I. Thou shalt not hide from the audience but shall open to them, share with them, and pull your hair back so that it is not obscuring your expressive face and eyes.

II. Thou shalt not…Read on.

This week on NPR’s All Things Considered, I heard Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy talk about the newly released study, "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation," which finds that “29% increased risk of heart disease; a 32% increased risk of stroke; and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults.” Dr. Murthy says that our goal is “to build a society that is deeply connected….We know that in-person interaction is what we’ve evolved for over thousands of years. We’ve learned to interpret not just the content of what someone’s saying but also the sound of their voice and their body language and when we lose a lot of that in text-based interactions, then that impacts the strength of the connections that we can form.” Dr. Murthy reminds us that we have a cure…Read on.

Ineffable Quality: When I sit in the audience for certain events—plays, concerts, talks—I can feel the difference between a performer who makes me think, “Oh, wow! That is a great performer! What a virtuoso!” and a performer pulls me into the music, the story, who makes me feel part of something bigger. One performer awes me while another touches me. One singer elicits a gasp, “What a voice!” The next envelopes me in the beauty of the music. I marvel at one speaker and see things differently when the next has left the stage. This quality of communication can happen in many realms. A favorite story of my father’s was a description of a man passionately weeping…Read on

I follow the work of New Yorker cartoonist, Liza Donnelly, and have been watching her drawings of tiny, quotidian moments in the lives of New Yorkers. This drawing arrested me with both its simplicity and its detail: the tilt of the dog’s head, paying attention to Liza as she draws, the man, eating a sandwich. She writes:

“To me, life is about the small things, the individuals. New York City is made up of so many wonderful individuals, in fact it’s what makes the city.”

The other day when I was trying to meditate, instead of letting my thoughts float by, I was caught by a deep longing to have work like Liza’s, work that demands that I simply stay still and pay attention—to be absorbed by others, by the poignant beauty that makes us human. Then I thought, but of course it does! Everyone is allowed to, invited to, pay attention to the world around us. My work is all about connecting with others. How can we possibly connect with others if we don’t take them in?

Read on for more on paying attention…we are all invited to witness our world with wonder.

Questions that Connect Us

Jun 30

Written By Kate Bennis

In the Fall of 2016 I visited our dear family friends, Joan Goldsmith and her husband, Ken Cloke. I was trying to make sense of a world where all the things I valued (empathy, connection, representation, equity, equality, justice) seemed to be rejected by so many of my country-people. The cognitive dissonance left me bereft and lacking the capacity to see the complexity of the moment: everything and everyone seemed to be “good” or “bad,” “right” or “wrong.”

Ken caught me up short in a conversation that reframed everything. He said, “The trouble is that we are asking the wrong questions. The questions we’re asking only have polarizing answers.” I was flooded with examples: “Who did you vote for?” “Do you believe in God?” “Do you support abortion rights?” “Do you support gun reform?” “Where do you get your news?”

These questions have only one-word answers. There is no room for a complex human being to reside in those answers.

Ken guided me to ask a very different question, a question that invites infinite answers, a question that has framed our humanity, given us meaning, culture, and connection.

This week, think about the questions we ask. Are they likely to polarize us? Or connect us? This week, we play with questions that invite connection.

Read on for Ken’s question, a question that cracks us open…

Last week, I asked you to simply listen to the voices of announcers on the radio. Just listen for the sounds of the voices.

This week, I want you to listen deeper. What can you tell about the person from their voice? Think about emotion, connection, present or reading?