FootprintsintheWind.com

Hot chocolate is the seed of conversation, the spring of emergence.

:- Doug.

Dark is a metaphor for human eyes, which cannot see in low light.

:- Doug.

We appear, like cells in the body, as separate organisms, bounded by walls called skin. But we also, if we cock our head and squint just so, appear as if floating in a stream of culture and history, psychology and religion. We have stability and dynamic mutability.

:- Doug.

Then there is purpose in conversation—another fine mess to throw into play.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2273

a bite to share
a word to enter

Please pass it on.

© c 2023, 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 don’t know about conversation
Could kill me

:- Doug.

We are part of the mass of the earth. When we die, the mass does not decrease. When we dissolve to earth and water and elements, the mass does not decrease. When we are born, the mass does not increase. We are of the earth.

:- Doug.

We more than complete each other: we draw out.

:- Doug.

Dog kick involves then not only the dog’s own energy as Gregory Bateson told us. It I fostered also by, and reliant on, randomness. I am led to guess that randomness finds a home in emotion, for one place. We don’t need many wild cards in a deck to create a new game.

:- Doug.

Conversation finds, does not introduce, randomness in life. Randomness is necessary.

:- Doug.

It’s perhaps not the number of people in a conversation that makes it alive, leads to emergence. Rather it may be the quantity and weight of the ideas and the energy exchanged.

:- Doug.

Things have to be repeated and varied a number of times and then they become absorbed.

:- Doug.

How do two people combine and self organize to form a conversation? For the conversation is more surprising than two.

:- Doug.

Tell me about a memorable person you’ve met on your travels.

:- Doug.

I am thinking I need to do some interviews of people. With whom do I start? Who are my most fascinating people? Gladwell interviews to find out how the person’s mind works. That seems like a good starting place for me. Not what they know, or what they are, but how they move through the world. Someone who interviews? Someone who writes stories of interesting people? Someone who works with many interesting people? Ask anyone about a memorable person.

:- Doug.

An imperfect argument is human; more humanly it invites others to engage you. It may just keep you moving.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2272

When the drill breaks through
we will find we were bit and brace
and the hard outer of life had always
barely covered over
our hugging-craving and
our impossibly big skyward
reach

Please pass it on.

© c 2023, 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

We are finding out what it means to be, and to be human. We are finding out what it means to converse.

:- Doug.

This is sacred conversation not because we talk of sacred things (everything is already in its way sacred), but because every conversation is in its way sacred, and because every person is likewise sacred, and mostly because every meeting can be sacred.

:- Doug.

Holy Conversation
Holey Conversation
Wholly Conversation

:- Doug.

Where I want to be going just now is to the field of rainbow lights. There I want to see others, to learn to see them, and how they are with one another. How we are with one another is what I might mean as conversation. And “we” is all this, all there is.

:- Doug.

Presently God to me when visible is fog.

But mostly these days God is presence, especially in each other and in the workings and playings of nature.

:- Doug.

This vision is drawing me. That could be a sign of its importance. Or my importuning.

:- Doug.