Something is shifting. It feels like the whole planet is shaking.

I feel it in the world around me. I feel it in our country. I see it in the organizations and leaders I work with. I see it in the lives of people I love. And I feel it in my own life.

We are crossing thresholds.

Some of them we have chosen. Some of them have arrived unexpectedly. Some are enormous and unmistakable: a death, an illness, the ending of a relationship, retirement, a new calling, a move, a financial breakdown, the loss of something or someone we thought would always be there.

Others are quieter. We begin to sense that a way we have been living no longer fits. An identity we have inhabited has grown too small. Something that once gave us life has become deadening. Or we hear, perhaps only faintly at first, the call of something new.

We know we cannot remain where we are. And yet we cannot quite see where we are going.

That is the territory of a threshold.

Six years ago, during another time of enormous uncertainty, I published a book called Crossing Thresholds: Island Reflections. I wrote it during the summer of 2019, on Isle Royale, a remote island in Lake Superior where my husband, Don, and I have spent time for many years.

The book was not originally intended for public consumption. I needed to make my own threshold crossing. And somehow, on that island, poems began coming as inner guides to show me the way—sometimes as many as six in a day. I wrote them as they came, and listened. The poetic Muse guided me. Isle Royale became one of my great teachers.

There, as I wrote later in the Introduction, the natural landscape of lake and sky brought me into a silence in which I could “hear my heart, hear my future, hear the journey that it was time for me to make.”

Only later did I understand that what had accompanied me might accompany someone else.

A dear friend of ours, Pat, a sound engineer who was working with Don, had a sister who was dying. She refused to acknowledge that she was dying. She was suffering, and her family was suffering with her. Pat gave her one of the poems from Crossing Thresholds, “For Giving Endings.”

She read it. And she wept.

The next day, she chose to enter hospice. Three days later, she died.

Her decision spared the family what might otherwise have been weeks, perhaps months, of suffering. I had written that poem because I was learning about endings—about completion, and about the strange truth that sometimes we cannot enter what is next until we are willing to fully acknowledge what is ending. I had never imagined that those words would find their way to a dying woman and contribute to her making one of the most profound threshold crossings of all.

Something shifted in me then. Perhaps these poems were not mine alone. Perhaps what had guided me across a threshold of my own could accompany someone else across theirs.

And now, six years later, I find myself returning to the book. I thought I was returning to something I had written a long time ago. Instead, the book returned me to a question that feels at least as alive now as it did then:

What threshold is life asking me to cross now?

And the answer is: quite a few.

The Threshold I Am Crossing

For most of my working life, my work has lived in live rooms—in conversations with people, in courses I created and led, in coaching, and largely through word of mouth. I know that territory. I know how to walk into a room, listen, create a safe space in which people can tell the truth, trust what emerges, and welcome new realizations into their lives, realizations that open new doors for them.

Now I am committed to letting the work travel beyond the room.

This spring, I published The Heart of Sacred Listening. And next week, on September 9, I am publicly launching my first self-paced online course, The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening. I have spent more than a year creating it, and getting it here has been a threshold crossing of its own.

Last November, I flew across the country to Philadelphia to film the course professionally. I had a well-being issue while I was there. I wasn’t myself. The teleprompter didn’t work for me. We filmed the course anyway.

And afterward, I knew.

It didn’t have the juice.

I could have let it be good enough. An enormous amount of work had already gone into it. But this course carries too much of what I have spent my life discovering for me to put it into the world without its being alive. Good enough is not good enough.

So in February, we filmed the whole thing again. This time, I sat in my own office—the place from which I have had thousands of conversations with people over the years. I was at home. I was myself.

And there it was.

Now comes another part of the threshold: letting it travel.

I find myself stepping—actually, rather often and rather awkwardly!—into worlds that are entirely new to me: social media, video, radio, and all the mysterious ways people now let people know that something exists.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent five days preparing to be interviewed for two hours on Coast to Coast AM. It felt a little like being thrown into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim, while somehow trusting that I would discover how once I got there.

And I did. It was fantastic. I even fielded calls from listeners and discovered that, once there was another human being in front of me, I knew exactly what to do. Listen!

What I am discovering is that creating the work and stewarding the work into the world are two entirely different things.

I know what it takes to create. I know what it takes to open a space for others to transform themselves. What I am learning now is who I need to be to become the steward of a conversation—to allow the work I have spent a lifetime creating to travel farther than I personally can.

There is vulnerability in that for me. I am accustomed to knowing what I am doing. Here, I am a beginner in many ways. I am learning as I go, making mistakes, asking questions I suspect everyone else already knows the answers to, and sometimes feeling completely awkward.

And I am UP to it.

There are physical thresholds, too. I am living with a hip that is asking something new of me, while being in physical therapy and discovering ways to be with the limitations that are here now.

And underneath all of these outer crossings is a quieter, inner one. I am listening for what is next.

I can hear the notes of a bigger symphony appearing. I don’t yet know where they lead. I follow the ones that sing to me, just as I did on that island in Lake Superior six years ago.

I listened deeply.

And guidance came.

Perhaps You Are Crossing One, Too

What in your life is ending? What has already ended, although perhaps you haven’t fully acknowledged it? What old skin are you being asked to shed? What new beginning can you sense, even if you cannot yet see its form? And what does it take to stand in that strange territory between what was and what will be?

In Crossing Thresholds, I wrote that our lives are not really one continuum. If we are committed to growing, they are made up of “ongoing small deaths and rebirths.” Who we were in one iteration of our lives is not who we are in the next. And when we cross a threshold into a new life, we begin to see with new eyes—and new perception opens new possibilities, new horizons and new futures.

That is where many of us are now: in our relationships, in our organizations, in our lives.

We are living in threshold times.

Crossing Together

I had planned for this essay to tell you that during September I would begin opening Crossing Thresholds again, and that in October I would begin serializing it for my paid subscribers.

Then, very early this morning, I shot up in bed.

I knew I had it wrong.

I absolutely want to return to Crossing Thresholds. I am not the same woman who wrote it, and I am deeply curious about what I will discover when I enter those poems and photographs again from where I stand now. I am looking forward to walking through that uncertain territory of liminal space later this fall, together with my paid subscribers.

But not yet.

September belongs to The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening.

Its public launch is September 9, and I realized this morning that after spending more than a year creating this course, I don’t want to turn my attention immediately toward the next thing. I want to stay with this. I want to give my full attention to bringing it into the world and to the conversation from which it came.

Perhaps that is part of this threshold, too. I am learning that stewardship asks something different of me than creation does. It asks me to stand for it once it is made, to focus in on it, to give it my full attention.

So that is where I will be during September.

Crossing Thresholds, the book, can wait for me, while I cross this threshold of bringing the course into the world.

For now, I want to leave you with the question the book asked me six years ago, and which I find myself living again:

What threshold is it time for you to cross?

Don’t hurry to answer it. Perhaps simply carry the question with you.

Listen.

See what arrives.

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Something rather wonderful happened this week.

On Thursday night, I was a guest on Coast to Coast AM, a late-night radio program Don and I have listened to and found fascinating for years.

The range of topics is rather vast: the paranormal, scientific mysticism, spirituality, astrology, integrative medicine—and sometimes things that are a little scary! Sometimes we tune in. Sometimes we tune out. Quite intentionally.

