Two levels of meaning
Write it so it is clear you are writing at two levels of meaning. Explain not.
:- Doug.
Archive for July, 2022
Footprints in the Windsm # 2155–Get your knees dirty
Footprints in the Windsm # 2155
If you’re to have a conversation with your garden, you’ve got to get your knees dirty.
Please pass it on.
© c 2022, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com
Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
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When you say you want to talk
In our community, when you say you want to talk, we sit down and make space in our day for you. We make space in our attention for you. We work to hear you. We speak little, asking things like, What kind of embarrassed was that? What else about that person? What happened next, or What would you like to have happen? We find others do the same for us.
:- Doug.
Easy to get to the hard
Our task is to make it easy to get to the hard work. Conversation, thinking together, is the hard work, the very hard work.
:- Doug.
Your most needy self
Who are you when you are your most generous self? When you are your most needy self? Are these both when you are your most human self? And are these also when you are your strongest, most alive self?
:- Doug.
Root system of conversation
What is the root system of conversation? This conversation? Your conversation?
:- Doug.
No longer speak truth to power
We no longer speak truth to power. Yes there is injustice even in the hearts of others. So we remind each other to open in love.
:- Doug.
Other beings converse
In our laboratory, conversations change how we do science, change the meaning of science from things to study, to other beings with whom we converse. It is a wider world, a widening world.
:- Doug.
Talk with strangers
In our region, babies are brought up to talk with strangers, birds, the sky, the moon.
:- Doug.
We seek out new people
In this town we seek out new people. We seek to meet someone new each day. We seek, after worship on Sunday, the people we know least. We seek out longer conversations with the person.
:- Doug.
A world of factions and fractions
Ours differs from a world of factions and fractions: now our first interest is to seek out those who differ, to find out, to create, new pathways to each other’s minds and hearts.
:- Doug.
A world in conversation smells
What might a world in conversation smell, sound, touch, taste, look like?
:- Doug.
Run toward, full tilt!
What conversation do we want to run toward, full tilt? Conjure up for me a symphony!
:- Doug.
Turn to stand in the meetings
This tension—between using others as things by which to profit (WIIFM) vs being true to others as our meeting mates—from our age is ever with us. We are unlikely to make the big corporations and the insincere politicians change their thinking. But we must each day turn, turn to stand in the meeting.
I need to bring this insight from Buber into the books.
:- Doug.
What a better world could be:
A lot of insights, stemming mainly from an On Being interview with an ocean scientist with a cultural focus: she focuses on what a better world could be: people want sustainable, and she asks do you want a sustainable marriage; rather she says we need to develop a picture of what a world could be if we made it better. Yes! We do not put meat on the bones of the better worlds we want to work for. We need, I need, to think deeply about what those things look like. Want to also get away from the hegemony of the visual.
:- Doug.
Sizzle; but wait for lolling
When, not how: When the words heat and start to sizzle in the page, if you look closely, you can find the beginning of a metaphor: “In this wet climate where everything is on its way back to decay. . . .” First, your ears prick up. Second you suspect there is a second or even third thing speaking to you. Third you think what it may be about, sensing fibers beneath the soil. Here you stay awhile and then want to rush off after you have turned the first bit of earth. But resist, hold yourself here, for fourth you open to further metaphors: applewood, crispness, juiciness, love, sustenance. Sometimes it just asks you to luxuriate. Lolling.
:- Doug.
Organism to last but a time
When a relation develops between two individuals or among three or more they are a wholly new organism to last but a time.
:- Doug.
Western gods and Eastern lumps
The reason our Western gods are anthropomorphic is we need around us other beings like us. The reason our Western gods speak to us is we crave conversation. Especially conversation that cuts our hearts in two.
What I miss in Eastern spirituality is the movement, the dynamics, the ping! All becomes saltless, sweetless, pabulum without even lumps.
:- Doug.
Missing grace
They experience their mother as burden and expense, and so miss the grace she brings.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 2154–Lay down this, accept the next
Footprints in the Windsm # 2154
This life is a gift. I have received it and I treasure every breath of it. And when I am done with it, and my consciousness, I will lay them down and just ahead, I will accept what comes or does not come next. I have that choice I can make.
Please pass it on.
© c 2022, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com
Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com
essential mystical
Conversation is as essential among us as breath—and at least as mystical. Day by night I drop my bucket into the abyss unfathomed.
:- Doug.
