#relationality

I've been reading Relationality by David Jay. The book talks about building relationships of all different kinds. Thank you to that one Asexual who recommended that book. Genuinely the ideas in there are the antidote to all alienation - personal and political.

[…] “knowing the other in the biblical sense” is to engage with the point in the Other where knowledge is lacking. And from the religious perspective, this lack of knowledge in the Other (missing signifier of the sexual relation) is no small matter. Hence the shame. The sight of naked bodies is not “shameful” because of these bodies as such, but because of what these naked bodies fail to convey, namely, the sexual relation.

growing up means realizing that a relationship requires work from both sides equally.

But Merlin’s mythic device is not the utilitarian hunt and capture of patriarchy. This is the tentative hand held out to the mourning dove. The white lace of matsutake kissing into the pine tree. Merlin keeps flexible by making kin. He understands the kingdom not by teaching kings to conquer it, but by teaching them how to come into relationship with a biodiversity of stories. His teaching is simple: When you need advice, don’t always go to another human being. Go to the woods. The animals. The weather. The American chestnut, all but extinct, but somehow standing behind your apartment. Make new kin. Tell new stories.

In Aboriginal worldviews, nothing exists outside of a relationship to something else. There are no isolated variables—every element must be considered in relation to the other elements and the context. Areas of knowledge are integrated, not separated. The relationship between the knower and other knowers, places and senior knowledge-keepers is paramount. It facilitates shared memory and sustainable knowledge systems. An observer does not try to be objective, but is integrated within a sentient system that is observing itself.

From our very first breath, we are in relationship. With that indrawn draft of air, we become joined to everything that ever was, is, and ever will be. When we exhale, we forge that relationship by virtue of the act of living. Our breath comingles with all breath, and we are a part of everything. That’s the simple fact of things. We are born in a state of relationship, and our ceremonies and rituals are guides to lead us deeper into that relationship with all things. Big lesson? Relationships never end; they just change. In believing that lies the freedom to carry compassion, empathy, love, kindness and respect into and through whatever changes. We are made more by that practice.