At any rate, I was thrilled to have been on Coast to Coast.

And there is a story behind how I got there.

My friend and astrologer Leslie McGuirk has been a guest on Coast to Coast for ten years—at least once a year and sometimes twice.

She recommended me to the producer, Tom Danheiser—and the door opened.

Why did the door open?

I’m not entirely sure. But I would say it had a lot to do with relationship.

During our first conversation, I shared with Tom the Steve Martin story about “going to the Bahamas.”

There is an old comedy skit with Steve Martin and Teri Garr in which Teri Garr is a patron in a very shi-shi restaurant. She gives Steve Martin, playing “The Absent-Minded Waiter,” a long and complicated order. Somewhere in the middle of listening to her, he simply...goes to the Bahamas.

That is a story about how we don’t listen.

Tom LOVED that.

And then came one of those wonderful little synchronicities: Lisa Garr, one of the Coast to Coast hosts whom I particularly enjoy, is Teri Garr’s niece.

Imagine that!

And then, as if that weren’t enough, I told Tom how much I had loved going to the old theater in Everett, Washington, where I saw one of the live Coast to Coast events they occasionally produce with George Noory. C. Crane, one of their longtime advertisers, was there with its wonderful radios. I remembered the whole evening. I loved it.

Well, Tom LOVED hearing that, too.

Why?

Because he is the person who works so hard to produce those live shows.

There we were.

I wasn’t trying to impress him. I was sharing things I genuinely loved—and discovering, as we talked, that some of them mattered to him, too.

Relationship.

Anyway, it didn’t take long.

I was in.

And then, a few days before the show, something else happened.

Tom called me. I called him right back. He wanted to know whether I had ever been on Coast to Coast before.

“No,” I told him.

We got off the phone.

Two minutes later, he called me back.

He wanted to tell me what a great subject I had.

He had just been trying to communicate with someone who wasn’t listening to him. He couldn’t get the person to hear what he was saying.

And suddenly, there it was again.

Listening.

The very thing we were going to be talking about Thursday night had just shown up in Tom’s own life.

He told me not to worry about having enough opportunity to talk about my book and my work—that George would give me plenty of time. He told me I was going to have a great time. He explained that he would be there with me on Zoom throughout the program.

And before we hung up, he said:

“Say hello to Leslie!”

I did.

Leslie’s response made me laugh and touched me at the same time:

“We are a great team. Tom likes you!”

And then, in the wonderfully empowering way Leslie has, she told me that people would feel my energy over the radio. That my passion would come through.

And finally, the astrologer in her had the last word:

“Remember this is all part of your destiny!”

Destiny.

I smiled when I read those eight words in my text.

And then Thursday night arrived.

I was nervous at first. I had prepared. Oh, had I prepared! I had stories in front of me, and had thought a great deal about the questions George might ask and how I could bring the heart of Sacred Listening into a two-hour radio conversation.

And at first, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with myself. I stumbled a little. I began telling the story of my father—one of the foundational stories in The Heart of Sacred Listening—and right in the middle of it, we went to a commercial break. A long commercial break! I texted Tom, who was there with me during the broadcast, and asked whether George would let me finish the story. He assured me he would, and George did. But something had been interrupted, and when I returned to the story, it didn’t quite have the same punch.

I noticed something else, too. When I tried too hard to tell a story the way I had prepared it, I wasn’t always completely present. When I simply knew the story and allowed myself to tell it extemporaneously, it came alive.

And then the callers came.

Something shifted in me. Suddenly I wasn’t talking about Sacred Listening anymore. I was listening.

One caller spoke passionately about President Trump, his language, and what the caller longed for in a leader. I listened to him and then realized that the question really belonged with George, so I handed it over.

George laughed. “You’re giving it back to me, eh, Amba?”

“I sure am!”

And George responded beautifully. He spoke about being old-school, about not liking that kind of language, and then remembered being twelve or thirteen years old when John F. Kennedy was president. He spoke of Kennedy as someone he could look up to, a statesman.

When he finished, I told him how much I appreciated what he had said. And I appreciated what the caller had said, too.

Nobody had to be made wrong. Nobody had to win. There was room for people to speak and to be heard.

Another caller told me that he had ADHD. I invited him, first, to let himself be all right exactly as he is, and to become interested in his own experience rather than beginning with the assumption that something about him needed to be fixed. I also shared something I have observed over the years: that people with ADHD can have extraordinary creativity and originality, and perhaps there was something there for him to explore—not simply a deficit, but a gift. He seemed deeply touched by that.

And then a woman called and began telling me about her father.

Her story sounded remarkably familiar. “Why is this A not an A-plus?”

She went on to tell me that she became a lawyer and ultimately a conflict mediator. And then she said something else. Others had suggested that she write a book, but she had been a big “No.”

And now she is going to begin writing one.

I got so excited for her!

Somewhere in the midst of those calls, I think I discovered the answer to one of the questions I had been carrying into the evening:

Could I touch, could I connect with, the hearts of people I couldn’t see?

Yes.

Absolutely.

And perhaps they could feel me, too. Some of the callers told me they were inspired.

At the end of the program, George asked me to “stay in touch.” He mentioned that this was my first time on the Coast to Coast. He told me I had been a “wonderful guest.”

That meant so much to me because one of my intentions going into the evening had been very simple: I wanted George to be glad I had been there, and I wanted the people listening to leave the conversation inspired. I also wanted them to leave with something they could actually practice—to begin taking responsibility for their own listening and catching themselves in their reactions.

And then this morning, Friday, I heard from someone I had worked with at the Stanford University Department of Public Safety in 2018. He had heard me on Coast to Coast and found his way back to me. He wrote about the difference our work together had made in his life, and how glad he was to see that I was now carrying the work out into a much wider world.

Eight years later.

Relationship.

Perhaps that happened.

But here’s the funny part.

When the show ended, I gave myself about a B. I knew the places where I had stumbled. I knew some of my stories had been too long. I knew the moments when I had been thinking about what I wanted to say rather than simply being present.

And then, sometime between two and four in the morning, I woke up.

There was my own voice in my ear!

Coast to Coast was rebroadcasting the program.

Imagine waking from a sound sleep and hearing yourself coming out of the radio!

I lay there and listened. By then, the callers were on, and something surprised me.

I could hear myself.

I was there. I was listening. And it sounded good.

I had to smile.

Perhaps Sacred Listening also includes being willing to listen differently to ourselves.

So I think I’ll raise that B.

Maybe an A-minus.

And perhaps Leslie was right. Maybe people really can feel something over the radio.

And another door opened that night as well.

In preparation for Coast to Coast, we made The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening available a little earlier than planned. Its official public launch is September 9, but Substack subscribers and Coast to Coast listeners are being given early access beginning Wednesday.

Which means the door is open now to you.

As a subscriber to Awakening Heart, and, particularly, a paid subscriber, for which I am very grateful, you are someone who has chosen to come more deeply with me into this exploration of listening, presence, transformation, and what it means to live an awakened life.

So, I invite you to check out/ explore the opportunity of “The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening” for yourself, which is 50% off for a limited time.

Learn More

And what, if anything, did I discover about Leslie’s word: DESTINY?

Perhaps destiny isn’t something we recognize while we’re living it. Perhaps we simply keep listening, with an awakened heart, for the next door that opens—and walk through.

I began this story wondering why the door to Coast to Coast opened in the first place. I thought it had something to do with relationship.

