Listening moves us closer, it helps us become more whole, more health, more hold. Not listening creates fragmentation, and fragmentation always causes more suffering. How many teenagers today, in many lands, state that no one listens to them? They feel ignored and discounted, and in pain they turn to each other to create their own subcultures. I've head two great teachers, Malidoma Some from Burkino Fasso in West Africa and Parker Palmer from the United States, both make this comment: "you can tell a culture is in trouble when its elders walk across the street to avoid meeting its youth." It is impossible to create a healthy culture if we refuse to meet, and if we refuse to listen. But if we meet, and when we listen, we reweave the world into wholeness. And holiness.

Margaret J. Wheatley, Turning to One Another