FootprintsintheWind.com

Now I get it! People resist meeting. It is or at least seems uncomfortable. It is not our usual way: usual is I-It. We look for experiencing or using. Our vast numbers of festivals are not so much occasions for meeting as for experiencing: It affects me. Yes, within them there are meetings, and perhaps more than in our daily rounds, simply because there are more people there, and new, and we have not yet placed them in classes and categories, so there is a chance for them to break out of I-It into I-Thou. Chance encounters with a crafts vendor who is also a person, an artist, someone with whom you share humanity, becomes a meeting.

Meeting though is not uncomfortable, just uncommon. Which suggests that if we train ourselves to seek it out at every opportunity, this might be the first step to making a more meeting-full world. Once we learn how to do it, we can invite others to do likewise. And in truth, we have already been inviting them along the way.

:- Doug.

I stumbled upon something in I and Thou which sheds some light on the process of emergence. Emergence seems to be what is the process at the cusp of I-Thou becoming I-It. This is startling to me, but seems true to what is.

We have met. Our eyes, our hearts, our beings have met. We have birthed an idea, a project. Now we are working together, heart, hand and imagination, on It.

We are seeing what is possible. We are seeing how to take our It to the world, to give It wings.

We must recall that I-It is necessary in the world to get work done. The side of I-It to avoid is the one that says it is the exclusive way to be in the world. I-Thou is the way to be alive.

So we must continually return to I-Thou. We must find ways to move from I-It to I-Thou, to say this primary mutual word with others. To do this, we must meet. We must make occasions to meet.

:- Doug.

Emergence is specifically—and only—from and after meeting a Thou. Meeting is about meeting and then meeting some more. When I invite conversation, it is in the hopes of meeting—and for the surprise it sometimes brings—emergence. But emergence is not the purpose, for what emergence is is the point where the meeting itself starts to become It—we realize some thing has happened, some thing we can experience and use.

:- Doug.

The trick is to not get caught up by your thoughts.

:- Doug.

Did something emerge which was unexpected?

:- Doug.