Now, having walked through that door, I think I know.

The doors open through relationship. Relationships we have, relationships to be created, and relationships we don’t yet know are in our future. And listening, as I said last night on Coast to Coast, seems to be the magic key to unlock that door.

With enormous love and gratitude,

Amba

For forty years, I have witnessed The Heart of Leadership transform people. I have watched people see themselves differently, listen to one another differently, repair relationships, take stands they had been avoiding, and return to their work with a new understanding of who they are as leaders and human beings.

And over those same years, one question has kept arising: How do we create a culture where everyone has the opportunity to grow?

Sometimes the question has been asked this way: “How are we EVER going to get everyone in our company through The Heart of Leadership?” Or, “How can we make this available to people who simply can’t step away from their work for five days?”

And once, a client asked me very directly, “Can you do The Heart of Leadership in two days?”

I knew my answer immediately. “I can do something in two days. But it won’t be The Heart of Leadership.”

There are some things we cannot accomplish simply by making them shorter. Transformation takes what transformation takes. And yet, the question underneath his question stayed with me, because my client was right, too. We can’t take everyone out of a hospital, a grocery store, a school, a business, or an organization for five days.

So how do we make the heart of this work more widely available?

For years, I didn’t have a response.

Sometimes the Response Comes in Another Form

When I began writing The Heart of Sacred Listening, I wasn’t trying to solve that problem. I was writing the book I knew I was called to write. And when I began creating an online course alongside it, I wasn’t trying to turn The Heart of Leadership into something smaller.

In fact, that was important to me. This course is not The Heart of Leadership. It does not replace it. It grows from the same roots that have nourished The Heart of Leadership for more than forty years, but it has become something of its own.

And somewhere along the way, I realized: This is one response to the question I have been carrying all these years.

For almost a year, alongside writing and publishing The Heart of Sacred Listening, I have been creating, recording, refining, and building a self-paced online experience called The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening.

It offers another doorway into the work—an auditory and visual one as well as the written word. A way for an individual to enter. A way for a family or partnership to begin a different kind of conversation. A way for a team to practice listening differently. A way for an organization to begin developing, more broadly, the capacities that make trust, partnership, leadership, and a culture of growth possible.

And perhaps most importantly, it allows people to enter the work where they are, in the midst of the lives they are already living. They don’t have to leave the hospital for five days. Or the grocery store. Or the construction site. Or the company.

They can begin where they are.

A New Door Is Opening

And now, the door is opening.

Beginning today, I’d like to invite you to explore The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening.

I won’t begin sharing it broadly with the world until the public launch on September 9, but I wanted you—my Substack readers—to be among the first to know that it is here.

I’ve created a place where you can explore the course, hear more about what it offers, and see whether it speaks to you.

EXPLORE THE ART AND PRACTICE OF SACRED LISTENING →

https://online.galeleadership.com/

I am enormously happy about it—not simply because I have created a new course, but because a question that has followed me for years has finally found a response I trust.

There will always be experiences that cannot be compressed or replicated. The Heart of Leadership is one of them. But there can be more than one doorway into transformation.

And perhaps that is part of what I have been discovering myself. Sometimes, when we cannot solve a problem in the form in which it first appears, the invitation is not to try harder to force an answer. Sometimes we need to keep listening—deeply enough, and long enough—to ourselves, to the world, and to opportunities that somehow present themselves, until the appropriate form arrives and reveals itself.

Interestingly enough, I have been living with another question lately. As I enter the world of marketing and publicity for the Sacred Listening work, I have found myself asking: How am I going to do this? I was preparing myself for what I imagined might be a steep and rather rough climb.

And then, more or less out of the blue, another form appeared.

My friend Leslie McGuirk, an astrologer who has been a guest on Coast to Coast AM a number of times, recommended me to the show’s producer, Tom Danheiser. He called me.

And tomorrow night, I will be George Noory’s guest on the program.

I could not possibly have imagined that form when I first asked the question.

Case in point.

And I wonder whether you have been living with a question—perhaps an immensely important one—for which the form of a response has not yet appeared.

Perhaps it isn’t asking you to try harder to find the answer.

Perhaps it is asking you to listen.

To yourself. To the world. To what presents itself.

And perhaps, in time, a form will reveal itself that you could not have imagined at the beginning.

A response you trust.

Tomorrow Night: Coast to Coast AM

Find the Coast to Coast AM station in your area

Tomorrow night—Thursday, August 20, at 10:00 p.m. Pacific—I’ll be a guest on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory.

Don and I have listened to Coast to Coast for years, so I find it rather wonderful to be joining the conversation from the other side of the microphone!

We’ll be talking about The Heart of Sacred Listening, The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening, and what becomes possible when we truly listen.

If you’re awake, I’d love to have you listen in.

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Three weeks ago, after returning from Portugal, I heard words I hadn’t expected to hear: “Bone on bone.”

My left leg and hip had been giving me pain, as you know, throughout the trip. Walking the beautiful cobblestone streets of Portugal had become increasingly painful, though I didn’t yet know why. Now I knew.

A hip replacement lay ahead, most likely.

I won’t pretend I greeted the news with joy. My first response was the same one many of us have when life suddenly changes direction.

“Oh, shit.”

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I wanted to share two pieces of joyful news.

First, after many months of creation, The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening, my new self-paced online course, is almost ready. I’ll be opening it publicly on September 9, and I’ll be sharing much more about it in a special newsletter very soon.

This course is for people who sense there is more possibility waiting to emerge in their lives, their relationships, their work, and the way they move through the world.

Second, I’m delighted to let you know that on August 20, I’ll be joining George Noory on Coast to Coast AM for a two-hour conversation about Sacred Listening. Here in the Seattle area, the program airs on KIRO. I’ll share complete listening information—including how to tune in from anywhere—as we get closer, and I’d love to have you join us if you’re able.

Now, on to today’s reflection…

Sometimes, at various points in our lives, the way seems blocked.

We get stuck. We stop.

A tree falls in our path.
A person we were married to stops coming home at night.
Shingles hit and abscond with a perfectly good back.

My husband is diagnosed with Stage 4 lymphoma.
I am diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Now, I am told I am bone-on-bone in my left hip.
No wonder I have such pain, and had such pain walking the cobblestone streets of the Roman medieval towns in beautiful Portugal.

I myself have schooled myself to make the interior perspective shift from “Oh, shit!” to Curiosity: “Well, that was a surprise!” as soon as I can. I am doing well with that. And since I’ve been including, rather than resisting, the pain, I can report it’s not so bad.

I’ll never forget my acupuncturist saying to me, upon hearing about my brain tumor, back in 2003, “You know, Amba? Sometimes the body has an intuitive wisdom. For your journey right now, this must be exactly what you need.”

And it was. I was on a journey that I needed to be on, one that resulted in a breakthrough in my work.

Leaving for Portugal in June, I had so many plans: with my newly published book, The Heart of Sacred Listening, starting to travel beyond my known friends, starting to make a difference in the lives of many who have never worked with me, with those friends sharing Sacred Listening with their friends.

For a year, I’ve been creating, ad shooting, my online course, The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening -- a five hour self-paced course, giving you an even deeper access to practicing the kind of listening that heals relationships, creates deep connection, allows you to generate self-compassion, and end the critical voice inside you, opening space to live a life of meaning and purpose. It is just about ready to go live.

