Listening is an essential skill for healthy relationships, both with God and with other people. But it is more than that: listening is a way of life. Adam McHugh places listening at the heart of our spirituality, our relationships and our mission. Heed the call to the listening life, and hear what God is doing in you and the world.

Daily meditations taken from the works of an acclaimed novelist, essayist, and preacher who has articulated what he sees with a freshness and clarity and energy that hails our stultified imaginations.

What is this fleeting experience that sometimes hits us when we listen to music? Through several short essays adapted from lectures given at Vanderbilt University between 2008 and 2012, author Joshua McGuire answers this question while exploring what it takes to become better listeners of music. McGuire's premise is that listening to music in a fuller way shows us a fuller way to live, clarifying the way we listen to everything. Ironically, better listening involves a recognition of the absence of time experienced amidst profound silence. After all, the purpose of music is to bring us to silence. “As we listen, we become the silence in which music happens. We disappear.”

Listening is an essential skill for healthy relationships, both with God and with other people. But it is more than that: listening is a way of life. Adam McHugh places listening at the heart of our spirituality, our relationships and our mission. Heed the call to the listening life, and hear what God is doing in you and the world.

We live in a world of noise where everyone is so quick to speak. When we slow down and give someone our full attention, we offer them a safe place to be fully heard and accepted. Hear’s the Thing is a story about what is possible when someone is brave enough to listen to others… and, ultimately, themselves without judgement. For Cody Alan, one of country music’s most famous on-air radio and TV personalities, listening to other people has always been a crucial part of his role. It was by fostering his ability to hear others that he discovered the person he most needed to listen to was himself. Listening ultimately led him on a journey of self-discovery where he found the courage to come out as gay, the openness to question spiritually, and the strength to explore a new definition of parenting and family. In his debut memoir, Hear’s the Thing, Cody shares some of the many lessons he’s learned along the way such as: How to actively listen with empathy and without judgment Why a willingness to “let people in” better equips you to receive from others How genuine attentiveness can help you build healthier and deeper relationships The art of listening is often lost but Cody’s story will inspire you to hear that inner voice that is leading you to a deeper connection with yourself and the people around you.

From his childhood in Waco, Texas, where he took expert care of nine small cousins while the adults ate Sunday lunch, to Princeton and an offer from Broadway, to medical and psychoanalytic training, to the exquisite observations into newborn behavior that led babies to be seen in an entirely new light, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton's life has been one of innovation and caring. Known internationally for the Touchpoints theory of regression and growth in infants and young children, Brazelton is also credited for bringing the insights of child development into pediatrics, and for his powerful advocacy in Congress. In Learning to Listen, fans of Brazelton and professionals in his field can follow both the roots of a brilliant career and the evolution of child-rearing into the twenty-first century.

In this memoir, lifelong minister of the gospel Leighton Ford tells his story as a personal history of listening for God's voice. Beginning with his earliest memories, he recounts the different ways God has spoken to him, and the different ways he has learned to listen. What emerges is not just an account of a long and faithful life of Christian service, but a picture of the Christian life—the life of listening.