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

Can We Tawk?

Comedienne Joan Rivers’ catchphrase was, ‘Can we talk?’ with all that that entails — its rhetorical nature, the Jewish thing, an implication that at least one of the parties will be better off for having done so … Like God. T’other day a priest spoke of ontological remembrance, the immediate and ongoing memory of past-present-future

The Smart Young Student

Then a student came up to Him and said, “Teacher, what must I do to get an A?” And the Teacher said, “Now you want to know? Now you care — and you think I can help? Look, to get an ‘A’ just do the things that get an A: think critically, run the spell-check, yes, you need

Functionally Illiterate Christian

Every few years I realize how wrong I’ve been. People who know me are faster on that, and even temporary acquaintances pick up the signals pretty quick, and I do the same for them. All this has happened before, and it will all happen again, the line goes. But this time it happened in …

Y2K20

better late than never

Related

Who They Are

The poet felt injustice in calling it Fancy Ketchup. The priest said the most grievous sins can be forgiven. * The priest wondered if anyone changed. The poet said he’d seen it often, depending on who was paying. * The poet would punish evil by making them hated by all. The priest would in having

Lyric Lent

Mostly I gave up meat for Lent. Or to put it another way, I gave up meat (mostly) for Lent. And this is how Lent often goes and the difference I think isn’t usually that it doesn’t go that way but that it’s OK when it does. Not that it’s OK to give our word

On the Rock

I often vow not to hope, and always break that vow. And the next thing I’m supposed to say is that finally my hopes are realized, my desires achieved and all my wildest dreams come true. But this is not what’s happening just now. Just now I break that vow and I don’t get what

Dance With Who Brung Ya

We’re observing Columbus Day with doughy, deep-fried donuts dusted with powdered sugar. It’s hard to hate old Christopher when M makes zeppole. But we are supposed to hate him, we’re told. We’re told, I say! We’re told he to do so because he was a bad man — he was a very bad man. The