Hi Alan (and Everyone)

I read the reflections you offer the list on Barriers to Love with profound interest and empathy. You 
have put me in mind of a poem that has 'called me back' so many times to value "good between".

'Barriers to Love: getting hooked on obstruction'. 
By Alan Rayner and Ray Sheath

Through trying to fulfil incompatible desires for absolute freedom and absolute security, we can 
become deeply attached to ideas and objects in a way that excludes us from feeling the influence 
of loving in our lives. We gain a sense of power and control at the expense of becoming alienated 
from our natural neighbourhood. The resultant loss of compassionate understanding and 
complementary relationship amongst ourselves and others gives rise to the distress and conflicts 
that predispose us to addictions, obsessions and compulsions. Thinking in a more inclusional way 
can liberate us from objective views of human and non-human nature and open us to the 
possibility of creative and loving transformation.

The poem you words evoke for me is By George Herbert and it is called The Collar. It's the element 
of on-going struggle between ultimate freedom of choice as an individual and obligation to others 
that attracts me to your words and Herbert's. This is something that Mohsen raised earlier I think?

GEORGE HERBERT  The Collar  

I STRUCK the board, and cried, No more.      
I will abroad.    
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?  
My lines and life are free; free as the road,   
Loose as the wind, as large as store.         
Shall I be still in suit?   
Have I no harvest but a thorn   
To let me blood, and not restore   
What I have lost with cordial fruit?  
Sure there was wine  
Before my sighs did dry it: there was corn   
Before my tears did drown it.   
Is the year only lost to me?  
Have I no bays to crown it?  
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?  
All wasted?  
No so, my heart: but there is fruit,   
And thou hast hands.  
Recover all thy sigh-blown age  
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute  
Of what is fit, and not forsake thy cage,  
Thy rope of sands,  
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee   
Good cable, to enforce and draw,  
And be thy law,  
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.  
Away; take heed:     
I will abroad.   
Call in thy death's head there: tie up thy fears.   
He that forbears  
To suit and serve his need,  
Deserves his load.  

But as I rav'd and grew more fierce and wild   
At every word,  
Me thoughts I heard one calling, Child:     
And I reply'd, My Lord.   

Why is this The Collar? I recall being told it was about the collar by which we'd recognise a priest. 
But is it more a kind of yoke coupling us to recognise that we have responsibilities to each other?
I am interested in your choice of word 'thinking' in a more inclusional way. Is thinking sufficient? 
Isn't yours a call to action? Action that's systematically undertaken to enhance the good between? 
For me there is a heartfelt cry to do more than 'think' in your words; to enhance relationships that 
can strain and break between us.  This is something I find missing in Herbert's poem - that good  
is (and some say that God is) what can resonate between us, if we choose to live life inclusionally.

Wonderful postings from you!

Sarah