a day where we most intently listen

Today is my first official day of summer, since my school's graduation was yesterday. This is from Jericho Brown, a creative writing professor who won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry this year.

I hope your day is full of listening amidst the stress of the quarantine and feeling on the brink of disaster with all of the reopenings around the country and the world. Happy Sunday--here's to a summer of better listening

"Still, it is hard for me to imagine what we do without thinking of prayer. We must be isolated and unbothered. We must have time to ourselves, time enough to see beyond the reality of the rooms in which we work, time enough for a kind of focus that yields excitement coupled with contentment. How is that so different from what we think monks, priests, and pastors do? Poets like me catch themselves chanting their lines as these lines materialize. Novelists notice themselves in dark attics and basements with low ceilings staring into a light. We all find ourselves putting words on paper that seem to come to us as if we were overhearing them…as if there were another voice or some other voices in the room. If a good writing day is one where we most intently listen, then who do we think is talking?"
Jericho Brown