Three Sacrements of Dialogue

Presence   Directness   Immediacy

Speaking with meaning to the injured order of existence
in which we each have a part.

Presence
 “Here Am I”

Characterized by focus, intensity and attentiveness to what is happening between you and another. What  matters is the person(s) in front of you and the fragile link between you.

Directness
“When Deep Calls to Deep”

Neither understated nor brutal but committed to due consideration, requires courage, respect and fidelity to your own truths and convictions. Directness anticipates risk and reaction, and demands fortitude and endurance.

Immediacy
“This Very Moment”

Happening here, now, cannot be delayed, deferred or repeated. It cannot be duplicated, replicated or reconstructed. This very moment can be a starting place, an end point, a jump-off point or a point of no return. In and of itself, this moment is singular and unique like a snow flake that leaves it mark and melts away. This moment awaits your presence.


Beautiful Sentiments from Trustcounts.org

Freedom

We are at our core, responsible for ourselves.  Sartre said that we are the authors of ourselves.  Through the choices we make and do not make; our action and inaction; we ultimately design ourselves.  The responsibility for this design is ours alone.  We are, as Sartre stated, “condemned to freedom.”

Our freedom extends beyond our individual life design.  We are the ones who provide form and meaning not only to our internal world but the external one as well.  We come face to face with outside world only as it is processed through our senses and perception and psychological filter.  Reality is not at all as we imagined in our youth—we do not enter into and (ultimately leave) a well-structured world.  Instead we play our role; our part in constituting that world.  We assign office and function to our world as though it appears to have an independent existence.

Because of this reality, the ground beneath us is not certain.  If there is no structure, then what, pray tell is beneath us?  Existentialists call it, Das Nichts—nothingness; the chasm, the abyss of freedom.  At the river’s edge of this lake of nothing are deep currents of anxiety.

While the word freedom rarely flows in the clinical relationship between client and therapist, its derivatives—responsibility, willing, wishing, deciding—are inescapable foci of attention in the therapeutic relationship.

The Power of "Us"

I had the pleasure of doing a 3 day family and parenting workshop for Allen ISD over the past 3 Wednesday evenings.  The participants were so gracious and eager.  The entire experience felt more like a conversation than a presentation.  In my profession, that is as valuable as gold.  I want to personally thank each participant and for all of the support staff who helped to make this such a special event. 

The workshop is called The Power of "Us."  This unique workshop is more than a menu of options to implement to address problematic symptoms in family relationships, it is a way of looking beyond the symptoms and seeing the resources available right now in your family and in the family relationship to heal and grow.  All of us have entered this world into a relationship with our family.  It is the first and most profound relationship we have ever been in.  It is in this relationship that we learn how to be in relationships.  We learn who we are, what our value is, and how dependaple relationships are.  In every relationship there is a me and there is a you, but when honest connection occurs the creation of a third identity occurs--"Us."  This workshop allows families to find their relational "us" and deepen the richness of this connection. 

If you are interested in being apart of this exciting workshop, please contact me for upcoming dates.  It is a resource too valuable to miss out on. 

Premises of Meaningful Dialogue

These are a few premises to meaningful dialogue and by extension vitalized relationships. The common denominator among all the couples that I see in my practice is that their struggles revolve around the core issue of "not being heard." The following premises are preconditions for speaking so that you can be heard, and listening so that you can hear.

• A genuine relationship is two-sided and beyond the control of either person’s will
  
  



• Words spoken with meaning heal
  
  



• Speech with meaning depends on each of us finding the courage to make our word count

• It requires the courage to imagine what is real for another

• Engagement is made real and vital when people face each other, hold onto their own ground, and try to hear what another really intends

• Acknowledging another person eases tensions between you and offers a chance to re-engage

• Willingness to risk initiative provides a reparative way
  

*from www.trustcounts.org/premises