FootprintsintheWind.com

The reason much conversation changes nothing is that it is not sustained beyond about 30 seconds. We flee. When we stay we are capable.

:- Doug.

Poetry is to be read and reread
for each time
we are creating
more of our life

:- Doug.

You human being reading these words years from now: do no take them as final words. Expand upon them. Grow your own from your life and knowledge. G*d lives.

:- Doug.

Sometimes
the purpose
of the poet
is to get us
to open wider
the manifold meanings
to expand the mysteries

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 730

We are now seven tenths of the way through the oo decade. Is it ooh or oh-oh? While we yet breathe—or die—there is still time.

Please pass it on.

© c 2007, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Six degrees of separation
or six degrees of connection?
Six directions of influence
at each of six intersections?

:- Doug.

What is the extent of the field of a conversation? Does it often range through the whole world?

:- Doug.

This conversation can change everything
This conversation may change us

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

Yesterday morning I was thinking of the parallels between conversation and spontaneous combustion. Greasy rags, hay and coal can spontaneously combust. It is a matter of oxidation and containing the heat until it reaches ignition temperature. Oxidation is simply adding oxygen to something, and often it reacts with that thing, actually burning it. Hmmm…. What is oxygen in conversation? It is something that changes, like another human being. It might be openness. The spontaneous nature is emergence—something unexpected happens. But if we know the process we can prevent or enhance it.

So for combustion we need heat, oxygen and fuel. Oxygen tends toward the openness—air, in other words. Heat comes from people in a confined place. Fuel is the inviting question. A triangle. Maybe they all play all three roles. But see what is going on—the oxygen combines with the fuel and both are changed into something new: energy, ash. And so too with people: they are bodies which are changed into actions by the conversation. They are changed too as persons, since they are not the same after the event. In the very least, they are like the outside of a car rusting or they become more durable like anodized aluminum. Is the oxygen the fuel, and the wood, coal, oil or metal the reactive agent? Does it matter how we define the term fuel? Oxygen is at least the common factor in the uncommon fuels of fire. So too people are the common factor despite the questions in front of them. So perhaps people are the oxygen, questions are the fuel, and meeting is the heat.

Note that it is people in the plural; singular does not do it.

This idea of spontaneous combustion is a way to explain or make a metaphor for emergence. Something happens that was unexpected and not predictable. You pile up the hay or coal and you get fire. It is predictable once you know about it, so that might not be the best way to define emergence. Something comes out that is not like the things you put in. You put in people and a question and give them space to work (the field) and you end up with fire.

So perhaps that is a useful metaphor. Can it take us new places? Or at least open some mind-doors?

:- Doug.

Conversation is the working of a compost heap, spontaneous combustion in a hay stack: something unexpected emerges.

:- Doug.

What would your next conversation be about if you thought it could change everything? If I knew a conversation could change the world, here’s what I’d invite a conversation about.

:- Doug.

When we are called to a funeral we can ask, What is the meaning of his or her death for me?

Perhaps: we see our mortality and know we have less time to complete our presence than we thought or hoped. And yet, our presence can continue for ever.

Is that our work, to complete our presence? What can that mean?

:- Doug.