from conversation
Life from conversation
:- Doug.
In conversation we are discovering the possibilities of our relationship—that is, life.
:- Doug.
Archive for the 'Conversations' Category
By simply saying their names
We are conversation-makers, makers of persons, makers of relations, neighbors, friends, action-workers, movements, potlucks, ties across supposed frontiers. We are the makers of worlds, our worlds. Between us, conversing, we make living things by imagining them, by simply saying their names.
:- Doug.
Pull us up by our shoulders
When are the conversations to stir our blood? To shake our imaginations? To transform us? Conversations get written in the crinkles of our eyes, the shapes we leave in the land and in our places. From our beds, conversations pull us up by our shoulders and stand us in our mountain-climbing boots.
:- Doug.
Ways conversation touches
Ways conversation touches—
Whole-making
Identity-revealing
Grocery-providing
Pharmacy-dispensing
Relationship-growing with all living
and with all earlier and later living
Sacred-revealing
Self-opening
Life-making
:- Doug.
Restores us
We restore conversation and conversation restores us. This springing and soaking nurtures redefinition of culture, blossoming of meaning. When we take care for conversation, conversation takes care of us.
:- Doug.
Neighborly living processes
I am learning about conversation by studying its neighborly living processes.
:- Doug.
Grasping hands
Where is this going? Where is the path to. . .what? Profound, weighty, penetrating, sacred, meaning, larger, keen, life, qwoan, intimate, known, rooted, grounding, completing? This is an opening of ourselves to some power or skill inherent in us, generating a knowing of persons (human or otherwise) and being known as person. This a grasping of hands, and grasping of essence.
:- Doug.
green and brown to heat
Our work is not merely permitting the conversation to do its work. We can be intentional. We can bring in the food and drink, and the living parts that have become separated from their optimal places. Consider the compost heap: we can bring our table scraps and put them on the pile. Living things will go to work and create rich black soil. But the little critters which do the work would work better if they were not starved. We know that compost works best with both green things (the table scraps and cut grass) and brown (like autumn leaves and wood chips): then the heap starts heating up. Work is done. Life is heated. Similarly our job in conversation is to go out to other persons, show up to stay there, bring food, water, green ideas, brown combustible material, and knowing patience.
:- Doug.
Bob hanging by its string
Several insights this morning, foundational in some way, sounding depths in me. They relate to conversation, and they go deeper (would like to have a better word than that) than I have been going in my studies. I feel as though my metaphors have not plumbed far, the bob is hanging by its string, has not yet touched, has only encountered some of the dirt and rock outcroppings on the way; maybe the hole has twists at many angles.
:- Doug.
Knows when we do not
The conversation knows what to do when we do not. More fruit. More birds. More seeds dropping. More ants transporting. More life sprouting. Enriching life. Juicy.
:- Doug.
Right humus
If we make space in our lives for forming our relationships, what then? Relationships form our cultural identity. Even our personal identities. One or two persons at a time, we restore rightness. We breathe health into our lungs. Beyond human to the humus and all that live in, on, under, and over it.
:- Doug.
A river runs
What does it mean to be sacred?
A river runs through it, yes
A river runs under it, too
:- Doug.
Does conversation have a right?
Does conversation have a right, and a sacred nature: to be whole and health-giving?
:- Doug.
Unconversable conversation
What is the unconversable conversation? For our generation? For example, how willing are you to allow humanity to end? What are your prerequisites before you will acquiesce to it?
:- Doug.
Human beauty last week
What dear friend is human beauty? When did you see it in another, this week? Think hard for it was there. It was probably in an encounter—maybe you saw it face to face, or maybe it chose to shine through you, or maybe you heard it across a room.
:- Doug.
As a microwave to a pan
As a microwave oven to a pan on a stove top, so this little thing to chit-chat.
:- Doug.
The unnamed thing that instantly boils blood
What is the concept I am seeking in the word “spiritual?” Thrill (to pierce, penetrate, hole, shivering, exciting feeling). It is an uplifting, a possibility of doing the impossible, being the impossible. Being more than we thought possible.
None of these are it, only nip at the skirt.
That little thing easily smothered that begins a conflagration.
So much for not being able to name it. What is it? Maybe that is the best, the better way: say what it does. This little thing in conversation like spirit may be more verb than noun. Conversation does things. To us. Conversation makes persons, changes us, engenders relations, starts fires. This little thing in conversation is what instantly boils the blood.
:- Doug.
Response and belonging
Conversation is response, and that is a realm of Thou. This expresses belonging or longing or giving of self or hearing of like or receiving or interchange or flowing.
:- Doug.
Character of this conversation?
What is the character of this conversation I study, and what justification have we for approaching it with respect and awe?
:- Doug.
