to marvel in the presence of the other …

Listening … is the capacity to be present before the other, leaving him all the space he needs to manifest himself. The silence of the listener is an offered, given silence. Listening is a kind of creation, because in listening to someone we allow him to be himself, we collaborate in the revelation of who he is … a silence that opens up to the events that take place. It is an attentive silence … which is to know how to listen, hence, to open ourselves to other people and things. To listen is to be sensitive to the presence of a person or thing, to be able to welcome and receive. This is the root of the difficulty in contemplating the universe. We are sunk so deeply in work and in the quest for success that we do not see people or things in the light of what they are, but in the light of their utility and efficiency. Everything is our tool. We lack the sense of presence, of mystery, which is to say that we do not know how to marvel. To take in the true reality of what surrounds us is to know how to marvel at what it is. Jaime Alvarez. Communio 23:252-69, 1996.