small circle of women friends' journey in communication and community.

      Community is where we learn to honor each other not with flattery but with love informed by truth. It is where we learn forgiveness, to give and receive, to love and be loved. Conversation may be among the greatest gifts of community; in conversation all relationships may find meaning and hope. Author Gordon T. Smith suggests it is in conversation that "we grow in wisdom, grace and strength. It is through conversation that we are encouraged, that we fill one another with courage. When we are encouraged, we are able to overcome our fears or at least keep them at bay – and know that our fears do not drive the engine of our hearts and lives." 

     In conversation we have the opportunity to listen – to attend to one another, honoring, accepting, and responding to what matters most in each other's lives. Some have proposed the idea that nothing demonstrates more love for another than the act of deep listening. Listening, at its best, resists the urge to tell or teach or counsel. Smith has noted that in community, the act of speaking before listening most often leads us to jump to conclusions or make premature assumptions about what is going to be said and, in the process, conversation literally dies. When we do speak in conversation it is a gift when it comes without innuendo, sarcasm, pretense or posturing. For some, a patronizing tone has become habitual, words no longer connected to hearing much less to one's heart. What is important to understand, says Smith, is that such habits undermine the possibility for genuine conversation.

     Conversations in community create the possibility for each of us to enter into joy and sorrow, acknowleging and living through pain, anger, sadness, happiness, or discouragement. It does not seem likely that we will encounter such freedom in every community, or that we will have many opportunitites like the neighbors lingering across the fence in Pissarro's Conversation (pictured above). What joy, however, when those special few find in each other that healing space where both hope and Love live and breathe. What immense healing when our patients experience the deep listening of a caregiver's heart. Deep and healing community may seem impossible to some caregivers who live under oppresive leadership. It does seem possible, however, that we may each bring ourselves into every encounter with genuineness and willingness to listen. And maybe, just maybe, a conversation will begin in that sacred place.