“Well that was — something new and different! I’m so glad Yolanda invited Typist to join her morning prayer group!” Thalia set her mug on the counter. “It reminded me of our Tuesday morning Listening Circle — only it’s open for anyone to join! And since Typist was only exploring, we got to hang out in the curiosity room! What a cool name — curiosity room! What does prayer mean to you? To me — it means paying attention, and relationship-ing with life.”
“I pray Thalia stops drinking so much coffee.” Nia folded her hands. “And, I’m praying we finish today’s love letter, get truck’s oil changed, stay present for our afternoon conversations, get irradiated, take Henny to the dog park, and pack for the weekend retreat.” Nia’s pencil was poised over Typist’s calendar, ready to put a line through love letter.
Calliope smiled. “Wonder-full! We can do all of those things while paying attention and relationship-ing… yes? Let’s not forget to shower first.”
Words from Typist:
I’m still thinking about reality… and how there is a vast ocean of life we can choose to experience.
Honestly, I’m rarely ever sure of what is “true.”
Is truth temporary?
A relationship with the moment we’re in?
Tomorrow the muses and I are driving to Hayward Wisconsin where we’ll get to hug a bunch of friends we’ve only ever seen on a computer screen.
Sweet 🔥🍫s’mores!
We’ll likely be MIA for a few days.
If you’re interested in exploring a coral reef or two while we’re gone, take a few seconds to listen to a snippet Neil Pasricha’s interview on The Knowledge Project.
Or listen to me read this short story from Kurt Vonnegut.
Enjoy your trip, Gail!
I’m not being facetious in asking: while you are “retreating” this week end, if you were inspired to write a love letter one early morning, would you be any less present in doing so than in conversation with your friends? Does the medium define presence? Our lives now offer new ways to be “with” others: FaceTime for Apple users, virtual reality (think Meta and their latest VR headsets), Zoom, and surely some I’m not recalling at the moment. 😉
I’ll confess potential bias in asking this. During my studies of psychology, I learned that in the earliest beginnings of psychology, they were referred to as “scientific philosophers.” One early subject of experiments was determining immediacy of experience. Do we experience life as it is happening in real time? They couldn’t measure when one’s brain registered a sight, sound, taste, smell, or touch. Only reactions to the event. Imprecision of timing devices over 100 years ago led to the frequent conclusion that we do experience life immediately!
Perhaps today the dimension of engaging with life is governed more by the directness in our experiences. Face to face vs screen to screen. Does that distinction diminish the latter over the former? Perhaps this is not only presence, but our connections with others. IMHO I have to conclude that the distinction between sound waves and electrical impulses is not the critical dimension. Note: I split hairs with the best of them!