Our Most Precious Relationships
James Flaherty of New Ventures West

Our most precious relationships appear (coming from where? going to where when they fade?) when we are fully met. When we hide nothing, distort nothing, justify nothing, protect nothing, hold back nothing, there’s the chance that someone we encounter will accept, treasure, celebrate the us that is then touched by them.

At this moment, we can fully relax, trust and consequently all anxiety and frustration drop away. We find ourself by being wholly received. Reciprocation by us, opens the other to deeper reception, and on and on without limit the individual and mutual depths embrace us. Have you felt this? Seen it in others? Do you deeply long for this meeting? For this we call out (almost all the Psalms are about this call, also much of Rumi), and our call often (always?) cannot quite say what we are trying to express.

Maybe our whole human life is our sometimes noble, sometimes base attempt to voice our call, which somehow is closer to us than our own bodies and yet so elusive. Sometimes it feels weighty, weighty as lead and still, when we go to express it, becomes gossamer and melts at our merest touch of attention. Other times our call feels joyous, exultant, and triumphant and our expression, our attempt to show it somehow becomesdark, dense, flat, dead. Do you feel what your heart is calling out to say? What is it?

Have you tried to say it?

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