Most of us think of listening in fairly literal fashion: human beings listening (or not listening) to one another; the pleasure of attending to a familiar piece of music. But listening can have a far broader and more capacious meaning, moving out beyond the small apparatus of the ears to the hands or belly or enveloping spirit/mind. In her new book, In Praise of Listening Christian McEwen reflects on listening (silence, music, nature, prayer, &c.) in a series of thoughtful chapters, each one focused on a different theme. When an athlete speaks of “listening to his body,” or a gardener describes herself as “listening to the land,” when writers and artists explain that they are “listening” to their work-in-progress, they are using the word as she chooses to use it here — as an extended metaphor for openness and receptivity, rippling out from the self-centered human to the farthest reaches of the non-human world.

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