FootprintsintheWind.com

What does it take to make space where people feel free, safe and generous?

Now this is different. We are talking about light and air; we are talking about obstacles and walls and art; we are talking about spiritual space. So it is both physical and non physical. It is in the welcome from the host. It is in the food set out. It is in the banter. It is in the work to be done. It is in the sunlight and rain on our faces and clothes as we come in. It is in the joy and pain touching our lives outside that door. It is in the anger and intentions people bring into this circle.

It is about a common feeling. It is about a freedom to share vulnerabilities.

It is about a common feeling: one that we mostly share: are we at home here? Does it help me feel more like myself to be there? To be here? To hear? To be heard? To be seen?

It is about a common feeling: something in common. Ask 6 people and see. Adjust and ask again. Make it better.

Open a window. Open a door. Bring in some food. Brew some coffee. Bring in some flowers. Move some furniture out of the way. Create a void, a contrast, a border, a roughness, a not separateness.

A void in the center. A softness and simplicity. An interlock.

What does it take to make space where people feel free, safe and generous? It takes attention to little things. It takes attention to big things: each person in his or her own idiosyncrasies.

What does it take to make space where people feel free, safe and generous? Where do people feel free, safe and generous to laugh, to cry, to scream, to dream, to banter, to draw, to dance…to live?

:- Doug.

Why disorganize? Because disorganized places are more comfortable, more homey, and we get the important things done there.

:- Doug.

I don’t remember where in Genesis God said “Abracadabra!”

:- Doug.

This is disorganizing—find a way to be at home—alive—everywhere we are.

:- Doug.

The question is, do we see this whole world as belonging to us? Are we at home, alive, everywhere we go? What can we do about it?

:- Doug.

Our usual way of thinking is Velcro®; meditation/contemplation’s way is Teflon®.

:- Doug.

I sneezed
G*d laughed
We laughed
Danced
Sang!
Round & round…

:- Doug.

This poet
Finds meeting spaces
Invites life

:- Doug.

Simply invite life. Simply invite meeting.

:- Doug.

If death be the beginning of our effect, then I understand in a new way Jesus’ saying that I must go for the Spirit to come and bring you power.

:- Doug.

We, nothing.

Beauty, truth, goodness grow in strength as they approach nothingness. We get our power as persons when we disappear.

Is death thus necessary? Look at eulogies—how people become saints, how we learn from them! I say this not to poke fun, but to poke us awake: our life is not the limit of our effect. Our death might be the beginning.

Can we then accept disappearing to become?

:- Doug.

Can we be in silence? Can we sit in mystery, in not knowing, in not doing, for just this bit?

:- Doug.

Emergence might be just this turning from meeting to working, from I-Thou to I-It. It is the precise point of leaving the narrow ridge upon which we met.

It is carrying some thing away from the meeting. We might be carrying it together, we might be caring for it together, we might be still meeting about it, but from the presence of each other our eyes have turned.

:- Doug.

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.

This (Find what matters to two or more persons, invite them to meet) is really Harrison’s Zen-like “open more space.”

:- Doug.

There is great correspondence between Buber and Alexander. My particular wondering is how to bring all this (centers and whole and the Whole; mutual action, meaning, and going out into the world) to the arena of persons. This is the relating that includes all relating, the whole of wholes, the Center of centers. How do the smaller centers and wholes support the larger and each other? How do the fifteen transformations relate to these three elements of mutual action, meaning and meaning in concrete action?

We are ever supporting and increasing the life of the other centers round about and in the whole. What Buber describes seems to be an endless circle or spiral: mutual action gives meaning gives action going out to meet in more mutual action and on.

Viewed as emergence (this is not so simple as it might seem at first; indeed it is complex—folded together): persons meet; they find-create meaning in their meeting (this starts as the inviting question and morphs into the persons they are changed into, and the persons they meet, and the persons between themselves and the persons they meet, and is then an integral part of them down to their guts); they carry this out into the world, not so much as words as action and more meeting. And the world turns again.

This is a micro view. The macro view is that this is how the whole world operates: by meeting. When enough persons meet, things get done, and when more meet, larger things get done. The large things might be built worlds, or they might be organic worlds, such as when social attitudes toward age, race, gender, or origin change.

So what is the work to make it happen, or open space for it to happen? Find what matters to two or more persons, invite them to meet.

It really seems to be as simple and as complex as that. It takes that much work and courage. It means meeting with them before they meet to find out who they are and why what matters matters.

:- Doug.

Ever more formative than normative.

:- Doug.

Maybe we can be paid for helping billions of poor.

:- Doug.

Purpose transcends goal as timeless transcends time.

:- Doug.