We tend to make the thing in the way the way.
In a world that lives like a fist mercy is not more than waking with your hands open.
Anything or anyone that asks you to be other than yourself is not holy, but is trying only to fill its own need.
Whether you find it through mediation or sighing over tea or just turning all your devices off for five minutes, listening is an ancient lifeline by which we are awakened time and again. Once reawakened, we more easily find our way to each other, and so help each other live.
To be broken is no reason to see all things as broken.
To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.