FootprintsintheWind.com

Ours differs from a world of factions and fractions: now our first interest is to seek out those who differ, to find out, to create, new pathways to each other’s minds and hearts.

:- Doug.

What might a world in conversation smell, sound, touch, taste, look like?

:- Doug.

The betweens are all we have to work on—and they never sit still!

:- Doug.

What conversation do we want to run toward, full tilt? Conjure up for me a symphony!

:- Doug.

This tension—between using others as things by which to profit (WIIFM) vs being true to others as our meeting mates—from our age is ever with us. We are unlikely to make the big corporations and the insincere politicians change their thinking. But we must each day turn, turn to stand in the meeting.

I need to bring this insight from Buber into the books.

:- Doug.

A lot of insights, stemming mainly from an On Being interview with an ocean scientist with a cultural focus: she focuses on what a better world could be: people want sustainable, and she asks do you want a sustainable marriage; rather she says we need to develop a picture of what a world could be if we made it better. Yes! We do not put meat on the bones of the better worlds we want to work for. We need, I need, to think deeply about what those things look like. Want to also get away from the hegemony of the visual.

:- Doug.

When, not how: When the words heat and start to sizzle in the page, if you look closely, you can find the beginning of a metaphor: “In this wet climate where everything is on its way back to decay. . . .” First, your ears prick up. Second you suspect there is a second or even third thing speaking to you. Third you think what it may be about, sensing fibers beneath the soil. Here you stay awhile and then want to rush off after you have turned the first bit of earth. But resist, hold yourself here, for fourth you open to further metaphors: applewood, crispness, juiciness, love, sustenance. Sometimes it just asks you to luxuriate. Lolling.

:- Doug.

When a relation develops between two individuals or among three or more they are a wholly new organism to last but a time.

:- Doug.

The reason our Western gods are anthropomorphic is we need around us other beings like us. The reason our Western gods speak to us is we crave conversation. Especially conversation that cuts our hearts in two.

What I miss in Eastern spirituality is the movement, the dynamics, the ping! All becomes saltless, sweetless, pabulum without even lumps.

:- Doug.

Talk to nurture one another.

:- Doug.

They experience their mother as burden and expense, and so miss the grace she brings.

:- Doug.

Conversation is as essential among us as breath—and at least as mystical. Day by night I drop my bucket into the abyss unfathomed.

:- Doug.

We are about renewing relationship.

:- Doug.

To converse is to gather.

:- Doug.

“In” a conversation, words and meanings get “in the way” of “seeing” what’s happening.

:- Doug.

What does the conversation want?

:- Doug.

Doing conversation with awe and humility is a powerful act of reciprocity.

:- Doug.

Plan for our conversation
Things I want you to know
Things I want to find out
Surprises

:- Doug.

Even if the conversation contains the cosmos, we can start with our neighborhood: the land under our feet. Dance for this home. It is conversation enough.

:- Doug.

How would we study this long-flow conversation? In geology. In the ontogenesis of the children and plants (apparently phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny has been thrown aside by biology). Cosmology.

:- Doug.

This is a new direction. It takes me past the building and teaching metaphors into the ageless flow, too slow to catch our attention. And yet including the too fast for us.

:- Doug.

This seems significant, this inventing a world bigger, taking part in a conversation bigger. In a sense the conversation bigger is there and we hardly recognize it. In another sense, if once we start attending this larger, might we take a more appropriate part in it? Not to direct it nor to profit from it, but to enrich it?

:- Doug.

What if conversation were inventing a world bigger than our mouths, ears, and horizons?

:- Doug.