I have had so many plans for unfolding life in a certain, specific way. And then life throws us a curveball.

“Man plans, God laughs,” is an old Yiddish saying. You might have heard me say this before.

Or, as my friend, Tommy Dixon, another superb Substack author, wrote to me today, “God uses everything to bring about our salvation.”

Or, as Krishnamurti said, “We cannot change the wind, but we can adjust our sails.”

I have been adjusting my sails, each and every moment

Sometimes, the “not way” shows THE way.

Sometimes, it takes moving oneself out of the drama of pain and into a larger perspective. And that is exactly what happened the other morning, when this poem came through after my morning meditation.

The Not Way

The house plants shout:
“Look! I’m alive!”
Forget your pain, your troubles.
Appreciate the Life around you,
     flourishing everywhere.

The waves white with rising sun
   roll gently
   onto your beach.
Mary Oliver’s words beckon devotionally.
The Buddha has not stopped meditating.
Ganesh, provider of obstacles-to-teach, faces you in all his glory, saying,
“I am only doing my job.”
Even Durga, on her lioness, says,
“You are not broken.  You are alive!”

This is only 
an unexpected curve
on your long, listening, loving road to Home. 

Here is an Inquiry for you to reflect upon: What is your current “not way” that is THE way?”

Many of the poems and meditations that arise in my morning practice find their way, as well, into my paid Substack community, where we explore together what they might be asking of us. It felt right to share this one more broadly, because I suspect many of us know what it is to discover that the “not way” is, in fact, the way.

Before I close, I promised to share a few photographs from Portugal. Looking back now, I see them differently. At the time, I thought they were simply memories from a beautiful trip. Now I see they were also photographs taken along a road that was quietly preparing me for a different journey.

Lisbon

Beauty doesn’t disappear because the path changes. Sometimes we notice it even more.

Lisbon,

A city that welcomed us

Belem Tower

The vineyards

Generations have tended these hillsides one season at a time.

The river

The Douro in the morning each morning instilled such a sense of peace.

The locks

Watching the ship rise and fall through the locks, I found myself thinking that sometimes progress isn’t forward motion at all. Sometimes it is allowing life -- including our troubles -- to lift us to another level.

The Churches and Cathedrals

Fatima:

Paco Episcopal de Porto

Batalha:

“Medieval” streets:

On the Atlantic coast near Porto (it was hot, hot, hot!)

More medieval cities photos:

Assorted photos from life aboard the ship:

Looking back, I realize that Portugal gave me far more than beautiful memories. I was being quietly prepared for the next journey—an adventure I never expected to take.

If this reflection has spoken to something in you, I invite you to continue the journey with me even more deeply. In my paid Substack community, I share the poems, meditations, and inquiries that arise from my reflective practice. Together, we explore not only what they mean, but how they might change the way we live. When our perspective shifts, life looks different. And when life looks different, our actions begin to change as well.

Until next time...

May you discover that what appears to be the “not way” reveals itself, in time, as the way.

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I thought of you often during that journey. In the quiet mornings, as I stepped out onto the small balcony of our ship overlooking the Douro River, I found myself bringing you with me, hoping that the peace I was discovering there might somehow, in its own quiet and mysterious way, find its way to you a…

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In 2023, after returning from a journey through Bali, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, I wrote here about outer travel as a form of inner travel. I wrote about curiosity, discovery, and intentionally cultivating wonder. I ended with these words:

The world is beautiful. Both the inner and the outer, when we see it with a clear heart.

I still “know” this, deep inside.

But this journey to Portugal and Spain asked something more of me.

I had imagined myself walking one or two miles a day through medieval villages and along ancient Roman cobblestone streets, entering monasteries and cathedrals, witnessing the rows and rows of vineyards, sipping the wines of Portugal, green, and white and red, delighting in the port, (after which the city, Porto, is named) noticing the yellow arrows and scallop shells that mark the Portuguese road to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

Much of that came to pass.

The walking did not.

For more than a week, after about thirty minutes on my feet, a severe pain would strike at the place where my left leg meets my hip—sudden, searing, like a hot branding iron. Again and again, I had to stop. I missed things I wanted to see. The guides and other passengers were compassionate and generous, and supportive. I leaned on Don, who was, as always, unfailingly there for me, supportive to the nth. And on the final day of our journey, in Santiago de Compostela—the destination of pilgrims who have walked hundreds of miles along the Way of St. James, from Italy, from Germany, from France, from Portugal—I asked for a wheelchair.

In a wheelchair, we visited the beautiful church, along with the throngs of pilgrims who had walked.

Perhaps because of the energy in the Cathedral, perhaps because my guide of the wheelchair was moving me around so much to see the beautiful light shining through the stained glass, or perhaps because of the bumping cobblestones, I became dizzy. And seasick. We had paid for an excursion named “Tastes of Galicia” -- different restaurants, different tastes. My stomach rebelled. Instead, I slept deeply in our cool hotel room.

New questions now arise: What is the pilgrimage when you cannot travel the path as you intended? What is being called for now? What is life saying to me now?

Perhaps this pilgrimage was never asking me to prove my strength by walking. Perhaps it was asking me to receive support with grace.

I listen, and am listening deeply, for what wants to happen, when upon return home, I discover I have no cartilage in my left hip joint.….

I look forward to sharing with you, in my next Blog, visuals of the rest of the trip to Portugal, which, despite the pain, or, rather, including the pain, was wondrous and welcoming (both the people and place), spacious, celebratory, and satisfying,

I invite you to join me, with some videos and photos of our journey to Santiago and our journey in Santiago, with our guide, Juan.

Here we are in Braga, along the way, where we stopped for lunch, a stop on the St. James Way. Juan shows us the walking paths from all over Europe.

And here is our guides’ stamped passport; walkers get to have their passports stamped along the way:

On the motocoach to Santiago, we came to a place where we stopped for coffee, and saw mussel harvesting platforms. Each platform has 500 ropes strung to it, and the mussels cling to the ropes, and get harvested by hand when they are “ripe.”

And now, Santiago!

The streets:

The Cathedral itself:

The statue of St. James on the outside of the cathedral.

And, finally, our guide in the courtyard, sharing about the different paths from all the countries to, finally, arrive: Meet Juan.

Continuing the Conversation

This experience has returned me to many of the questions at the heart of my book, The Heart of Sacred Listening: Transform Your Relationships, Your Work, and Your Life—pathways for listening when life does not go according to plan, for meeting what is actually here rather than what we expected, and ways in which an interruption can become a doorway for greater information, or for a new future. If you are interested in exploring futher:

The Heart of Sacred Listening: Transform Your Relationships, Your Work, and Your Life

This fall, I am delighted to let you know I will also be opening The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening, a new online course for those who wish to bring these practices more fully into their relationships, leadership, work, and everyday lives. I’ll be sharing more about it in the weeks ahead.

If you are looking for a deeper, live experience, we currently have two places remaining in this fall’s public Heart of Leadership program (September 29–October 1 and October 22–23). You can learn more here:

The Heart of Leadership

And finally, if this reflection speaks to you, I warmly invite you to join me in my twice-monthly paid Substack. It is a quieter, more contemplative space where, through essays, poetry, and reflective practices, we explore what it means to create the conditions in which Presence can enter. Wisdom can enter. Joy can enter.

