FootprintsintheWind.com

Sometimes in conversation we are pulling ideas out of each other’s foreheads, and releasing them into the air as butterflies. More color, more brightness. More light, more distance.

:- Doug.

A metaphor relates one thing to another, often a physical object to a mental construct: the elephant in the room. In this way the physical thing converses with, and is made to relate to, the conceptual—and us.

:- Doug.

Relation is the without which not of conversation. Conversation is the without which not of relation.

:- Doug.

conversation
less work
more immersion

:- Doug.

The ultimate mystery of conversation is how relation makes person (see also Martin Buber, I and Thou, p 62). Said another way, the mystery rises up to face us when we are stirred by the breath of our Thou (see also, Id., p 63). This mystery faces us every time, every conversation, we cannot know how it will turn out, how indeed it has turned out. With no end conversation confronts us, even in its echoes. The mystery is this Thou, this I, this relation.

:- Doug.

Ask a favor.

:- Doug.

A metaphor is an attempt to make sense. Or it encapsulates a sense made. Or it reveals a level of heat. Or it condenses several thoughts into an easy to transport memory. Or metaphors are the base of the comparisons by which we think.

:- Doug.

We are not here to converse perfectly, rather to love converse deeply.

:- Doug.

Listened to an excerpt from an interview of Rachel Naomi Remen where she talks of creation and light coming out of the “holy darkness.” This is an evocative image. Hold us in the holy darkness!? It suggests fecundity and mystery in the darkness, something pregnant and out-flowing.

:- Doug.

One of the fathers of the modern study of dialogue for me has been Martin Buber. It was now time to return home and sit again at the knees.

:- Doug.

Maybe we do not want to meet deeply, as Thou to Thou. Maybe we need to let that happen and deepen, get through it, not past it. Like grieving?

:- Doug.

We are seeking to belong to one another, to meet as Thou to one another. Perhaps this is the peak kind of conversation. Or the ocean that is all conversation, where the darkest, coolest, most fecund parts are what we are drawn to.

:- Doug.

I and Thou develop for me a foundational role in conversation.

:- Doug.

We don’t seek to use conversation. We simply become present to it, let it in.

:- Doug.

In I and Thou Buber offers to meet us. We’d do well to do so.

:- Doug.

This brings me to life
Brings life to me

:- Doug.

We don’t get there by sweat
Nor by will
But by allowing

:- Doug.

We cannot get control over this thing called spirit, called conversation. We can only meet and be met, turn and be turned.

:- Doug.

Buber, I and Thou, p 54 equates process with unlimited causality, and therefore, by the logic on p 51, equates it with the world of It.

:- Doug.

Causality, and so teleology (and so goals), are of the world of It, so that “conversation” which sets out to bring about an outcome is doomed to never be conversation. It will only be a bargain and a price paid or demanded. Conversation is never guaranteed. Conversation is when Thou meets Thou. See also Buber, I and Thou, p 51.

:- Doug.

Metaphor, comparatively speaking.

:- Doug.

What do you want to have happen in your conversation?

:- Doug.

Into this conversation we each bring with us many landscapes. When we put them together we can build something of worth.

:- Doug.