FootprintsintheWind.com

We don’t get there by sweat
Nor by will
But by allowing

:- Doug.

We cannot get control over this thing called spirit, called conversation. We can only meet and be met, turn and be turned.

:- Doug.

Buber, I and Thou, p 54 equates process with unlimited causality, and therefore, by the logic on p 51, equates it with the world of It.

:- Doug.

Causality, and so teleology (and so goals), are of the world of It, so that “conversation” which sets out to bring about an outcome is doomed to never be conversation. It will only be a bargain and a price paid or demanded. Conversation is never guaranteed. Conversation is when Thou meets Thou. See also Buber, I and Thou, p 51.

:- Doug.

Metaphor, comparatively speaking.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2141

Maybe bird talk is the betweens of the notes. Their notes are the canvas from which the silences arise as mountains and river valleys in relief.

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

What do you want to have happen in your conversation?

:- Doug.

Into this conversation we each bring with us many landscapes. When we put them together we can build something of worth.

:- Doug.

In conversation might our individual and group symbols be connected by their relationships? Might these relationships build to a group metaphor?

:- Doug.

Every book we write is bumping up against what we cannot know.

:- Doug.

Just as our body-mind needs sleep, so too do our conversations. The Why, the What’s going on, is so far mystery.

:- Doug.

Alexander’s The Nature of Order is less about 15 transformations and more about sequence and unfolding.

:- Doug.

Kind—how our words carry things we seldom notice!

:- Doug.

“I bought a liquor store about two months ago.”

“Oh, really? Is that the kind of conversation you want to have with your community? With your world and your grandchildren?”

“I do need to accumulate money.”

:- Doug.

A worth of Clean is to grow our curiosity. Curiosity leads to Thou.

:- Doug.

There’s something valuable in talking together, but we don’t yet know. Or maybe simply we don’t yet have words. Or its size, shape, and closeness puts it out of our manipulating hands.

:- Doug.

My difficulty is remembering to bring in Clean. I might need to look for clues or triggers: What do you mean? Do I want to understand you better? Is there something verdant in what you said?

:- Doug.

I think it is not necessary to have the consent of the other to have a Clean Language sort of conversation: The other might just play along and so we gain; even if we do not, they might upon reflection later. So it is worth trying.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2140

I am wondering about the benefit—and necessity—of a time away from the conversation. Two sleeps, or a sleepover on a mountain or beside a lake. What do we not know of that?

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

The thing is to turn Clean Language from therapy to conversation. What are the overlaps, what are the borderlands? So how does it work in groups? Do we see what each sees, what metaphors and symbols we carry and meld them into one? More likely we see how we each conceive and perceive, then we interleave our approaches with one another, creating something entirely new.

:- Doug.

We cannot know conversation ahead. We can only get glimpses of its light, intuit the deep roll of its thunder hundreds of miles off.

:- Doug.

What is the light of this conversation? What is the inkling we have of this light?

:- Doug.

Heal is a metaphor.

:- Doug.