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On June 23, Don and I left to Portugal for a time of rest, renewal, adventure, and simply being together. When I return, I will be leading an in-house Heart of Leadership course.

After two years of writing The Heart of Sacred Listening: Transform Your Relationships, Your Work, and Your Life, followed by publishing it and then launching it into the world, it feels like the right moment to step away for a little while, take a deep breath, and give myself a pause as I cross this inner and outer threshold before returning home to whatever is waiting next.

While I am away, I will be sharing a few of my favorite essays from the archives, starting with this one, which is perfect, as this post is all about travel, and the last adventure we were on last year.

I chose the archived posts carefully. Each one has stayed with me for a reason.

I have found that when we revisit a conversation, a poem, or a story at a different moment in our lives, we often hear something entirely new. We see with different eyes. We listen with different ears. What did not touch us before suddenly does.

My intention is that these reflections will meet you exactly where you are and offer companionship, insight, encouragement, or perhaps simply a quiet moment of pause.

It is a privilege to share these reflections with you, and I look forward to returning in August with new stories, new experiences, and, no doubt, new things to listen for together.

If these reflections speak to you, please feel free to share them with others you love.

Thank you for traveling this path with me.

There is inner travel and outer travel.

While most of these postings have concerned themselves with inner travel, this is different.

I have always held (outer) travel as a unique opportunity for discovery, exploration, and learning. Learning the ways, the nature of, the thinking, and the behaviors of people who think differently than I do, who have different norms, and who have been brought up in a different culture. When I travel, I am beyond curious: I intentionally cultivate a commitment to wonder.

The amazing, extraordinary trip my husband and I just completed during the month of November from Bali to Bangkok by ship, with five days in Bali, five days in Bangkok, 3 days in Singapore, and many day stops in between – Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Semarang, Surabaya, was just that – amazing. Filled with the newness of new lives, new ways of being, ways of living, new sights, sounds, and smells.

I invite you to join me, through light touching, with photos, through this posting, in the adventure.

The depth of the welcome, people’s openness to share, the warm smiles, forthcoming embraces, gift-giving, and heart extensions were prominent as we discovered, leaned into, and allowed ourselves to be amazed by what we uncovered.

In a world where people have been killing one another over religious differences for years and years, the people of these lands, and their way of life, gave us an opening to visit a world oriented in a different direction.

Throughout Indonesia, people of different religious persuasions live alongside and embrace one another in the same neighborhoods. In Thailand, while predominantly a Buddhist country, the Buddhist temples, Muslim mosques, and Christian churches often stand side by side.

In Bangkok, we were walking through an art neighborhood when we stumbled upon a Buddhist temple with monks chanting. We delighted in people selling their produce and wares on the canal, the open floral markets. We were awed by the beautiful gold Buddhas that abound in the city.

The Grand Palace, a vast compound of palaces and temples, was the location where Governess Anna and the King of Siam (yes, from the movie) actually met – true story.

Then, there are the wooden houses on stilts and plumeria trees, with homes built right on the canals and goods conveyed down it. And, if that weren’t enough, a ginormous Buddha along the canal.

In Kuala Lumpur, the indigenous Mah Meri Malaysians – former sea nomads – live in villages overseen by a shaman. We were treated to a unique mask dance to honor the ancestors.

In Singapore, the world’s only island city-state, the cleanliness of the streets, the super technology, the astounding architecture of the buildings, and the 30 million trees (yes!) and countless flowers of the Gardens by the Bay astounded us with their beauty, entranced us with their uniqueness (brought in from all over the world). A “ship” or “surfboard” spanning three hotels at 58 stories high greeted us throughout our perambulations of the central district. From the top, as we took the elevator up to the “prow of the ship,” the view was amazing.

In Bali, altars are everywhere. Here, the Hindu culture predominates. Even in the colorful market stalls, people light their incense, and altars are in every stall.

Ganesh prevailed. Ganesh– the Indian elephant god who provides and then removes obstacles, predominated as a spirit and a figurehead.

In Ubud, the artist and cultural center of Bali, temples abound in each block. Each family has an enclave that includes a temple for that family. Then there is a “village temple” in each village that villagers (not outsiders) all go to. Then there is a larger public temple that extends for approximately a block and is open to the public. All the temples are beautiful and entrancing.

It was hot. Both the food and the weather.

It was intense. It was exhausting and wild.

At one point, a monkey in the Jungle Forest of Ubud jumped onto my lap as I rested from long hours of walking with my husband. I was delighted! Then, I discovered he was after my necklace! Fortunately, Don brushed him off, and we were able to leave with only a minor scratch, a little “love note!”

Now, I give myself some time to integrate, to be with, to complete, and to look with new eyes and see what I see from here as I start my next inner traveling, the creation of my new future.

The world is beautiful. Both the inner and the outer, when we see it with a clear heart.

The world is beautiful. Both the inner and the outer, when we see it with a clear heart.

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I originally published this reflection on May 22, 2022. As I prepared for our trip to Portugal and looked back through the archives, this piece called to me once again.

I have often found that when we revisit a story, a poem, or a conversation at a different moment in our lives, we hear something entirely new. We see with different eyes. We listen with d…

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Given the recent Eagle Harbor launch and the participation of several Town & Country leaders there, it feels like a natural continuation of the conversation about Sacred Listening, compassion, and seeing through another person’s eyes.

May these next two stories serve as an entrance into living with, and living through, compassion.

In my June 3 post about my father, I found myself entering his life in a way I never had before.

For perhaps the first time, I saw the world through his eyes.

I understood something of the burdens he carried, the choices he made, the limitations he inherited, and the suffering he lived with.

Compassion often begins there: not in agreement, not in approval, but in seeing.

Truly seeing.

Getting into another person’s shoes.

Seeing through their eyes.

Experiencing, if only for a moment, what it is like to be them.

It is a deeply needed and deeply missing practice in today’s world.

I. Nelson Mandela

There is a story about Nelson Mandela that beautifully illustrates this.

After his inauguration as President of South Africa, Mandela attended a formal banquet. At one point during the evening, he invited two men to leave their seats and sit beside him.

The men had been prison guards.

For many years, they had helped oversee the prison where Mandela spent twenty-seven years of his life.

Mandela later said that while in prison he came to realize that hatred was poisoning him. He also realized that he could never free his people if he did not also free his oppressors.

So he began learning about the guards.

Their families.

Their struggles.

Their humanity.

That evening, seated beside them, Mandela introduced the men to the guests and then said:

“Please forgive me for my years of hatred toward you.”

The two men broke down in tears and asked Mandela to forgive them for what they had done.

Rather than using that historic moment to celebrate victory or vengeance, Mandela chose compassion.

In doing so, he began to heal a nation.

II. Ed Loverich

The second story is much closer to home.

My home.

Bainbridge Island.

When I first moved here, my dear friend Ruth, who was helping my husband and me settle in, asked, “Have you been to T&C yet?”

I had no idea what she was talking about. “No,” I replied. “What’s T&C?”

She looked astonished.

“You mean you haven’t been to T&C? Why, T&C is the spiritual center of Bainbridge Island!”

I assumed she meant a church.

She didn’t.

She meant a grocery store.

And, in a way, she was right.

Town & Country Market’s mission is simple: “Nourishing the quality of life.”

And that can only happen through the heart.

