Find a way…
What we need to do is find a way for anybody to start conversations and find the joy in it.
:- Doug.
Archive for the 'Conversations' Category
Filled with amazing people
Alan Stewart and I have been having a wonderful conversation. He sent me this link to an interview with Theodore Zeldin, a professor at Cambridge, a professor of happiness, no less!
Here is some of what I wrote to Alan about this interview:
From the interview:
“we have got to rethink advertising too. Because the question we are asking is, is it true what people are saying to us? And we are asking that people should be honest with each other.”
and
“In the past we wanted to survive, we were talking about happiness as a form of contentment, we were talking about prosperity and now we want much more. To be rich is not enough. We want what money cannot buy.”
and
“Now people are interested in the quality of your life, not in how much money you earn. And it’s more important how you spend your money than how much you earn or what you earn.”
One of the things I keep asking myself is how to get the word out about conversation? This guy may just have a way in his way of speaking: he is talking as if what he was selling was already the predominantway of thinking in the Western world. (It probably is–people just haven’t focused on it yet.) This kind of friendly, jocular way might be one way….
“And the world is filled with amazing people.”
Yes! The stuff of reality, that! A bit of divinity here and there!
“And I find enormous satisfaction in discovering other people.”
Another way of getting conversation going! Find out what’s interesting and surprising about anyone.
His idea of curiosity is a new emphasis to me. I want to explore it more. How about you? How do you understand curiosity? Is it not the stuff of G?d in our world?
So how about his dinners for 40 idea? Would that help get conversations started? I think of his questions and of the ones suggested by Thomas Merton: What do you live for? What gets in your way of living that life?
:- Doug.
Cause, Choice, Cure
My friend, Jan Hughey, sent me this poem, which I thought you might like….
CAUSE, CHOICE, CURE
We make choices in our lives so we’re responsible;
for some things that are thrust on us, we are not liable.
Let’s look at some diseases—the kind we always face;
some may see them differently and think them a disgrace.
Consider the afflicted one who bears the malady;
there are no guarantees in life—I’m sure you can agree.
Before your judgment lowers, consider the three “C’s”:
What was done to CAUSE it, and then in what degrees?
Would this have been their CHOICE
if it were heaped upon a pile?
Many an affliction robs a person of a smile;
There are ills for which a CAUSE or CURE are yet unknown,
If you’ve not walked a mile that way,
you can’t know cause to groan.
Love and understanding
are both needed in each life,
if you’re a strong and robust one don’t add to others’ strife;
It wasn’t CAUSED nor CHOSEN, that is plain to see,
And if no CURE is for it—COMPASSION is a “C.”
C Janet Elliott Hughey
Cause Choice Cure Compassion
Jan has had Type 1 diabetes for 55 years and writes about it. She is also going through a tough time just now: her 43 year old son has been diagnosed with cancer. This poem is from her newest book, Tolerating the Sweet Life, http://maxpages.com/TSLandCLIP.
:- Doug.
is like
The field of G-d is like this lawyer, that widow, those teenagers, because…the field of G-d is made up of these.
:- Doug.
G?d’s field?
To my good friends–
Robert W. Funk, in his book, Honest to Jesus, reports that scholars consider the theme of Jesus’ ministry to be the Kingdom of God. This term kingdom is a hard one for a current mind to get its arms around. We might think of kingdoms as archaic, or fiefdoms like the warlords of Afganistan, or benevolent irrelevancies like the Queen of England, or rich people with absolute power inside their boiundaries, but of little importance outside, like the Arab oil potentates. Living in a modern democracy it is hard to see these concepts as living.
What concepts could we use today?
One that comes to mind for me is field, used as physicists might use the term. An area of influence.
Or world: G-d’s world, universe, cosmos.
Realm gives a kind of other-worldly picture, and also reminds us of kingdom. For those reasons, I do not like it well.
Range, sphere, milieu? Home, terrain, land? Influence?
:- Doug.
Peripatetic
Peripatetic: walking around. The word actually seems to refer to Aristotle’s method of teaching, walking around the Lyceum, students literally following. It was perhaps Jesus’s way, too. Is it one that is valuable for itself, something a teacher or prophet today should consider?
One thing I see is that there is more to see, more to run into, more than concrete block walls and blackboards can present. Those are designed for concentration, especially upon ideas, concepts, mental constructs and frameworks. Walking around engages the eyes, the body, the ears, the nose, the skin. Walking around engages living things, inanimate things, people and ideas. Ideas flow from the engaged.
Ideas flow from the engaged.
Ideas flow from the engaged.
Engaging teaches us how to engage, here and now. Engaging teaches us about a wider world, and to always be looking for a wider outlook, a larger world.
