Richness

Time for reflection. A tool for doing just that. Let's see if it produces discoveries.

'Call to mind some 2nd person encounter (of one or several occasions); identify the Other(s); consider the arisings, arrivings, or deviatings that made it possible; appreciate its history of richness: how vivid the recognitions (otherness!), how potent the acknowledgements (this Other!), how urgent the addressings (You!), how suspenseful the anticipations (We!), as well as how intriguing (what is yet to be encountered, exposed, examined), how impressive (that the encounter was--what it was--for us).' (from the God-in-love framework)

'Call to mind...'   Easily enough done. I'm fair tuckered out by this whole week with Meja.

'Identify the Other(s)...'  Meja of course, but then my daughter, my wife, relatives, friends, strangers... But, for the sake of this analysis, the grandson.

'Consider the arisings, arrivings, or deviatings...'  the alescences (vs prevalences) in the philosophy of Justus Buchler. The question is about what special factor made this encounter special, out of the ordinary, new: the occasion of a baby shower for one of my daughter's friends.

'Appreciate its history...' Episodes of  significant intensity because consisting of short compressed visits.

'How vivid...'   two year old-ness, the overtness of all gestures, the visual images: small boy in a big place focused on something tiny at his feet. His compactness, his expressiveness, his fascination with puddles...

'How potent...'  this particular tow-headed child (what is it about blonde that provokes remark?) taking overr my home. The one who lives and grows out in Michigan, the one who is inimitable, this one who has unique power over me..  I know I'll see him again. I make plans for his education. What can I teach him?

'How urgent...'  You, Meja, waking from a nap, calling to be let out of the crib. He has needs and he has wants, the two hardly distinguished, except wants can be distracted. When he calls, I answer; if, sleeping, he coughs, I wait in suspense.

'How suspenseful...'  On the verge of...sentences, stories, formal games, deliberate intentions. In the layover airport asking about Grandmere and Granpi, so relationship are being cemented and poised to develop.

'How intriguing...'  the sources and structures of his spontaneity, his will to learn, his patterns of fears and insecurities, what he sees in Michigan that is expressed in Massachusetts.

'How impressive...'  our home with your presence, the focus of this week, our whole-hearted response, the sheer boyishness of him.

All in all, the tool is a distraction from describing the encounter and waiting for discoveries. This checklist of aspects of significance seems more like rummaging through a drawer to find a match for a sock than say walking through a landscape watching as on the left hills hove into view, on the right streams begin to burble. An encounter is a living occasion. On the dissection table, the parts seem like so many saggy lumps, not contributors to active life. What, then, is the value then of this set of questions, or any such..on any project?

Step back, Peter. What we're talking about are episodes in a 2nd person encounters, not Grey's Anatomy. These are prompts for reflection toward discoveries, not algorithms for generating them automatically.

Perhaps prompts are like the 'schemata' Paul Klee develops in his pedagogical notebooks: a vocabulary of forms combining the observable and the symbolic that can serve as soil for inspiration. Urgent, suspenseful, potent, vivid, intriguing, impressive: these are words we can be aware of feeling and either know why, or find out why, and in any case, savor.