Do take
The first of the list of Dos: Do take what is given.
:- Doug.
Person
wanting to hear
your stories
:- Doug.
Archive for July, 2022
They will find in your sitting
By sitting with another they will eventually find what they need.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 2151–In return for attention?
Footprints in the Windsm # 2151
What do you give in return for this person’s attention to you?
Please pass it on.
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Your story exactly what is needed
What if this conversation were exactly what is needed to heal this world? What if your story were exactly what is needed to heal this person?
:- Doug.
The grace to hear
It takes a certain grace—and maybe graciousness—to hear another’s stories. Maybe that means to hear their stories out into the open.
:- Doug.
More than eating we need meeting
We seek because we deeply need the conversation in which meeting occurs. The other kinds are necessary to the functioning of an It-world. We need them to eat. Yet more than eating, we need meeting. Or eating would not be worth our while. So the conversation in which meeting comes about is what I want to point us toward. These meetings are not likely. They are necessary.
:- Doug.
Just often enough
The meeting conversation you seek you cannot have often. Just often enough to sustain your liveliness.
:- Doug.
We know what we need
We know what we need. It is not words. We need to be met. We are surprised that meeting is ephemeral. Knowing this, go. Expectantly, vulnerably, openly.
:- Doug.
Fleetingly, perhaps in a glance
Martin Buber in I and Thou, at page 99 writes “Love itself cannot persist in the immediacy of relation; love endures, but in the interchange of actual and potential being.” So too conversation keeps on, becoming stronger and weaker, more intimate and less, more Thou and then more It in an interchange. Constant change. Here is where our dismay arises: we are denied continual satisfaction of our need for union with the other.
This last is significant, maybe a key to another inner passage, and bears restating. I get disappointed when our conversation does not leave us with a feeling that we were one with each other. We speak of soul mates and mind melds and these are but hints of what we mean. What Buber is telling us is the truth of experience: we only get these meetings fleetingly, perhaps in a glance. Yet we keep going out, seeking and being open to such meetings, for herein we come alive.
:- Doug.
We often take too little
We often take too little from one another in our conversations. We can hold back our challenges to one another so much, we fail to stimulate. Real harm is done, unseen, for what is the cost of what could have been?
:- Doug.
Gestures a-thinking
When I harvest your gestures a-thinking, we stimulate growth of each and both of us.
:- Doug.
Unseen in each
Unseen in each
little buds ready
Gently tug
break the surface holds
tender shoots reach for sun
:- Doug.
Owe this sacred person?
Don’t you owe the sacred person standing face to face with you a few moments to consider what you will make with your words?
:- Doug.
Make your conversation beautiful
You were given sacred life; in return make your conversation beautiful.
:- Doug.
Everything we say sacred
Because everything we do in life is sacred, so too everything we say in conversation.
:- Doug.
Makes us anew
Conversation changes us—not only does it make us, but makes us anew each turn, phrase, sometimes each word.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 2150–Who’s to say?
Footprints in the Windsm # 2150
The breeze runs its slender fingers through the leaves of maple, here and there turning up a flash of silver; a stream play-wrestles the fishes; a dog eats the treat so he can play with the human throwing the ball. Who’s to say each of these conversations are not in some way intimate knowing exchanges? When humans “make” a metaphor from the natural world, who’s to say from the plant’s side a lesson was not taught? Who’s to say there is there no imagination that we as yet understand but even then catch?
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