What would be the manner of peripatetic teaching? “In the first place” made it easy for Aristotle to remember his lesson outline, attaching point A to this tree, point B to that flower on the covered walkway. It is an old memory crutch. The teacher, Rumi-like, can see what is going on in the bazaar and search that for its learning and lessons. The teacher, Jesus-like, can hear in the story of a fisherman or a widow the voice of the Father. The teacher, Gautama-like, can find a Bodhi tree to sit under. The teacher can interact with those he or she meets, assist those in need, guide others, confront some.
We live a peripatetic life style, driving all over, but still meeting people in shops (bazaars), at sporting and rock-n-roll events (lycea), in the hallways (dusty footpaths). We can still, if we look, see wild and growing things–the weeds in the sidewalks and the trees along the way and the birds and squirrels and deer who look at us, some out of the night. We can touch something larger in the starry skies and even in the grey skies. We can engage in the coffee breaks and self-organized small groups (how radical these can be!). We can have a world rich in persons and life.
We can be engaged.
Life flows from the engaged.
That is what peripatetic teaching is about. I like the rhythm of the word. Especially I like that it suggests meeting.
Life flows from engaging.
:- Doug.
A man went out
A man went out into the world to meet,
wholly,
listening, hearing, touching, storytelling:
stone him for he is a threat to you.
:- Doug.
What the shell, what the meat?
What is the shell and what the meat of this person we call Jesus?
:- Doug.
G?d
Christy Lee-Engel last evening wrote me a response to yesterday’s separated couplet about G-d.
Christy has intrigued me by writing G!d, and another form. The exclamation point is good, but I think now not as good as the hyphen. The hyphen seems wider to me for the moment, opens more space. The exclamation is good for times I feel like flying, and so I like it. A lot. She also uses G*d: now that also is a flying thing, more open than the exclamation point. So, Christy, what do you see in these ways of writing? I suspect you will open us all up.
Which leads me to ask about G@d, G#d, G$d, G%d, G^d, G&d, G()d (I kinda like the hugs!), G+d, G=d, and perhaps with an interobang (! and ? in one character). What do we see, how can we see bigger? How about G?d? Or G<>d, or G|d? Let us look bigger.
:-Doug.
Klutziness
Original sin might be the human tendency to klutziness. Which is another way of saying to surprise. It may actually be reason to celebrate. G-d has given us the ability to voluntarily and involuntarily slip off the path we or others have set. When we are paying some attention we can discover and create, redeem and make ever more whole.
Broken people leaking out good, blind artists making creation beautiful and then seeing.
:- Doug.
Get the intermediaries away
Get the intermediaries away from between
G-d and me!
Let me move into the between and
feel your breath!
Humans, images, thoughts–all! Away!
I wait. I stand. I breathe.
And where do you meet me? Exactly here.
:- Doug.
Hearing born again anew
This morning I heard the Johannine born again in a new way. Of water and Spirit speaks to me of the wind of G-d moving across the face of the deep in Genesis verse 2. This primal meeting is what brings forth persons and worlds, and so we are invited to meet again, from the beginningness of time, the breath. Breath in the middle eastern cultures is the way we know someone–we get close enough to feel their breath: this is meeting. G-d’s breath, G-d’s very essence, Spirit, is known in such meetings. Meeting by its nature is not held in the hand but touches it. We must continually renew our touching and being touched, our exchanging of breaths. In this way we give life to one another. G-d gives breath and life to us, yes, somehow we give breath and life to G-d. We affect each other. We are changed by the meeting, we are born, our persons, our essences are formed and transformed, by meeting. So being born again is a continual process, a forever turning again to meet, to touch, each other. We cannot hold, we can only continue. We can only do, we can only love. I hear a call, a knocking, to open, to meet, to touch, to love. Our faces move near to each other, near enough to feel the breath.
Be born again–meet and in that meeting be brought forth a new person. Dare to die to whomever you were, for whom you were dreamed in the first dream, the first breath, is larger still. Shed the cocoon, struggle out with wings wet and meet. Meet G-d in your breath.
Lord, I am seeing that meeting you is the essential thing. Those who think they own others and can control how they meet you miss the essential quality of the meeting: breath to breath.
:- Doug.
An occasion
The Bible needs to be, for me,
an occasion for meeting G-d today.
How am I touched, how do I touch?
:- Doug.
Again
Robin Williams is free to act crazy
So was Cole Porter and think of David
dancing naked in the streets
I too once turned head over heels for my love
We long for and envy the freedom
these people live so large
yet we are frightened to death of it
so we hide in our paycheck lives
maybe someday we will break free
again
:- Doug.
Your plow standing idle
G-d will not ask you
why your plow stood idle in the field
G-d will grieve
that you–and G-d–were unfulfilled
and the world is less than it could have been
–much less
how will you console those tears?
:- Doug.
Faith based solely on dependence
Faith based solely on dependence
is not faith
but using G-d as a tool
or self as no self;
it is fraud
and lying to G-d.
:- Doug.
