Re-Visioning “Things”: Part Four

Let’s Re-Vision “Things” Again

We have re-visioned “things” in the past when our circumstances required us to do so. It is time for us to re-vision “things” again. We must re-vision “things” in more life-affirming ways. If we do not, we will continue to lengthen the list of extinct species, and in the foreseeable future, add ourselves to the list. Fortunately, we have in pre-Christian Western culture the seeds of re-visioning “things” in more life-affirming ways.

One such seed is our word “thing.” It is an Anglo-Saxon word. It originally referred to a meeting, assembly, or gathering. It did not refer to objects. To have a thing was to have a meeting with another, not an object in our possession. To go to a thing was to go to a meeting, not to an object in another place. Consider the following illustration:

Things as Meetings

If you are digging a hole in the ground with a shovel, meet a rock, toss the shovel, pick up a hammer, and strike the rock with the hammer, you are engaged in a thing, a meeting. The immediate parties in the thing are you, the shovel, the rock, and the hammer. None are passive. All are active participants in the meeting.

The thing is not an object. It is a meeting that has a narrative: The shovel and your hand meet and join. The shovel goes with your thrust, meets and cuts the ground. The ground splits in response to the shovel’s cut. The shovel and rock meet. The rock blunts the shovel as it repels its attempted cut. The shovel falls and meets the ground when you toss it aside. The hammer you grab meets you hand, joins, complies with your swing, and delivers a blow to the rock. Rock and hammer meet. The rock responds to the blow you and the hammer deliver together. The rock chips but repels the blow, and moves out of the way.

All in the vicinity attend this meeting: the ground surrounding the cut you and the shovel make, the bugs in that ground, the trees in the vicinity, the birds and bugs on the trees’ limbs and in their leaves, and all the other plants, rocks, and animals in the vicinity. 

The living and non-living have dynamic roles in the thing, they influence its narrative. If they influence the narrative of the thing, they have power. If they have influence and power, they are alive. The thing is an organic, creative process that all the participants create together. Together they affect the thing and are affected by it. By their co-created thing, they are forever changed.

Part Five of this series provides additional reflections on things as meetings and the conclusion of this series.