FREE EVENT: Reimagining Masculinity: Becoming Trustworthy

What is trustworthy listening and why is it an imperative in the project of truth and reconciliation?

In this talk, we will explore how an apprenticeship to the discipline of listening is integral to healing, and juxtapose the work of becoming a trustworthy listener with the work of healing masculinity.

What does the rise of the #MeToo Movement ask of men? In what ways is it an invitation to reimagine and embody masculinity as a force for reconciliation, unification, and healing?

How do we reclaim masculinity when for so long it as been–exclusively but in a large part–an instrument of oppression?

How do we look back on what it has meant to be a man, so as to envision what it could mean?

We have to begin with listening, but we cannot listen if we don’t understand what listening actually is, why we don’t do it, and why we must.

About Andrew Forsthoefel

I’m a writer, speaker, and peace activist living in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts. After graduating from Middlebury College, I spent eleven months trekking across the United States with a sign on my pack that read “Walking to Listen,” recording interviews with the people I met along the way. I co-produced a radio documentary about this project that was featured on Transom.org and This American Life, and my book, Walking to Listen (Bloomsbury, 2017), tells the tale of the journey.

Drawing from the experiences of my year-long initiation on the road, and from the abundance of lived fodder that comes from an active contemplative practice, I offer my work as a contribution to the collective project of learning how to be human together with love, by listening—united by our diversity, empowered by sharing the inherent vulnerability of being alive, and freed by opening to truth.

This work comes in three ways: I write, putting my wonder to words. I speak, spinning stories and mining them for insight. And I teach, exploring the practice of listening as a catalyst for connective presence, personal transformation, and peacemaking.