Dialogue is a way of discovering what we know

What we give

What we receive

This is the beginning of a Dialogue Series that invites reader/receivers of ACOL into intimate dialogues.

Dialogue is revealing.

I began these dialogues with the idea of wanting to capture a few of the people who had been with me as A Course of Love began. As soon as I engaged in the first one, my excitement grew. It grew over what was being revealed. There was more being shared than story or content. There was something about seeing two people in conversation that spoke with far more than words. There was visible listening, visible hearing, expressions of intimacy, relationship, and connection . . . all made visible and sharable. It was like the words on the pages of ACOL. More is there than words. More is going on than reading. But just as those words predicted, something more is also going on with sharing.

You have to share who you are to be who you are.

Each of us know it when we experience something more. We can walk the same park every day for ten years yet still remember the particular days on which something more happened and we were overcome by a feeling of awe and reverence. We can share thousands of conversations with a good friend over the years, and still never forget a particular conversation or two in which something more happened that made our hearts beat in a new way, our eyes tear up, or the arising of new ideas or insights that shot zingers into our scalp. In every area of my life I can recall times of heightened experience that fall into the category of something more, something beyond the kin of everyday life experiences.

At the same time, dialogue is ordinary. The “magic” doesn’t happen every day, but what happens every day prepares the ground for the extraordinary, as the ordinary always does.

In this time and place, in our in-spirited form, we are uniquely able to express ourselves and show love in all its marvelous diversity. I have no idea if you will find the extraordinary in these Dialogues as I did. My hope is you will find something “real.” Everywhere we find people “being real” we meet our humanity and divinity in its wonderful dance.

If you would like to fund these on-going dialogues you may designate your contribution to the Center to go toward this endeavor.