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How wide do we want this conversation’s field to reach? Whom do we want it to touch? Who is touched by it now? How far in space time do we expect it to reach?

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

This notion of fields still pulls me. A field is the extent to which the influence of one thing reaches. A field is the reach of influence. A reach of force. Now that says some things. One is that there is some power to conversation. Another is that it has some reach. Another is that its reach varies over space-time, probably dropping as distance increases, but not predictably: for it is possible that an idea from a great distance might have power. For instance, last week’s conversation about what to have for dinner is quickly forgotten, but the influence of the Sermon on the Mount is still felt. Why is that? There must be something not about the words (for few today know Aramaic) but the ideas and the way they catch the imagination of humans. Is it a matter that they stick in the memory? Or is it a matter that they are so strong that they stick in the memory? Which comes first? Is it a matter that the way people live their lives is changed? We are purpose-seeking beings, we humans, and so when something touches on that, we pay attention. When it has the promise of changing things to a better purpose, we get involved. It is perhaps not memory but body memory: it shakes our world. The degree of shaking is the degree of power, and the further the shaking, the more the power. There are two notes which carry: the high soprano or tenor (O Holy Night) and the deep base (The music of the night, Evita). These touch our body memory. This is akin to emotion, but not emotion: emotions are in humans, but humans are in the shaking: life. The field of conversation is then the reach of its force expressed as life and love.

What can we do with this? Use it as metaphor to invite more conversations. Use it as metaphor to give us the courage to invite more conversations. Use it as metaphor to give us the insight to see what conversations can be invited. This is interesting: I am concentrating on the conversations, the verb, rather than on the persons, the nouns. Indra’s net and the nodes flashing in and out of existence. The conversations bring forth the persons. And a third. Invite the conversations to extend their reach in time and space. Invite persons to consider the reach and give attention to the longer-further.

Furthermore, the field of conversation arises: it is emergent. It is the power, the capacity. We live within this field and have the capacity to extend it, to be carriers. We get power from this field; we give it life and boost its power and reach from the very fact that we are changed. As it emerges and changes us we have a choice: to take it higher and deeper: to make it more resonant: to channel it to the more profound. This is what is happening in creating communities of practice out of mere networks: we are moving from separations to communities; from the smaller to the larger; from piece to whole. This is where we get scale: the community is more profound and has a wider influence.

Writing seems a way to go, yet does writing get conversations? Writing is a process of speaking with others one at a time, often seriatim. It is a sort of conversation. Speaking is one directional. We need conversations. So how to sustain them? How to invite them? When? Where? Everywhere, always. I am at the perfect place I wrote a few days ago, a node on the web, flashing, able to flash.

Not a tool of the conversation, but an agent, able to extend and power the field, to find the power and concentrate it and set it loose.

What good is it to see the field? It lets us see and see more purposely. To see the bigger picture is to have the power to choose. Power of choice is a dangerous power. Once we choose, we die: we die to the other choice, we die to living in the presence. This is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But power of choice is also good, for we then can see the injustices and pains and choose to help and to stand by each other.

What good is it to see the conversation field? It helps us point it out to others, that is to point out to others their own power and beauty and truth. We fear most of all our own power and beauty and truth. We fear our conversations, for we know their field is the field of our power and beauty and truth. Turn this loose and there is no going back.

:- Doug.

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.