FootprintsintheWind.com

Last evening I read an interesting piece from Vaclav Havel on power and powerlessness. He offers a glimpse into life in a totalitarian society. He talks about the greengrocer who is given a sign to place in his window, “Workers of the world, unite!” He speaks of how he could protest or just not do it, but then he loses his job, his child loses his entrance into college and on and on. It is a matter that the requests are subtle, easy, and they do not call to mind that the state has total control or that you are ceding that to the state. Protest then is a matter of choice and self-exile from friends and system and community, but toward truth. Protest takes effort and resolve. Protest may be costly. But what of the cost? Eventually we die anyway. Truth lives on. Spirit lives on. This is the only hope that life will get better.

:- Doug.

The magic of conversation comes from the stretch—it stretches us outside ourselves and outside our assumptions and outside our perceived and maybe real abilities—to whom we might yet be. Only when we stretch do we converse.

Some stretching arises from or draws us into the between, some we choose, some we can seek. Some opens our eyes, some engages our brains or even our minds, some shakes our being, some changes the world we hold in common. All engages our hearts or spirits. It might be wholly involuntary or partially.

If we meet we are changed. We grow or we break. Either way we grow. Either way we gain life. In all cases stretching is core and cor. This distinguishes chit-chat and debate. For we can stretch the mind in debate, searching for a stronger come-back, but it is not conversation. Conversation involves the turning of the compost and the spinning of the dancers: that is stretching. This stretching is of the kind that we seldom can go back to our prior size or shape.

:- Doug.

How can we stretch what works to make it better?

:- Doug.