Practices for Living Creatively With Life

We live in a world that is ultimately a mystery to us. While we can never fully undestand it, we can learn to live creatively with it:

To work with things in the indescribable

relationship is not too hard for us;

the pattern grows more intricate and subtle

and being swept along is not enough.

- R.M. Rilke

Working with things is the Art of Dialogue in the broadest sense, for Dialogue is essentially creative interaction - conversation - with the world we encounter, in a way that produces new possibilities that enrich us all. It involves recovering basic capacities - presence, attention and openness - through clarifying our intention, cultivating certain attitudes, and practicing simple skills.

We know a lot, and that wisdom is reflected in our spiritual traditions, our philosophies, our art and our science, but we fail to live this wisdom or let it shape our institutions. Instead we get stuck in old assumptions and uncreative ways, even when they no longer serve us: we cling to the familiar especially when faced with threats; we find transition hard. We don't easily cross the river to new ways and a new life.

CROSS RIVER
Sometimes, life - the river - simply takes hold of us and pulls us across to the other side. Think of the times of crisis when we came together to support one another, as if we were one family. Think of when you fell in love and were pulled out of yourself and into the river. In every case, it was connection that pulled us in and pulled us through; took us across to the other side.

CONNECTIONS
The essence of life - ever unfolding, ever-changing life - is connection: communions of all sorts that create new life, or rather allow new life to emerge.

We are happiest when we participate in this flow. We are unhappy - we suffer - when that connection is broken.