FootprintsintheWind.com

This is the work; the work is not to get to the last page of the chapter or book. The work is to strike this idea against a prior held one, to see what sparks fly, and if they can be constrained to start even a conflagration.

:- Doug.

Mostly we do not hear as we are addressed. So we miss our opportunity to respond. It is our responsibility—it is mine—to hear what is unexpectedly said, and to kindle the spark of turning to meet the depth.

:- Doug.

The direction of conversation, its true north, is to commune and to covenant with another. Communion opens us out, draws us in.

:- Doug.

Conversation is play, but not silly. Even when the conversation is silly, work is done.

:- Doug.

Conversation is unknowable. We cannot grasp it, hold it in the air, and say, There! We can only meet another face.

This may just be divine. As much divine as we can meet. After all this is infinite. Possibility.

:- Doug.

While we may never know another, it is possible to meet.

:- Doug.

There are people who don’t know they’ve shut off the human heart feeling part of them. Said one cop: “Once I’d experienced it, I could go back to it.”

:- Doug.

Fear breaks up the linkings love would make.

:- Doug.

I cannot pin down all in one poem or paragraph, for life wiggles and will not.

:- Doug.

Where hearing passes into being
when I perceive what is to be perceived
My very life is asked and I must answer

here—here—a chance and only a chance
upon my cheek to feel this holy breath

:- Doug.

Essential questions as life streams past: What am I catching? What am I missing?

:- Doug.

Loving and learning a particular neighbor, rather than humankind or a nation or a congregation: because it is the only way we live in our life as it is lived, with the people we can bump. If we cannot be touched by them, they do not exist for us. If we do not love this one with these ways of pointing or speaking or holding the head, we cannot ever recognize and differentiate and learn ourselves. Love is a betweening. Love is done between. Learning is done in distance: we compare, we make metaphors, we differentiate. When we do, love is possible.

:- Doug.

We learn ourselves the same way we learn to love ourselves: through love of our particular neighbor.

:- Doug.

God: presence.

:- Doug.

The work of conversation is to open, to attempt, to receive: not to succeed, only to stand in the face. To be able, once.

:- Doug.

Prime
This conversation
Uncreated
Received
Grace

:- Doug.

A little stream, a rivulet: the horrifying, dangerous, threatening, unanswerable, never before asked question, for which a response is demanded. Of me. Conversation is that.

:- Doug.

Discussion, Buber suggested, and it is true etymology, is strike asunder, break up, shake, as in quash, smash apart, to destroy, shatter, toss violently.

:- Doug.

What we humans seek above all, even need, is communion.

:- Doug.

Our email addresses, our telephone numbers, our @ signs, our # tags—and our very lives—how evanescent!

:- Doug.

To move from I-It towards I-Thou relationships is to mature into really real humanity.

:- Doug.

The Unwished-for Conversation

:- Doug.

Sin ≠ Guilt

:- Doug.