FootprintsintheWind.com

Buber says we can stand in I-Thou relation “with beings and things which come to meet us in nature”, (pp 124-5). Some original peoples of North America hold that non-human animals and plants are persons and deserve to be met as such (e.g. Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, p 56: “know the world as a neighborhood of nonhuman residents.” This one is “Someone, not something.”) Might the latter enrich the former? More specifically, are words necessary for conversation, or even for meeting?

:- Doug.

So I am seeing a desire to make spirit central to my study of conversation; and to look at specific areas or uses of conversation—to make it concrete. If conversation is central and not a tool, then what is specific, what is concrete? How do I give it framing, put meat on the bones? Conversation is perhaps how we stitch spirit to spirit, or reveal the stitches. Not so much stitches as tendrils, living bits reaching out to other living bits. Softly, tenderly stretching to meet. That is perhaps the beginning of a frame.

:- Doug.

Conversation gone askew: role of foreign actors in US social media.

:- Doug.

Conversation realms to investigate: women’s education; continuous supply energy; food; water; health; ecology; rights of women, children, aged, disabled, workers, prisoners, refugees.

:- Doug.

Is conversation a near-deliberate sharing of spirit?

:- Doug.

What is it about conversation that we find undertones of sacred?

:- Doug.

Converse! It’s what we all do.

:- Doug.

There is now a great patch of blue, medium-deep, highlighted by bright cumulus clouds surrounding it. Beautiful! Thank you!

:- Doug.

I want to get to studying and to writing: to making sense and headway in my books. I may at the moment be thinking there is no stream through it. Then again, the droplets from the melting snow do not know where they are going, but are pulled and follow. Mighty rivers from little melting snowflakes grow, by only following gravity.

:- Doug.

Conversation is life
Quenching our thirst
For belonging
Giving us strength
For giving to others

:- Doug.

But how do we touch the shared imagination? Shared first with another one or two people; shared ultimately with the 11th generation?

:- Doug.

I read again today in George Lakoff’s The All New Don’t Think of an Elephant, and am finding some wider angles on it. The question I am asking now is what is the picture of a more conversational world that life-enhancing people will want, and Lakoff is bringing me to asking How then do we frame what we want? These share an essence: a leaning towards.

And leaning in toward each other has been a meaningful image for me.

102: “Morally based framing is everybody’s job.” 100: “It is about which values will [enliven] in our society.” 98: Meet “definition with definition” “sanctity with sanctity”. 97” “love and commitment, family and community.”

Turning to One Another is the book by Meg Wheatley. That is a good image. Leaning in toward one another, hearing one another, intent on one another. These are somewhat, perhaps softly, evocative images. What will seize our imaginations?! Stir the blood (Burnham)?

That is perhaps the perennial question for me, yes? What is the most exciting picture you have for the generations of your children? First, why are you not making a bigger more exciting picture? Second, how will the higher futures be sterile of conversation?

:- Doug.

Gathering in arms
Dancing
All are wanted
Rhythm
Love is
Conversation is
Not ever a balancing

:- Doug.

Thinking About Talking

:- Doug.

Write it so it is clear you are writing at two levels of meaning. Explain not.

:- Doug.

In our community, when you say you want to talk, we sit down and make space in our day for you. We make space in our attention for you. We work to hear you. We speak little, asking things like, What kind of embarrassed was that? What else about that person? What happened next, or What would you like to have happen? We find others do the same for us.

:- Doug.

Our task is to make it easy to get to the hard work. Conversation, thinking together, is the hard work, the very hard work.

:- Doug.

Who are you when you are your most generous self? When you are your most needy self? Are these both when you are your most human self? And are these also when you are your strongest, most alive self?

:- Doug.

What is the root system of conversation? This conversation? Your conversation?

:- Doug.

We no longer speak truth to power. Yes there is injustice even in the hearts of others. So we remind each other to open in love.

:- Doug.

In our laboratory, conversations change how we do science, change the meaning of science from things to study, to other beings with whom we converse. It is a wider world, a widening world.

:- Doug.

In our region, babies are brought up to talk with strangers, birds, the sky, the moon.

:- Doug.

In this town we seek out new people. We seek to meet someone new each day. We seek, after worship on Sunday, the people we know least. We seek out longer conversations with the person.

:- Doug.