Month: December 2020

Eye control is an integral part of listening.

Several different focal points that enhance listening include wide, deep, reverse, and askance.

To have a wide-eyed, unfocused gaze emphasizes the importance of cues beyond words and timbre. An attempt is made to see the whole person who is more than this moment of conversation. This is a portion of waiting for the issue behind the issue to reveal itself. There is no hurry here. A needed response will begin at the right time, an interjection will come unbidden. The other is honored with presence.

A deep look is not investigative but alert to loving-kindness that can be nurtured within both speaker and listener. At stake is locating a fulcrum point that will shift toward healing. The other is honored with participation.

From time to time, a listener needs to gaze inward to note how this is going for them. It may be time or past time to look for another time. Some personal experience being triggered may have its opportunity to identify a third pair of shoes for both to walk in for awhile. A question can be raised whether I’m looking for a way to break in and redirect. The other is honored with integrity.

There is no need to trust another’s perception or recounting. The old saw about “trust and verify” is as important between people as it is between national adversaries. This sharpens what question to ask and to bring back a shaggy-dog story to the issue at hand. The other is honored with reality.

Additional foci are also needed. At this point, the only point is that listening involves all the senses. Among them is what sight can do to improve one’s hearing that it might become a listening that moves everyone into a more fruitful frame of reference, even as a mustard plant can be a nesting place for new life to arise.

there there
comforts
a skinned knee
a broken heart
a loss too many

there there
announces
an insight
a discovery
a clarifying crux

there there
dismisses
an oversight
an injustice
a rising anger

there there
nails
a resolution
a doctrine
a false fact

there
is no
there
only
next

There is no there there, if there isn’t a their there.

I’ve been sadly amused by those claiming they approve the policies of Trumpism while questioning the presentation and tactics of Trump.

Trump’s knee-jerk response is to have an automatic put-down and threat to anyone who is not in immediate lock-step with him. There is only one who is independent, Trump. There is no equal to Trump.

This eternal conflict between independence and equality is all too easily unbalanced in favor of the separating power of independence with no recognized importance of another, much less their equality. This is Trumpism, and there is no policy associated with Trump that is not caught in the trap of ultra-independence—its automatic denial of equality.

It is only the possibility of equality that allows independence to shine. When independence has no place for equality, it is but a short way to authoritarianism and its fragility that inevitably leads to downfall.

Independence is not unlike a pyramid scheme, always in need of a stronger affirmation of independence. At this point, there can be no recognition of any other right to exist on its own.

Going in the other direction, ultra-equality is but a slower way of arriving at irrelevance.

The only viable choice is a recognition of the dream and fact of both independence and equality. Once out of balance, it is like putting the entitlements of Pandora’s Box back in place—not doable. Having lost connection with one another, they lose touch with their identity and devolve into their respective forms of injustice.

Another ultra-frivolous suit is headed toward the Supreme Court in an attempt to remove democracy from a democracy, to remove voting as a means of identifying next leaders for a limited time. It would seem an increasing number of people perceive the world as so chaotic and out of control that the most charismatic person appealing to fear should become the leader for an indefinite time.

One book I am reading titles a chapter, “Repairing the Moral Canopy after Institutional Betrayal.” A second book I am reading begins a section of the chapter entitled “The Problem and Promise of Prophecy” this way: “Although we live in a world of polemics, ever more present in social media, we must try to live in a world of possibilities, where we can affirm our own beliefs without negating the beliefs of others.” A commentator today spoke of needing a “new moral compact” to hold a divided country together.

This is a time of decision-making, conscious and unconscious, about what is next. Will it be a harking back to a mythical time of greatness measured in all manner of Manifest Doctrines? Might it yet lean forward to a time of interdependence that is more than polite dignity and some acceptable level of institutional malpractice of slowly eating our “seed corn” for a fleeting extra buck in our pocket.

Even though it would appear to harden already hardened sides, I look forward to more people signing on to the Lost Cause suit. In some respects, it is an equivalence to non-mask wearing during a viral pandemic. This clarifies the most fearful, those most deserving of a scarlet letter – “I” – for Idolator. Other Letters might be “S” – for Sedition or “T” – for Traitor. Of course, they will scream their patriotism to Freedom and Independence from any common good that doesn’t privilege and benefit their bottom line.

Since we don’t yet see or know the danger we are in of divinizing one person, one ideology, one way, I can imagine the Supreme Court bowing to the political theatre of striking the votes of four states.  Without some such institutional betrayal not attributable to one person (think The Donald or Grim Reaper McConnell), there will be no concerted action to develop a clearer moral compact to care for one another as the most effective way to care for self and all creation. Without some event similar to the Stamp Act or Krystallnacht we don’t go through the pain of redefining what is expected of 85% of United Statesians – first, the broadest general welfare of all; second, the lowest common denominator of common defense (public service). Until the economy is reset, there can be no expectation of a changed politic.

