FootprintsintheWind.com

To be hallowed is to be loved in action by you. You hallow, I hallow, by developing our relations to one another and our worlds. Get in touch.

:- Doug.

Mirroring and labeling—even saying Hi—are ways into the meeting. It is up to you to make the meeting.

:- Doug.

Just what does conversation exchange? Essences of persons? What meets in the middle? Maybe it is not a what but an action.

You are not exchanging anything. You’re making. Persons. Once for ever events. Worlds. Relations. Mostly: simply making.

:- Doug.

How to get what you want in conversation. Don’t try. It won’t work. Give yourself to this once in ever there was event.

:- Doug.

Reflection is difficult work, something I’d prefer to avoid.

:- Doug.

Wishing feeling perceiving and thinking
Imagine
These working within the other
As the other imagines
These working in you

:- Doug.

There is communication, and there is communion. Communion not as a state of non-conflict, but as a state of recognition of each other as legitimate persons.

So when a butterfly draws nectar from a flower and carries pollen to another, it might be simply a commercial transaction. It might also be loving. But how are we, another species, to know? When a bird chases another bird, is it play, is it threat, is it conversation? How are we to know? When traffic clogs and clears, is it knowing another, or simply traffic clogging and clearing? How are we to know? The task might be to ask the question.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2182

How can we bring us together after this divisive political season?

Please pass it on.

© c 2022, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

More there is to conversation than communication.

:- Doug.

The purpose of a conversation is not merely to exchange ideas, but to lead to significant changes in the relations of living beings.

:- Doug.

Being fully there for someone is difficult and strenuous work. I had a conversation yesterday with P. We talked about his work, about philosophy (a shared interest), about books. Was I really and wholly there for him? I don’t know just yet how to tell. I was working to connect what I knew of him to what I might ask next. I did a little mirroring, but did not remember to try labeling of emotions. I could next conversation work more on finding the other person’s side. What was he trying to say; what was behind that? P spoke of being overly literal: where did that come from? Was he self-editing or self-commenting in order to be approachable, or to be humble, or to be self-deprecating, or to examine himself more? I cannot know him: I can only meet him, thus seek to know him better. For I cannot even know myself.

:- Doug.

Meet what you read
Meet whom you read
Meet whom you encounter

:- Doug.

If you are not addressed—
not seen, heard, confirmed—
you do not stand forth, do not exist

:- Doug.

If you don’t allow for all you do not have anything of worth.

:- Doug.

After the tragedy has been completed
the relation is possible yet

:- Doug.

Tragedy is a possible and regular result of conversation.

:- Doug.

I am beginning to encircle more widely, lucidly, crisply for my studies and the book. It is more work than simply reporting, more than carrying the thought to a new place, while including both.

:- Doug.

Write as poetry, much as Buber did in I and Thou: take people to their sidereal, help them find deeper, higher, beyond, between, to step out.

:- Doug.

To surrender to the divine will is to dive into that waters not knowing if they are icy chunks or flesh-separatingly boiling: divine will be there as divine will be there. Not as the immutable one and done.

:- Doug.

Entire, curious, vulnerable: go.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2181

Deliciously lost
In a chocolate swirl
We
Perhaps this conversation
Warms and melts together
Bitter & sweet & possible
& you & me
No notes are made
Nor could they be
This we this now and only once
Yet we entered—and left—a difference

Please pass it on.

© c 2022, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

What you fear is the infinite within you.

:- Doug.

If everything is in conversation, every book is about conversation, every song, poem, dance, grunt.

:- Doug.