Recently, someone who works at T&C now, Shawn Stark, shared an early story about one of the founders, Ed Loverich.

Shawn told it this way:

“I was working one day when a guest came through my line, admiring the pictures that are displayed from our Grand Opening. He told me that his first job was at this market as a teenager.

While we were talking, he asked if I wanted to hear a story about Ed.

“Absolutely,” I said.

He began to tell me a story about a special project that Ed gave him anytime a certain guest came into the store.

Ed told the young man that whenever he noticed this local lady come in, it was his job to make sure that when she was in a certain grocery aisle, he would distract any guests who might want to shop in that same aisle, leaving the lady to have the aisle to herself.

The young man did what was requested of him.

Until one day, he approached Ed and said, “Ed, I think this lady is stealing from us.”

Ed responded to the young man, “I know she is stealing from us, and I also know that her husband died last year, and she does not have any other family on the island.”

Ed explained to the young man that he was also aware that the local lady did not have money to buy food.

So she steals cat food to eat and survive.

The young man realized that he was not just providing a service to his community; he was helping Ed preserve this lady’s dignity.

The gentleman said that he believed the lady never knew what Ed was doing for her.

But he saw the incredible way that you can impact a person’s whole life with empathy.

The person to whom this story was told said:

“I will never forget this story.”

Nor will I.

Because now I have no choice but to see through her eyes—to imagine her loneliness, her hunger, her grief, and her fear.

Perhaps that is where compassion begins: not with judgment, not with fixing, but with the willingness to enter another person’s life long enough to see the world through their eyes.

Like I did with my father.

The Greek poet Yannis Ritsos wrote:

“Now I have no choice but to see with your eyes.

So I am not alone.

So you are not alone.”

An Invitation: Who in your life are you being invited to see through new eyes?

I invite you to take a few moments now and think of someone you disagree with.

Someone you have given up on.

Someone you do not understand.

Perhaps close your eyes.

See through theirs.

What has their life taught them?

What burdens have they carried?

What losses have shaped them?

What dreams do they still hold?

Who are they, really?

Allow them to enter your heart.

What do you see?

What happens next?

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Two days ago, with Father’s Day in mind, I rediscovered a letter my cousin Dudu had written to my father.

Reading it at this time, I was startled.

Seeing my father through Dudu’s eyes revealed that much of what I had remembered as severity and strictness was, in fact, something else entirely.

And I discove…

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As I think about that gathering, I find myself thinking about Bainbridge Island itself.

This place where people still greet one another by name.

Where bookstores and markets become gathering places.

Where community is not an abstract idea but something lived.

A place that remembers.

A place where neighbors cared for the strawberry fields of Japanese families after they were forced from their homes and sent away.

A place where the Exclusion Memorial stands, reminding us of both the wound and the courage.

A place where belonging matters.

Sacred Listening begins there.

In remembering one another.

In caring for what belongs to all of us.

In refusing to let another person’s humanity disappear from view.

Two weeks ago, I attended a celebration of Japanese heritage on Bainbridge Island.

There was music, storytelling, memory, and history made present once again through the lives of those who carry it.

And there was a song.

The song was titled, “Why Should I Leave?”

As I listened, I found myself thinking not only about those Japanese families who were forced from their homes, but about a larger human longing.

The longing to belong.

The longing to remain connected to the people, places, and communities we love.

The longing to be seen, to be known.

The longing to be remembered.

The song was introduced and then, the children sang.

Perhaps that was the moment that moved me most.

Because the song was no longer only about history.

It was about inheritance…the passing of memory from one generation to the next.

The passing of care.

The passing of belonging.

Tomorrow evening, we’ll gather again.

Not to celebrate a book so much as to celebrate what the book points toward.

The possibility that, through listening, we might remember that we belong to one another.

That when we truly listen, we are one.

And perhaps that remembering is one of the most important things any community can do.

After two years of living with these stories and teachings, it feels deeply meaningful to gather in community and send this book into the world as an invitation to deeper listening, connection, and belonging.

I do so trusting that the ripples of being in true communication with one another will continue to spread outward into our families, our workplaces, our communities, and our world—a world so thirsty for the healing balm of genuine human connection.

If you live on Bainbridge Island, in Kitsap County, or in the greater Seattle area, I would be delighted to see you there.

For more information, RSVP details, and a free introduction to Sacred Listening resources, please visit:

https://www.galeleadership.com

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There is excitement.

There is gratitude.

And, if I am honest, there is also a little nervousness.

Releasing a book into the world is an act of trust.

What I am discovering is that every meaningful creation eventually asks us to let go. Whether it’s a …

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On Wednesday evening, June 11, at 6:30 p.m., Eagle Harbor Book Company here on Bainbridge Island will be hosting a live launch gathering for The Heart of Sacred Listening: Transform Your Relationships, Your Work, and Your Life.

The evening will include readings from the book, reflection, conversation, audience participation, Q&A, and book signing. More than a traditional author event, my intention is to create an opening into Sacred Listening itself - a gathering around presence, connection, relationship, and what becomes possible when we truly listen to one another.

After two years of living with these stories and teachings, it feels deeply meaningful to gather in community and send this book into the world as an invitation to deeper listening, connection, and belonging.

I do so trust that the ripples of being in true communication with one another will continue to spread outward into our families, our workplaces, our communities, and our world — a world so thirsy for the healing balm of authentic human connection.

For those of you who live on Bainbridge Island, in the greater Seattle area, or nearby, I would be delighted to see you, and be with you.

More information, including RSVP details, can be found here, where you can click to get to the Eagle Harbor Book page:

RSVP Here

And now, I’d like to share one of the stories that lives near the heart of both the book and the evening itself. You may have read this before…it never hurts to read a good story more than once. Each changes each time, because each time we are not quite the same person as the person who last read it.

The Story of How I Learned This Practice

It was December 1972. I was twenty-seven years old, sitting in a banquet chair in the ballroom of the Jack Tarr Hotel in San Francisco. Two hundred people surrounded me, all of us searching for something—meaning, direction, awakening. A charismatic man with a booming voice stood at the front of the room, leading a transformational training that promised to open our lives.

It was the perfect moment for me to be there.
I was in the middle of an identity crisis—newly divorced, untethered, unsure of who I was without the roles I had so dutifully played: wife, teacher, good girl, obedient daughter. My inner world was splintering in ways I had not expected, and I felt lost. Adrift. Without a lifeboat.

So I threw myself into the work, listening to people share, watching a new kind of honesty emerge in the room. I began to see how many assumptions, and how many unexamined stories, I had been living inside of, especially about my father.

The turning point came unexpectedly.

As I contemplated taking a year’s leave from teaching to explore this new path of developmental inner work, a fierce internal voice rose up and said:

“You can’t. Daddy won’t let you.”

I argued back at that voice.
I’m twenty-seven years old. I can do what I want.
But the voice persisted.
“Daddy won’t let you.”

Its tone was sharp, punitive, and rooted in fear.
And when the trainer asked us to look at the story we were living inside of around whatever issue we were dealing with, my story was unmistakably clear:

My father is a controller.
A manipulator.
A man who wants me to do what he wants, not what I want.

I had years of “evidence” to prove that story:
the hours of daily piano practice…
the curfew of ten p.m., even through my senior year in high school
the pressure for straight A’s…
the night he showed up at a high-school make-out party to take me home…
the insistence that I marry a Jewish man…
the constant vigilance over my choices.

