Everyone has a voice
I had felt the responsibility before I departed upon this project to give it my all and that anticipation has only magnified. It isn’t just my duty to be fully committed and to honor the personal and fiscal support the project has received. Rather, it is that I am inviting people to talk with me in a mutually open, vulnerable and candid manner. Listening attentively is only one feature of this arrangement. More noticeably we are actively committing to each other emotionally and psychologically. On occasion this has been viscerally moving. In discussing her work in community, Lisa in Hastings asserted that “Everyone has a voice.” That reminded me of John in Dannebrog who did not have a physical voice because of an ailment, yet he was expressive in so many ways. It also painfully reminded me of Owen in St. Paul who recounted that, “I kinda felt like I might have had some brain damage when I almost drowned. That that’s part of the reason why I’m an introvert. That there are just certain …