Replying to LO24464 --
Dear Rick,
Thank you. I agree with you that everyone here is a 'learner' and my
normal method of addressing this list has been 'dear learners' and just
recently I distinguished the term 'lurker' which I think I felt was an
aspect of that whole 'complex of learners'. It was before I wrote to this
list that I first read the term 'Lurker' in the LO context. I thought the
term was quite offensive, 'lurking' has overtones in my culture of someone
with bad intent...so it came as a revelation when I think At de Lange in a
'systems appreciation' context demonstrated to my delight that lurkers
were understood as 'noble elements' within that whole learning community
chemistry. So I guess in reflection my distinction was meant on these rare
occasions to be appreciated as inclusive rather than exclusive, Perhaps At
would remind us of his thoughts on the term.
If I now accept it as a kind of fragmentation, and I think I must question
myself and publicly now so as to be prepared by walking my talk I have to
ask myself why I have done that act of distinction as fragmentation and
maybe the answer sits within a contemporaneous contribution, the one on
Carl Rogers in which context my feelings about the language of separation
of this (short) from that (long) or this (relevant to LO dialogue) to that
(irrelevant to LO dialogue) in which my mind is still swimming seems to
have manifested in that very symptom.
I also wrote last week that 'not contributing as writing' is contributing
in another way, perhaps distinguishing is not distinguishing in this case?
Mmmm. By way of closure I am reminded of a true story of the life of a
man, I think a Benedictine monk who gave his life to serve others and in
his choice he imprisoned himself on a leper colony in the South Pacific,
one morning inevitably he began to see how pain left his body so that it
discoloured here and there, culminating eventually one morning in the
actual loss of a limb. He went out among the lepers and sank to his knees
and prayed to God, saying his thanks in that he was now truly, more truly
at one with those he had come to serve. He had become a leper. I do not
know the name of this saint.
I don't think he learns or teaches on this list.
Love,
Andrew
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