OCSD
Ongoing Covid Stress Disorder

calling kindness
in sorrows midst

knowing sorrow
canceled kindness

offers challenging
opportunities

defining
our time

HumanKIND
kind of human

HumanCONTROL
controls humanity

a mental-health pandemic
within a virus pandemic

puts the question
quite starkly

kindness to sorrow
sorrow to kindness

The distance between irony and blasphemy is ever so slight. It only takes standing in another position, even if they are standing alongside. All of a sudden, all kinship is up for grabs. Life-long companions can no longer be seen in the way while in the presence of a new bed partner.

When a new revelation comes, what had been seen as a settled conclusion is now recognized as having diminished capacity. Our sense of agency becomes exponentially greater or becomes quite beside the point. What we can do from where we are is guided by angels or technology, depending on what century we find ourself.

For some, a desire for wholeness is a limit on what we can bear. Others find a desire that leads beyond wholeness to something intuited as better than well.

There is a perennial tension about the location of our limits. Some stop far short, and others stride boldly past. In some sense, we are at the paradox of infinity, both countable and uncountable. Consider that ∞ is “infinity”. When we lose track of ∞ not being a number, but a concept, we find that ∞+1 is also infinity. When it turns out that ∞-1 is also infinity, we either laugh (response to irony) or curse (evidence of blasphemy). Either way we need to get back to first definitions and not get overly trapped in common sense when dealing with technical matters.

While the pluses and minuses that accumulate through a journey with sticky realities do have mass that changes our velocity, they carry no weight (again: laugh or curse). Our circumstances can continue to slide away in the face of a trickster or shapeshifter showing us the Great Kenosis of any divinity and any human and any creative context.

The work never ends with a judgment of what is ironic and what is blasphemous. Always we are the constructor of our next pass through their polarities and the import of their calculus.

life is inevitably
plural
more than one
is the implication
of context

a context always
relates
to additional
supportive contexts
or extinction

no life makes it
alone
without synchronicity
there’s only kaput
and whirlpools

laughter is in order
holographs
demonstrate a background
holds firm foregrounds
then not

Refraction can be measured and described but never captured. It has practical applications even while remaining wild and evocative. Everyday occurrences trigger stories in every culture. Explanations continue to fall flat.

If you are interested in an overview of different ways rainbows have been understood, try this link: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200409-rainbows-as-signs-of-thank-you-hope-and-solidarity.

Those interested in playing further might try a “compare and contrast” exercise with refraction and fractals. One approach is through physics: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/154576/how-would-a-fractal-refract-light. Another approach is through visual arts: https://www.deviantart.com/justravelin/art/Refracted-Fractal-Duo-69270342.

For the moment, of interest is asymmetrical slowing as light (life) enters, exits, or changes its current medium. As one edge is slowed, a beam shifts in its direction until all of it eventually follows suit, and a new straight line is established.

This reflects a similar process of changing one’s mind. An initial shift in a leading edge portends a fuller shift to come.

Conversion is not an instantaneous event. It can be credited to a first contact with something different or chalked up to a completed shift of a whole, non-zero beam. In real life, a change in life direction is as much a process as refraction.

This may not be recognized from within a refracted life. It is much easier to spot from the outside—as when a rainbow shows up on a wall. When it is an internal shift, we cover it over until it is well and truly on a different trajectory than before.

Given the multiplicity of our various parts, it makes sense that we are always behind a recognition of a new life. This is perhaps, even more, the case for a community. A take-away is to not give up on life getting better—we just haven’t caught up with a refraction point begun yesterday.

elections begin
with three questions

what has been going well
and needs continuing

what has not gone well
and needs changing

what needs to begin
and needs introducing

then we get to people’s lives
where practical questions

are thrown out the window
and questions are supplanted

by choosing up eternal verities
to have on our team

and we fight to the finish
while earth again avoids heaven

Intention is as frail as any set of thoughts and prayers unattended by action, large or small. While pointing a direction, it has no set of directions, in and of itself. Essentially it can quickly turn to an excuse that our intention was pure, but the circumstances of the moment were tripped up by forces larger than anticipated.

Intention is required when setting up a strategy within a given context. Without it, the possibility of finding the best place to place a fulcrum so a lever and our stored force might pry today up so space can be made for shifting the elements of how to arrive at a later positional difference.

Intention recognizes the need for humility that it might shift when feedback loops are engaged. To claim an eternal and unchanging intention made in the heaves is to do a grave injustice to anything approaching a Living G*D. If an intention is held to, past its time, that will be sufficient evidence that the intender is practically dead and living off a dead-end model of meaning.

Intention, then, attempts to work its way out of a job. An intention is best honored when, seven generations of intentions later, remembrance of its initiation of a fruitful process has shown its worth. In fact, any intention is well suited to anonymity and takes satisfaction in a job well completed, whether honored or not.