This is the way it is.
Freshness, with regard to bread and breezes, is a term of praise and promise. Ordinary freshness we know by smell and taste, touch and feel. It suggests things new, or newly made or gotten, or just begun or arrived. It suggests topped-off, ready-to-go energy unburdened by past experiences, not tired, not over-used, not stale. It’s what makes bread worth eating, breezes worth breathing.
We welcome ordinary freshness, but we need more. We need a freshness, spontaneous and inexhaustible, which can blow into our airless ordinary world like a breeze from beyond. We need a freshness which can be found ‘deep down things’ where depth opens up to breadth. We need a freshness that can point us to lives and worlds–any we would want to live in and lead–worth wanting.
The freshness we need, and want, is transcendent, that is, from another place which is both within and beyond our circumscribed mundane world of regrets, grievances, impatience and urgencies.
This transcendent freshness is a gift and, at the same time, the giver of the gift: gift and giver are one. There’s a standing offer for us to actually meet transcendent freshness on any occasion of encounter, that is, whenever we make common cause with the livingness of an other or otherness, that is, anytime, anywhere.
We recognize the actual, active and potent presence of transcendent freshness whenever, reflecting on encounters and participant others or othernesses, there were/are: a. beckoning whiffs of beyondness (unexplored plenitudes, unrealized potentialities, unresolved puzzles); b. unsettling knocks and nudges of interestingness (imprintings of what’s impressive, ticklings of what’s intriguing, touches of what’s intimate); c. the appearance of new perspectives, new notions, new relationships, new others, new options, new visions; d. exhibitions of hospitality, friendship and exploration in action.
By this suite of indicators, together powerful, productive and positive, we follow freshness at its work–and appreciate how appropriate its name.
Encounters lead on to more encounters, and the presence of transcendent freshness, comprehending the freshness of all prior encounters, even those fleeting or forgotten, gives each a fresh future forever.
This website is freshness’ invitation to meet. Use the links in the sidebar to get started.