Out of You and Me

Leave a Comment / By Paul Hughes / July 2, 2016

An important decision

Zig Ziglar …
Wendell Berry …
or James Lee Burke?

The book one brings to morning coffee out is not unlike the t-shirt options one has later that evening

SpongeBob …
Arsenal F.C. …
or Feel the Bern?

Managing our reputations, as the LinkedInFluencers say. Wouldn’t wanna cross those guys.

It’s usually about trying to say something unique, trying to be something unique.

Of course we can’t avoid being unique but we don’t think we are, so we keep trying.

There’s another way. It’s harder but — by which I mean and thus — it’s well worth it. More precisely there are two ‘nother ways

Say something
Say nothing

Or rather

Say something different
Say nothing, which is different

An easy something different can be to ask the other a question. It must be honest and sincere. Prolly we’ll have to work at it.

To say nothing, which is different — that second option — means we can talk but only to comment on what the other says, not ourselves.

This isn’t about being coy or combative, shy or manipulative. It’s the studied studying of the other.

Why the other?

Because they are.

Rainer Maria Rilke said it was a marvel (or German to that effect) two people ever truly communicated, that one ever knew anything, or cd know anything, about the other. And he’s talking about people in love — people who want to know the other.

In any event … a marvel.

A wonder.

And that’s the key.

Knowing the other — making the other another — turning someone in your mind and heart from utterly alien to one who … isn’t … who is still an other into another — to one we come truly to want to know about … to know truly about … to know about truly … is a marvel, accomplished by wonder.

Treat it — and them — as one.

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.] One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Random

All Things Considered

This could go a couple different ways. An image likes could be Veteran’s Day, it’s not, or Memorial Day which, though closer, it’s not. Could be about a song (actually a poem) I found only a few months ago or an automatically somber meditation on mortality that’s begun before you’ve even begun to read …

Syllogism

Premise: If a story, then a storyteller. Premise: A story. Conclusion: A storyteller.

Around the House

One night I watched about half of “Extreme Makeover: Personal Edition.” Or something like that. It was about body renovations instead of housing, which is an interesting way to extend the brand. I can’t help wondering if as they pitched the idea a guy didn’t say, “Heh, heh — fat people … house … get

Dirty Rotten Scoundrel

Some of my best friends have a problem with the dirty poor. These are the folks below the dirt-poor — which describes a financial level not the person himself. These are the dirt-encrusted, unemployed, possibly begging (relying on strangers, kindness, and a fair economy as much as the rest of us, anyway), frequently transient (the weather

Related

You’re Doing It Wrong

A friend once recounted how a mutual acquaintance of ours had told her God spoke to him, which he meant both literally and verbally. It’s enough on one point to note the gent didn’t say God spoke with him — which wd seem to be preferred, all things taken together — but that isn’t what I’ll

Murder, Inc.

In Season One’s “Ransom for a Dead Man” Columbo tells a story about his cousin Ralph. He’s flying in Leslie Williams’ plane and she’s been talking about her husband, whom she’s murdered. By the story he tells after they’ve landed, he enters the murderer’s mind — with a significant stopping point: “I have this cousin, Ralph,

Duo

… More then says because he’s in prison and only has a coal with which to write he can’t respond fully to the view that one ought harm an evil man lest he cause even greater harm to such as are innocent and good. But He counsels us that even if it be our formal office to punish an evil

Why Not Two Cupcakes?

Something we know well and another I know little. Remember … re-member … before we begin Dallas Willard on knowing — namely … named-ly … not intellectual apprehension but interactive relationship. Each and both come from the same aim: good and right and lovely when well and harmful on all counts when not, as is