I was sure I was right about him.

But the trainer didn’t ask whether I was right.
He asked something much harder:

“Can you find another story—one that fits the same evidence—but empowers you rather than disempowers you?”

I didn’t want another story.
I wanted my righteous one.

But something inside me—maybe the twenty-seven-year-old who was drowning in old identities— called to me to work on this. I wanted to feel joy. I wanted to feel aliveness. I wanted to experience freedom. And I knew I was stuck.

So I ran the “movie” of my life in my mind again and again, unwilling to stop until I saw something new.

And then, like a sudden flash of light, I did.

The Moment Everything Changed

I saw my father not as the villain in my movie but as a man shaped by his own impossible circumstances.

He had been born in a Jewish shtetl in Ukraine, raised in hardship, his own father murdered by Cossacks. He immigrated at fourteen, worked through the Depression, educated himself through sheer grit, built a life through discipline and determination. He lived through my mother’s illness and death at my age of 16, raising me alone while holding a demanding career as a Mechanical Engineer.

He wasn’t trying to control me.
He was trying to forward me.
To give me the life he never had.
To contribute to my happiness in the only ways he knew.

The kaleidoscope turned—just one click—and everything inside it rearranged.

Suddenly, the father I had been resisting my whole life was a father who had loved me fiercely and profoundly and was committed to my success.

I felt my heart break open.
Tears came.
The world shifted.

And so did I.

The Phone Call That Became My Awakening

I couldn’t wait to talk with him. The next morning, I called him from my home. My heart was pounding.

“How was the course?” he asked, the first question.

“Are you sitting down?” I said.

He wasn’t—but he sat.

Being with him, fully and honestly, I apologized. Deeply.

I told him I was sorry for the many years of resistance.
Sorry for how I had listened to him—through suspicion rather than trust, through resistance rather than a willingness to listen.
I apologized for the walls I had built.

He was very quiet. I could tell he was listening; listening, like something important was happening.

And then I told him what I had discovered:

“I realized, Dad, that all you ever wanted was my happiness.”

He was silent. For a while.
Completely quiet.

And then I heard him weeping.

He wept for five minutes—five full, spacious minutes in which the past -- who I had been being with him, who I had been being for me -- washed away between us.

And what was there was nothing.

Just respect and love.

When he could speak again, he said:

“That’s all I ever wanted for you, Marilyn. (Marilyn was his original name for me).
That’s all I’ve ever wanted.
And I thought I was going to have to die
without you ever knowing this.”

Hearing those words changed me.
Something dark and heavy dissolved.

And then came the next test.

“Before we hang up,” I said, with a little fear, deep down inside. “There’s something else. I’ve decided to take a year’s leave of absence from teaching.”

I took a deep breath.

Silence.
Then an explosion.

“YOU’RE GOING TO DO WHAT?”

He yelled. Loudly. Passionately.
I shut down. My heart retreated. My old story returned: There he is—the controller, the one who won’t let me live my life.

My inner voice roared back.

You’re an adult! You can do whatever you want with your life!

And then—thank goodness—I looked at the small piece of paper I had written before calling him, an important piece of paper.
A prompt.
A lifeline.

I promised myself that unless I could answer “yes” to the following question, I would not speak.

This was the question:

“Can you hear his commitment to your happiness?”

The answer was no.

So I said nothing.

He kept yelling.

My internal voice started giving up:
Fine. I’ll do what he wants. I won’t go.

Then my eye landed on the prompt again.
“Can you hear his commitment to your happiness?”
Still no.

I realized I needed to shift my listening, not his speaking.

So I took a breath, and with all the courage I could muster, I moved from the story I was hearing him through. I stopped listening through the filter of “He is trying to control me,” and instead I listened for the deeper truth:

His concern
was a form of love.

His commitment was to my happiness.

Once I shifted, the entire conversation shifted.

I became calm. Present. Interested.

“What are you worried about?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“What do you see that has you so concerned?”

And suddenly, he wasn’t yelling.
He was sharing.
He was a father who loved his daughter and didn’t want her to leap into the unknown when her life already felt unstable. He thought that it was a really bad idea for this time.

Once I could hear him—really hear him—his love came through as clear as mountain air.

And when I shared with him that part of the process of self-discovery was exploring the unknown, and that I was comfortable in that territory and wanted to explore it, he understood.
He even supported it.
He became curious, almost excited.

He asked me if I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

And when I shared with him I wanted to be in the mountains of Colorado during Fall and Winter, which brought him to the experience he had had as a boy, growing up, he said, with wonder in his voice:

“That will be so wonderful for you.
Do you think I might visit?”

A year later, he did.

The Principle:

The Practice of Listening Beyond Your Story

What changed that day?
Not my father.
Not his personality.

Not his worry for me.
Not his past.

What changed was my listening.

I shifted from listening through a hardened story called “he’s controlling” —
to listening for what was underneath his words:
his commitment to contribute to my happiness.

This is the heart of the practice I learned:

The Practice of Listening Beyond Your Story

is the practice of becoming aware of the filters, interpretations, and inherited narratives through which you listen—and choosing to set them aside long enough to hear the deeper truth.

When we listen this way:

• defensiveness softens

• understanding opens

• connection becomes possible

• communication, in other words, listening, becomes a doorway to partnership

• and a new world of relationships become available

This one practice transformed my relationship with my father. He and I had a loving relationship for many years. He lived to be 98.

The practice of what I call “Sacred Listening” — listening for good intent, for the Divine in another, gave me a new future, a future built on partnership instead of resistance, on possibility instead of fear, and on deep listening instead of old stories.

It also became foundational to my work, my teaching, my coaching, and the heart of my life’s purpose.

The Teaching of this Story

And here is what I found to be true:

When we shift the way we listen, we shift the way the world appears before us.

And this is super important. Because if someone appears to you as a threat, you act one way. If someone appears to you as a partner, a friend, and a collaborator, you act another way.

In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge says that in the world of transformational leadership, you “re-perceive the world, and your relationship to that world.”

Listening is the key to transforming your perception.

Communication opens the doorway to connection.
Conflict morphs into understanding.
Relationships live on sacred ground.
And life itself becomes a place where love can enter.

That is the heart of listening.
And it transforms everything.

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I was sitting in a most comfortable chair in the cabin we rented for a long weekend at Iron Springs Resort, on the Pacific Coast of Washington, having just opened my Mother’s Day presents from my daughter. Thoughtful presents all: a card, rum cake, a candle, a roll of chocolate Necco’s, a facial cleanser, and most of all, a watercolor painting she made for me, placed lovingly in a Japanese frame.

All spoke of love.
Of a lifetime of challenges and nourishment, struggles and peace.
My life behind me.
My life in front of me.

The silence between notes.

I have just completed two years of getting up at 5:30 every morning, on fire, ready to write.

And write I did.

My astrologer had given me a two-year launch date of April 28, 2026 — what at the time seemed impossibly far away. A long road ahead.

And it was.
And it wasn’t.

I was passionate. Fierce. The stories kept pouring out.

I knew the reader was my friend, my colleague, my fellow pilgrim on a journey toward transformation. Someone knocking on my door wanting to shift their relationships:
to themselves — letting go of the critic within, cultivating compassion and forgiveness;
for others — healing broken relationships and deepening loving ones;
for work — the foundation of all accomplishment;
for life itself — seeing obstacles as great teaching opportunities;
and for the sacred — finding God within, your own inner spirit, revealing a life of meaning, wonder, and purpose.

