Over the past several editions of Reflections, the same theme, through many mutations and formulations, has been the steady undercurrent:

We live together within a space between us; a space in our relationships we must allow and enter if we are to realize a sense of our lives as being meaningfully related … despite the vicissitudes that challenge us constantly. It is a space, without prior definition, wherein lies the core paradox of life – meanings cherished must be surrendered to challenges of meeting in order to be affirmed or reformulated within newly discovered possibilities between us. The most critical moment of this challenge is often in the surrender of our deepest assumptions when we are called to allow the validity of the differences between us.

I’ve often said to myself: might my need for these many iterations lurk in some part of me that really doesn’t ‘get it’?

We know that repetition can mask a desire to understand that clings to a faulty method of inquiry. True realization would rest securely within a silence. Wasn’t it Lao Tzu who said: He who says doesn’t know. He who knows doesn’t say? Isn’t it the silence to which Job was reduced in the awesome face of his question?

We have Winnicott’s ongoing being, Bion’s O, Kristeva’s heterogeneity and Chora, Buber’s ‘in between space’ of the I Thou. And of course, Freud!  Freud, to my mind at least, whose theorizing about structures and levels of dynamics between this level and that … can distract from his radical insight into the depth and essence of any therapeutic encounter: the mutual allowance of attentive, undefined silence. A silence that is so alive that it can feel threatening; a silence that holds the groping imaginings of our deepest awareness.

Ok. Winnicott’s imagining and Freud’s silence. Got it? Of course.

So why can’t I shut up about it?

Hmm …

***

Premonition

somewhere i know

we are but shades

reaching

for each other  in the breeze

and love in truth

is oneness with the wind

but i

would rather hold

a longer while

to dreams

than comprehend

what love requires

James Donnelly

Love and Knowledge