Conversations COULD be a dime a dozen.  My hunch is, however, that we are impoverished when it comes to conversation, particularly conversations between spouses and partners, and conversations between parents and children.  That's unfortunate, because conversations can be very RICH experiences.

     How much time do we spend in the car with our loved ones, including children, driving in silence or listening to the radio?  Or how much time do we spend ranting and raving?  Do we spend any time at all at the dinner table?  Many of us are GONE most of the day, gone working, gone golfing, gone puttering, gone shopping, gone drinking and gambling, GONE!

     When we are at home "together," we spend considerable time GONE there too.  Gone watching television, gone working or playing at the computer or "Play"station.  And it's interesting that we WATCH television, and sometimes that's exactly what we do, we watch, we stare, we become mesmerized.

     We do spend considerable time on our cell phones, CONVERSING ear to ear.  And more and more we are abandoning even those conversations to TEXT messaging.  Perhaps the excitement of hearing your cell phone beep and then seeing a message from another human being is SO EXCITING, that it's almost like passing a note to your first love in school.

     But what happened to CONVERSATION, where we sit down across from each other or even side by side, where we can REACH OUT AND TOUCH someone (as the old AT&T commercial used to say), with our fingers, our eyeballs, our smile, our frown, our worry, our anxiety, our grief, our ecstacy, our love?

     CONVERSATIONS can be informative, touching, inspiring, lifegiving, and HEALING.  There's an old philosophy, goes back thousands of years, that believes that when we speak a word, the speaking of the word brings into existence what the word stands for.  So when I refer to you by your name when I'm CONVERSING with you, I'm literally calling you into existence!  When I speak with you about my excitement, my passion, my depression, my sadness, whatever it is, I literally call that part of me into existence and it's laid out there between us, for both of us to look at, to touch, to smell, to taste, to share, to heal, to savor, to weave into the fabric of both of our lives.

     Sometimes, we hear the term the ART of conversation.  I just want to assure EVERYONE, that you do not have to be an artist to have a wonder-filled conversation.  You just have to SPEAK, say what's on your soul, and invite your listener to speak as well.

     Or perhaps, if you take the risk to have a conversation, to put some words out there onto the airwaves that separate one person from another, that atmospheric canvass that can hardly stand waiting for someone to come along and paint something on it, perhaps, that is precisely what makes all of us ARTISTS!  

     It's cooler today here in the Inland Empire, and even drizzling.  I hope it's cooler where you are as you read my "drizzles" for the day.

     There are places in our world today where we all are in desperate need of CONVERSATION.  I'm not sure if CONVERSATION is the same as DIPLOMACY.  I don't think it is, because it's not about speaking softly with a big stick.  It's truly about CONVERSATION and learning to  converse without a PERSPECTIVE or SPIN.  Spinning leaves everyone dizzy!

     It's about SEEING only the PERSON across from or next to you.  And taking the risk to allow that PERSON to see YOU.