The reader was my companion and my friend, a hungry heart ready to open, to be contributed to by stories of people they would never meet in person.

Then shooting an online course 2,000 miles away that I was not happy with.

And a few months later, in my own office/studio, we filmed, newly.
At my desk.

And I loved it.

Soon, that course will be ready to make its own contribution to whoever wishes to have Sacred Listening in their world, forwarding them in The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening.

And now, in early June, another book launch:
this time live,
at our beloved local bookstore on Bainbridge Island,
Eagle Harbor Book Co. —
a place where the community gathers,
and the heart of Sacred Listening can once more soar into the world.

But for now,
for this weekend,
a full stop.

A descent into family life:
husband,
daughter,
a devoted dog.

A fireplace.
My poetry book to write in.
Board games.
Movies.

We watched Amadeus for the fifth time, letting Mozart’s music stir our hearts.

I listened to the crackling fire and watched the flames lick their way up the chimney walls.

I walked out onto the balcony and saw my daughter playing with her big, beautiful black German shepherd, Cruz.

I stopped.

The voices in my head stopped.
The obligations stopped.
The “shoulds” stopped.

A new threshold crossing.

Presence came easily there.

I listened to the silence.

I entered into a daydreaming space — the edge between my interior world and where it meets the outer world.

A poem emerged.

I share it with you in its first draft form, just as it came onto the page.

May its spirit speak to you, whether or not you understand what it says.

I’m not sure I understand it either.

For now,
let the poem rest.
Let my heart rest.

And may you rest as well,
in the silence between notes.

Longing — by Amba Gale

I want to write about longing.

About the heart’s desire
to marry its own soul.

There, on the path before you —
the dark path
where no one else
has ever traveled —

underneath the trees,
there in the wood,
it meets itself.

Its future,
glimmering, sparkling,
looking up at you
like a timid animal in the trees.

We are in the forest now.

The deer glances up, shimmering.

The future, barely seen
in the darkness of the woods.

You
join with your heart’s longing.

The fawn,
invisible to everyone else,
follows you
out of the woods,

accompanies you
as you flow through life,
glowing, growing older each day,

until,
at last,

joined with your soul,

you and the future
(which has followed you from that wood)

become your life.

Peace.

Before I close, a few invitations for those walking this path with me.

If you live in the Bainbridge Island, Kitsap, or greater Seattle area, I would love to see you at the live launch of The Heart of Sacred Listening at Eagle Harbor Book Company on June 11 at 6:30 PM.

The evening will include readings, reflection, conversation, and exploration of Sacred Listening itself. The RSVP information is available through Eagle Harbor Books.

The evening will include readings, reflections, conversation, and shared exploration around Sacred Listening itself. I would truly love to see you there, to share in a community gathering.

I have also recently created a new introductory PDF doorway into Sacred Listening, available at:
https://galeleadership.com/books/the-heart-of-sacred-listening/

(You may need to scroll down slightly to find it.)

Please feel free to receive it yourself, and also to share it with friends who may resonate with this work.

And finally, I am happy to say that a self-paced online course, The Art and Practice of Sacred Listening, is now beginning to take shape and will be released in the months ahead.

More and more, I find myself interested not only in sharing ideas, but in creating spaces where thoughtful people can reflect, listen, and journey together.

More on that soon.

Amba

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When I wrote this poem in 2019, I did not yet speak about Sacred Listening in the way I do today.

And yet, looking back, I can see that my whole life was already being shaped by it. In this case, I had cultivated a Sacred Listening to Nature itself, speaking to me, guiding me on the path I needed to walk.

I wrote these poems at Isle Royale National Park i…

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It was April 28 at 2:00 PM PDT—the launch of The Heart of Sacred Listening—a moment I had been preparing for intensely for nearly two months.

An invisible wall I had not even known was there—questioning myself, questioning my life, questioning the contribution my life has been—simply disappeared in those ninety minutes.

In front of me, on that miraculous screen, were the presences of people I have walked with—some for fifty years—alongside those with whom I have more recently shared life, and others I had never met. Fifty-six people gathered that afternoon…

The listening was profound.
The speaking was profound.
And the listening for ripples was profound.

Person after person—leaders in their lives and in their organizations—spoke with such authenticity, passion, and clarity about the difference Sacred Listening has made in their lives… and in the lives of those they, in turn, have invited into this work.

I had been preparing for that launch for two months, extending myself beyond what was comfortable—creating invitations (social media, anyone?)—on behalf of introducing The Heart of Sacred Listening: Transform Your Relationships, Your Work, and Your Life to the world, and sending it forth on eagle’s wings.

You may have been there.
You may have listened to the recording.

And if not…
see if you can feel your way into the room—
into the listening,
the speaking,
the field we were held in together.

Today, I’d like to share with you a moment from that gathering.

This is a short excerpt from the launch, where I read from the book—my very own, very personal first experience of what I now call Sacred Listening, and the difference it can make in a life… my life.

You may have read this story before—I first shared it here on January 28.
You may have heard me tell it—if you’ve taken The Heart of Leadership, it’s the story I share at the end of Day One.
You may have read it in the book itself.

And still…

As my dear friend Rick Lewis, of Honestly Human (highly recommended), says: “I’ve heard this story about your father several times now and it re-inspires me every time I hear it.”

Each time I tell it, another dimension of the story reveals something powerful to me for my own life.

So—enjoy.

P.S. Several people have asked where they can find The Heart of Sacred Listening: Transform Your Relationships, Your Work, and Your Life.

You can learn more about the book here: https://galeleadership.com/books/the-heart-of-sacred-listening/

And a small note:

During the month of May, I am taking some time to listen inwardly and shape what comes next as offerings for paid subscribers, now that the serialization of the book is complete.

In the meantime, I will be sharing recently written poetry, with visuals, every other Sunday.

If you feel called to receive those offerings, you are warmly welcome to become a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

The online launch of the book is complete. I share about it with you here.

Please know: during the month of May, I am taking a conscious pause—a time to listen inwardly, reflect, and be in inquiry as to what this paid subscriber space is wanting to become.

While I do so, I’ll be sending you a poem and visual offering every other week during th…

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Hello,

Tomorrow, we gather.

Over these past weeks, I’ve been sharing with you the journey that became The Heart of Sacred Listening-
the stories, the thresholds, the moments that asked to be lived…
and, eventually, to be written.

And now, we gather-each in our own way.

Reserve Your Spot

This gathering is not a presentation.

It is a space…
to pause,
to listen,
to be together in a different way-
in service of something that is deeply being called into our lives…
and into the world.

In this past week, I have found myself listening more deeply for what is truly being asked of this time.

What is taking shape is something simple, and very real-

a space of presence,
of shared reflection,
of honoring what has brought this book here…
and what it may now bring.

More than anything, it is an invitation into the experience that lives at the heart of the book itself.

If you know you are already joining us, wonderful, and a deep welcome.

If not, please know, I would love to have you join us.

And if there is someone else that you would love to invite, please feel free to invite them as well.

April 28
2:00-3:15 PM PT
(online)

You can reserve your place here:

Reserve Your Spot

And if the book has been calling to you, it is now available there as well.

With love,
Amba

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