My hope is to begin making significant shifts in whatever 'free' time I have in the coming days. My reading and writing has been demonstrating too many aspects of compulsivity. What can I read that will make for clever posting? What can I write that will engage a wider audience? Daily hits are up (normally reaching double digits!) and according to Google Analytics I have hosted visitors across the globe. Though I know I should not I remain under a subtle illusion that my work here will somehow surface as 'significant' in writing something either thoughtful or provocative. There are seasons where deadlines, clear structures and clear goals stimulate helpful thought. This season is closing for myself (though I hope to experience its warm evening breezes again). I hope to move into a hibernation where I might find undemanding spaces of contemplation. Ideas, memories, pathologies must be given some room to engage each other internally as though in a highly confidential support group. Guest speakers may be allowed to visit occasionally but they will be of a different sort than the harsh pedagogues they have been co-habitating with recently.
I hope to continue to post here but I will not be anxious as daily hits begin to reflect my own visits and the few and faithful who have remained (for almost five years now!). I have been reading on and posting on the possibility of change or transformation. I hope to engage more fully in the process now. This is not to say that a forum of expression such as this cannot be a part of someone's transformation. In my case the hope of writing for recognition has demanded too much control and vanquished transformation's subtle (I did not, and would not, say weak) movement.
No matter how we articulate our positions or what our political or religious orientation we remain all too bent on conquest. We do not believe that it is possible to receive a gift, to be touched. We do not believe that there exists in life sufficient (never mind abundant) spaces where time gives of herself. Well, okay I have not believed. Time may yet be our lover but we have been all too aggressive with her.
I have experienced movement and it has given me hope for movement. Achievement and status are not our friends. They have taken their turn with time and left her vengeful on any who would take advantage again. This is all turning out very poetic as I do indeed have time early this morning where autumn colors dapple the valley of trees out my window and the morning hues of pink and blue are just beginning to gain intensity. I have time and I peace right now and for this I am thankful. I can do no more.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
A Hope of Movement and a Movement of Hope
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4 comments:
I may be responding over-literally to what you have written - apologies if this is the case... My sense is that sometimes the apparent bent to conquest strikes most strongly, when people actually are being touched - when some impact has been made? The most overt gesture or most visible flashpoint doesn't always reflect the most significant consequence of an encounter. The most significant things unfold very slowly, and sometimes the flashpoints and the momentary stasis they reflect stay in memory, while we miss the slower changes because they unfold gradually enough that we change along with them and therefore don't ever possess the same kind of stark perspective from which such things can easily be seen...
I don't know if you know Benjamin? I've always found his metaphors for transformation quite powerful... I've particularly liked this passage - part of a series of meditations on time, history, remembrance, and (our own responsibilities in relation to) redemption:
our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply.
Apologies if I have misunderstood the intentions or mood behind your post, or if this intervention is unwelcome...
The intervention is of course welcome. I agree with you on the subtlety of change. What I am trying to reflect is an awareness of movement that assumes that things will not simply continue if unattended. We must to attend to that which is beginning to take shape.
I don't think that 'being touched' leaves one more prone towards conquest. It can however offer itself as a catalyst. A match to light a fire for warmth or fuse for explosion. I hoped that my later reflection on time pointed to my need for time. That if change is desired then patterns must be altered so that new rhythms could be perceived. I get very distracted by illusions of status and intellectual achievement which can dull the senses required for meaningful and healthy relationships. And so I am hoping to explore new spaces . . . and I will try and listen carefully.
Have read very little of Benjamin, would like to read more.
It's tempting to write for the sake of getting someone to listen (read). I know I do that. Read me! Listen to me!!!!
But it's so important to be the one doing the listening. Our brains fill with noise. One of the things I'm working on in the next few months- in this hibernation time of year- is to shut up the noise and the drive and just listen. It's never been easy for me.
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