Connecting with Images

This page is a rough draft!

Connecting with Images Zoom calls

When done in person, we would all spend time together looking through images individually. Then, we would share a very small number of images with each other and talk about them. This would be followed by a time of engaging in a creative process. At the end, there might be a checking out process that again involves choosing images and sharing them.

For the Zoom calls, one way we could try doing things is to choose images beforehand to bring to the call.

Third Things

From: https://nickross.me/the-four-quartets/

Third Things: Using poetry as practice

‘Mediated by a good metaphor, the soul is more likely than usual to have something to say.’

The principle of ‘third things’ come from the work of Parker J Palmer and The Centre for Courage and Renewal. Using third things might best be described as ‘soul work’.

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Parker describes third things as follows in his book, A Hidden Wholeness

"In Western culture, we often seek truth through confrontation. But our headstrong ways of charging at truth scare the shy soul away. If soul truth is to be spoken and heard, it must be approached ‘on the slant.’ I do not mean we should be coy, speaking evasively about subjects that make us uncomfortable, which weakens us and our relationships. But soul truth is so powerful that we must allow ourselves to approach it, and it to approach us, indirectly. We must invite, not command, the soul to speak. We must allow, not force, ourselves to listen.

“We achieve intentionality by focusing on an important topic. We achieve indirection by exploring that topic metaphorically, via a poem, a story, a piece of music, or a work of art that embodies it. I call these embodiments ‘third things’ because they represent neither the voice of the facilitator nor the voice of a participant. They have voices of their own, voices that tell the truth about a topic but, in the manner of metaphors, tell it on the slant. Mediated by a third thing, truth can emerge from, and return to, our awareness at whatever pace and depth we are able to handle — sometimes inwardly in silence, sometimes aloud in community — giving the shy soul the protective cover it needs.

“Rightly used, a third thing functions a bit like the old Rorschach inkblot test, evoking from us whatever the soul wants us to attend to. Mediated by a good metaphor, the soul is more likely than usual to have something to say. But the fact will count for nothing if we fail to recognize that the soul is speaking or fail to pay attention to what it says.

“What T. S. Eliot said about poetry is true of all third things: ‘[Poetry] may make us . . . a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.”

... The invitation is simply to read the poem and notice which words, sentences or phrases touch you today and speak to your experience. ...