Perhaps we will see that listening is not a course you must register for, a new gimmick that will magically transform your social and professional life. It happens when you take time to look around you, to be still in the evenings, startled by mornings. To listen means to be aware, to watch, to wait patiently for the next communication clue. And, as anyone with a speech or hearing disability can tell you, listening is not always auditory communication...When earth's auditory energy is received as a whisper, or perhaps not at all, other senses become sharpened, grasping communicative clues we have forgotten, in the rush of life...Listening becomes visual, tactile, intuitive. Listening ... perhaps ... is just a mind aware.
Through science we have created magnificent spacecrafts and telescopes to explore
the night and the light and the half light. We have made visible things that are
invisible to the unaided eye. We have brought the dreamy heavens down to Earth,
held them in the mind's eye. Our explorations have produced a vast archive of
remarkable astronomical images...The riches are too many for choices, the
revelations beautiful and dreadful. Who can look at these images and not be
transformed? The heavens declare God's glory.
~ from SKEPTICS AND TRUE BELIEVERS by Chet Raymo