Listening with open hearts

If you click this LINK you can read the poem from the book The Art of Walking Upright, which along with the words of Aunty Rangi, have inspired me to write this post.

t’s funny how the universe conspires to place in our path provocations that touch both heart and mind. This week, the poem The Art of Walking Upright by Glenn Colquhoun and the words of Aunty Rangi in Still Being Punished have done exactly that.

Aunty Rangi’s story reminds us how paradoxical our place can feel here in Aotearoa — for both Tangata Whenua and Tangata Tiriti. When a Pākehā relative was invited to whaikōrero on her marae, she wept. As a child, she had been strapped for speaking te reo Māori - her own mother tongue. Watching that young Pākehā man stand proudly and speak in the same language that had been beaten out of her was both beautiful and unbearable.

Her tears were not of judgement, but of pain, irony, and love, a powerful reminder of the long shadow of colonisation, and of the tenderness required as we walk forward together.

The poem by Colquhoun echoes this sense of paradox — that to stand upright in the world, we must learn to walk humbly within it.

I’ve been reflecting lately on the power of pūrākau and ngā kōrero o neherā, how they hold ancestral knowledge, wisdom, and emotion in ways that invited deep listening.

Perhaps this is what we are called to do now: to listen, not to respond, justify, or defend — but to understand.