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In gathering we may consciously surrender a piece of our autonomy (“self-law;” living by one’s own laws) to the gathering itself.

:- Doug.

Ours is a print-literate culture. Writing is so pervasive—signs, headlines, emails, texts, and much else assails each of us by the minute. But we miss that we also are an oral culture. After all, “Don’t talk to strangers” came to us not in books. Then there are all those songs. You hum and you sing, and these tell you how to live—and you follow.

So we ought to make conscious some things we live by, but seldom set to writing. Not to give writing a claim to them, but to give us claim to our heritage that is often not acknowledged. These are part of the luggage elders carry for all of us. What oral text of our culture do you carry?

:- Doug.

We humans have an absolute need almost daily to go unconscious as witness our nightish sleep.

:- Doug.

It’s not how good you are. It’s that you are good even a little.

:- Doug.

We are prisoners, incarcerated by our eyes in pictures of our selves. We have envisioned ourselves as lawyers, interior decorators, laborers, welders, ride share drivers. Have we seen ourselves as world makers, even as worlds? Have we seen ourselves as our microbiome sees us, inscrutable, large, moving to unknown beats? Have we seen ourselves capable with a word or a laugh to topple kings and queens? No, we see ourselves powerless. (But we are powerless as Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s God.) Out beyond our prison bars, past the grey drapes, panoramas!

:- Doug.

What is our core identity, that of the two of us, gathered?

:- Doug.

What if we contemplate together? Here is gathered contemplation.

:- Doug.

Itching I am: I realize it may be because of the community of microscopic living beings crawling and gnawing on my skin. I am community. But why do I suppose (as I apparently do) in only one direction with me the culmination? Turn and maybe I am the little critter!

:- Doug.

Shift to bedtime story. Join with me and my grandchildren here around me, in their living room as I concoct a bed-time story.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2455

Doubt is essential
To be human
Weakness opens

Please pass it on.

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With whom can you get yourself comfortable speaking gibberish—by which I mean tohu-bohu, by which I mean euphonia? Bring forth in tone and rhythm what is moving around behind your face.

:- Doug.

Perhaps there is a ritual
we can enact
beyond predictable, controllable, repeatable

:- Doug.

Kindness doesn’t have to work. The purpose is not to win over X people by Y date. The purpose is to be better at being persons. Ourselves.

:- Doug.

As Jesus said, “It’s not over till it’s over. And it’s never over!”

:- Doug.

We could decide to treat all this as a joke, and laugh until we cry. No, we must. When we get there we arrive for a time.

:- Doug.

Play with me.

:- Doug.

I’m on to something. Why do I insist on giving it names of my choosing?

:- Doug.

Maybe the next station will be an easy relationship—“Hi, old friend. Sit a spell.”

:- Doug.

We are integral
to all there is
doing fascinating
being fun
functionable artfully
processual
meaning-fully

:- Doug.

Maybe it is not a new state, simply a remembering why we are doing this.

:- Doug.

It’s not about learning something one or both of us can use; it is about being together.

:- Doug.

Can we describe our divinity without anthropomorphizing?

:- Doug.

Which came first, persons or goals?

:- Doug.