Conversation is opening one’s being to another, stepping inside the leg bones of one another. Conversation seeks, at least I seek in conversation, a kind of exchange where each is known, is met, as the all there is for this moment. You mean each other. You do not need to know all the secrets of the other. You do not have to agree, even on anything. For one glimmering moment, you meet.
:- Doug.
There is grace in full meeting. We cannot claim it. Grace comes or not. We can claim going out to meet. Opening. Vulnerably. Expecting. Buber himself writes, I and Thou, p 78, of the “unreliable, perilous world of relation”.
:- Doug.
Everything is in conversation; conversation is in everything. Conversation is as inseparable from us as cream in coffee, as kisses from hugs. The urge to converse is stronger than the pull the flock feels when one goose announces honkingly a laborious lift off to flight.
:- Doug.
Sometimes in conversation we are pulling ideas out of each other’s foreheads, and releasing them into the air as butterflies. More color, more brightness. More light, more distance.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 2143
Get people together.
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© 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
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A metaphor relates one thing to another, often a physical object to a mental construct: the elephant in the room. In this way the physical thing converses with, and is made to relate to, the conceptual—and us.
:- Doug.
Relation is the without which not of conversation. Conversation is the without which not of relation.
:- Doug.
The ultimate mystery of conversation is how relation makes person (see also Martin Buber, I and Thou, p 62). Said another way, the mystery rises up to face us when we are stirred by the breath of our Thou (see also, Id., p 63). This mystery faces us every time, every conversation, we cannot know how it will turn out, how indeed it has turned out. With no end conversation confronts us, even in its echoes. The mystery is this Thou, this I, this relation.
:- Doug.
A metaphor is an attempt to make sense. Or it encapsulates a sense made. Or it reveals a level of heat. Or it condenses several thoughts into an easy to transport memory. Or metaphors are the base of the comparisons by which we think.
:- Doug.
We are not here to converse perfectly, rather to love converse deeply.
:- Doug.
Listened to an excerpt from an interview of Rachel Naomi Remen where she talks of creation and light coming out of the “holy darkness.” This is an evocative image. Hold us in the holy darkness!? It suggests fecundity and mystery in the darkness, something pregnant and out-flowing.
:- Doug.
One of the fathers of the modern study of dialogue for me has been Martin Buber. It was now time to return home and sit again at the knees.
:- Doug.
Maybe we do not want to meet deeply, as Thou to Thou. Maybe we need to let that happen and deepen, get through it, not past it. Like grieving?
:- Doug.
We are seeking to belong to one another, to meet as Thou to one another. Perhaps this is the peak kind of conversation. Or the ocean that is all conversation, where the darkest, coolest, most fecund parts are what we are drawn to.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 2142
Fishing is conversation between fisher and worm and hook and line, between fish and fisher: a tuggle, a release, a quiet again following. The fish flashing away, heart beating, hiding; the fisher sitting back, taking in the enjoyment, thinking of re-baiting the hook.
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
We don’t seek to use conversation. We simply become present to it, let it in.
:- Doug.
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