I want to respond at length to your question. It is a great question and worthy of a whole blog posting. So stay tuned.

I too am an addict; but I am addicted to what you really want, and what you really want, like the dying world around us, is a resource that began dying when our anscestors began to die.

I spend a great deal of time alone because I am not content to experience “the hit.” I don’t want instant gratification. To quote you, ” I want real relationships with people IN THE ROOM. Or even better, amongst the trees with the wind on our faces, the sounds of birds and frogs and insects, the smells of green and brown…I want to sit in a circle with you. I want to hear your story. I want to know what makes you laugh uncontrollably. But what I really want to know is what makes you cry. And I want to make a place for that.”

In circle you and Tim, and some others, have offered me this; but what I want from the circle is a sense of commitment. Solidarity requires a foundation of identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose. It is not about sentiment - and we cannot love and experience real relationships and be limited.

Yes, you are right, looking each other in the eyes to speak of things real and deep, is scary. But to remind you of a quote you have used,

“Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of fear; the moving out against the resistance engendered by fear into the unknown and into the future.” ~ M.Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled

Each day I pray that the circle will remain unbroken - that there will be a commitment amongst us each not to foresake the other and to continue to support one another in vision, personal growth, and community development. Each day I pray it will be the last before I am again a part of the circle.

But the circle, like all else, is the result of our dying world, where we are each suffering our own addictions and communication flaws. We see that to simply schedule the circle coming together again, is, in and of itself, a near impossible task. Given that, how would the circle ever remain unbroken?

Hi, my name is wendi, and I am an addict. One could say that I am blessed to have an addiction to a substance I rarely feel, see, hold, connect to, or get my hands on. Real, committed, and everlasting relationships. Or one might say, Wow,

“Our world is dying.

It really is.”

I’m turning off the computer to go to bed early and read a Derrick Jensen book, and talk to my wife…

Regards
Ted

thanks for your spirit. i too am an addict of various stuff, email and the Internet being two of them. it’s funny that i just read this blog today, because i just made a pact with myself last night–i will limit my in take of on-line “news.” i’ve felt for sometime that in order to serve the age, we must betray it. some irish poet said that, i think. and so to betray the age we must pay attention to it, or so i thought. so usually while digging around for “news” and “analysis” on line, i often go to the shallow sites such as cnn.com to see what the masses are consuming. and here, i get sidetracked. my addiction gets me. the details of our vapid society drag me down. They affect me.

no more. great topic. your sense of balance and your perspective are so needed in the world.

bye for now
mark d