Holding Your Question Within Me

By Fr. Daniel McCarthy, O.S.B.

A monastic perspective on the value of intentional dialogue, from a Kansas monk in Rome.

This article was originally published in our March 2025 Kansas Monks newsletter. Read the whole newsletter at www.kansasmonks.org/newsletter/march2025

I came to realize the importance of holding the idea of another person within myself and expressing it in my own thoughts. This is a deeper form of listening to another person, so highly prized in the Rule of St. Benedict and in monastic life. Practicing such profound listening could help monastics come to greater understanding of one another, and help us all make our world a better place.

When I write, I can first make my own statement. Second, I can also directly quote the statement of another person. Third, I can take the statement of another person and hold it within myself, in my own thoughts and then retell it in my own words and from my own perspective.

These perspectives are embedded in our daily ways of talking, in ordinary speech, but awareness of these shifting perspectives can help anyone communicate more profoundly. This practice can help people negotiate conflicts with deeper sympathy.

The ability to hold the comments of another person in my own speech shows:

• respect for the other person,

• my own integration of their ideas,

• my ability to present their ideas from my own perspective.

It also gives the other person the opportunity to hear their own words reflected back at them as told from my perspective. I don’t have to agree, but I can practice profound listening. I would like to give a simple example for your consideration. To highlight the different voices, I shall assume that that we are speaking together, and you ask me a question. Then I shall restate your question directly and finally from my own perspective.

You can ask me a direct question. Who are you?

I can directly restate your question. You are asking me: “Who are you?”.

I restate your question from my perspective. You are asking who I am.

These three questions express different levels of listening which can help people:

• to hear oneself,

• to hear others,

• to hear others in my own speech and even

• to help others hear themselves as retold from my own perspective.

Who are you?

This is all you need say when speaking your own question. This can be written as a full sentence which begins with a capital letter W and ends with a question mark. This is as direct as speech can be and so indicates your direct relationship with me. You are presenting yourself directly to me. There is no indication, however, that I am listening.

You are asking me: “Who are you?”

Now there is an indication that I am listening. I have heard you carefully and can reproduce your question directly. I can say this with an inflection in my voice to distinguish the two different people speaking, my own statement and then your question. If you are listening, you may realize that you have been heard and that I have respected your own formulation of the question which is now written within quotation marks. Two distinct voices are in direct expression, and this indicates direct relationships. You ask me a question which I am repeating.

You are asking who I am.

When I listen to your question and take it into myself, I can then retell your question from my own perspective. This shows a deeper integration of your question into my own thought. Direct speech remains in this statement because I speak directly, “you are asking ...”, and so I am presenting myself directly to you.

But I have now taken your question into myself and then I restate your question from my perspective. The direct question, “Who are you?”, is now given indirectly, that is from my perspective.

So I am both presenting myself directly to you, and I am presenting your question indirectly through my own statement.

This type of indirect speech is simple to do when speaking. Typically the subject and the verb change places in the sentence, as indicated in the following diagram.

You can see that the question word “who” remains, but the words “are” and “you” exchange places in the two sentences. The word “you” originally referred to me, and so has now become “I”, and your verb “are” becomes my verb “am”, because now I am talking from my own perspective.

This exchange also happens in writing, with a few additional indicators. You can see that the second line does not have quotation marks because it is no longer a direct quote. The capital “W” become a small “w” because I am no longer giving your full sentence. The question mark is dropped in favor of a period because now this sentence is my own statement, although your question is contained within but told indirectly in my statement.

Holding your question within me.

When I retell your question from my own perspective, I have come to a deeper level of listening. This does not mean that I agree with you, only that I can hold your question within myself. I could indicate disapproval by saying, “It is strange that after all these years you should ask who I am”, or approval as in, “You are right to ask who I am”. But I need not judge your question when I simply retell it from my perspective.

This retelling allows you to hear your question no longer from your own perspective, but now from my perspective. This may help you to reflect further on what you have said. The opportunity for reflection reveals both:

• your own words,

• your own words reported in my speech and

• you hearing your own ideas retold from my perspective.

All you need do is respond, “Yes”, and now I can see that you recognize what you originally said as retold from my own perspective.

These levels of listening remind me of the psychological insight which goes something like this:

I see me - you see me.

I see you - you see that I see you.

I see you in me - you see that I see you in me.

I see that you see yourself in me - you see that I see you see yourself in me.

Such profound listening happens in ordinary speech, and it surely draws us into deeper communion.

I learned how to talk about all of this while studying the Latin language, because studying another language helps me to reflect on my own language. We can state this in Latin.

Quis es?

Who are you?

Me rogas: “Quis es?”

You are asking me: “Who are you?”

Rogas quis sim.

You are asking who I am.

This last one we express in a different way in Latin than in English. In Latin we put the indirect question into the subjunctive mode of speaking, producing sim rather than es.

I would like to think that the study of Latin helped our ancestors in monastic life to hold one another’s questions within themselves as a normal experience of listening more deeply to one another. My hope is that by practicing such deep listening and holding one another’s questions within ourselves we might come to a greater appreciation of our differences in our mutual exchange of fraternal communion.

Fr. Daniel McCarthy, O.S.B.

is a monk of St. Benedict’s Abbey currently living Rome, Italy.