leave this little gift on the floor: what fun is that?

This little gift is very disorganizing. It disorients each one who takes hold of it: you cannot remain the same. You are changed. It is a risk, a big risk. Your heart might be torn, your mind shredded. But it is OK: it will all be put together in a new way. At first it might look Picasso-esque, things all out of place, but that is only because you had an inflexible picture of how everything should work. The world is bigger than any of us! So enjoy! What is this little gift? Conversation: letting someone in.

Conversation is giving: giving our selves in the act of speaking ourselves forward; giving our selves in the act of taking another into us, making ourselves one with someone else’s ways and thoughts and histories.

Conversation is a gift to those who hear, and to those who speak. Both get to hear the speaker. Both get to ponder. Both get to engage. Both get to be part of the turning: turning is over and round. Conversation starts things in motion, motion that can reach beyond our space, beyond our time.

What can we do? We don’t know till we converse! Conversing gets things started. We talk our ideas through so we can decide to move. We move singly or together: conversing started the action.

Conversing is the gift I bring. I am lightened by the idea of leaving little packages with bows all round, one here, some few there, a winding trail of lively light!

I bring this little gift: but you have to unwrap it; you have to play with this new toy to get what it has to give. You can leave it on the floor, but what fun is that?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on November 5th, 2010 | No Comments »

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