Notes and quotes from Reuel Howe's The Miracle of Dialogue."Every genuine conversation, therefore, can be an ontological event, and every exchange between husband and wife, parent and child, teacher and pupil, person and person, has more meaning than the thing talked about."
"Only as we know another and are known by him, can we know ourselves."
"The breakdown of community and, therefore, of dialogue occurs when there is an obliteration of persons. This obliteration takes place when one person or the other exploits the relationship for any purpose other than its true one."
Dialogue empowers both speaker and hearer. Monologue denies power.
"If we would love, we must listen to one another. This is the first work of love."
2 comments:
GREAT QUOTES, ED!
I REMEMBERED A QUOTE I WANTED TO USE IN A PAPER I WROTE GIVING FIVE REASONS MOST OF US NEED ASSISTANCE AND INSIGHT IN ACHIEVING TRULY CONSTRUCTIVE AND SATISFYING COUPLES OR MARRIED'S INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS! I DISCOVERED DR. M. L. KING, JR. USED REUEL HOWE'S INSIGHTS AND BOOK TITLE ("THE MIRACLE OF DIALOGUE") TO CREATE A NATIONAL PROGRAM OF THE sclc (SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE'S "OPERATION DIALOGUE." It appointed a "white" (so-called) clergyman to head the national program, I believe, in 1963, "to overcome racism, prejudice, hatreds, and active hostilities." Dr. King quoted the exact quote I wanted and have loved for five decades, which I will now share with you:
"Dialogue is to love, what blood is to the body.
When the flow of blood stops, the body dies.
When dialogue stops, love dies and resentment
and hate are born. But dialogue can restore
a dead relationship. Indeed, this is the miracle
of dialogue: it can bring relationship into being,
and it can bring into being once again a relationship
that has died."
I'll close with these words I wrote for Goodreads worth knowing about and following up on--for any person serious about learning how to achieve truly constructive and satisfying couples communications, up-building re self-esteem while, at the same time, strengthening relationships:
The Miracle of Dialogue, though decades old, is still one of the best popular books on interpersonal communications in general, for families, and especially for marrieds and couples! Dr. Howe points out how to achieve miracle-working dialogue, and it was the first book to tell me that "the communications process" itself has some naturally occurring built-in "barriers" to his definition of communications: "the meeting of meanings!" Most people don't know such invisible, naturally occurring "barriers" exist, even though they "bump into them" as their interpersonal communications is being blocked by them. Reuel Howe lists five “barriers” found in even the best of relationships (images, anxieties, defense mechanisms, language (words have different meanings), and cross-purposes); he defines them, and he tells us how to overcome them. When our culture's "win-lose" competition values and the many negatives we are taught to say and do are added to the invisible, unknown "barriers" that have to be overcome, we begin to realize the complexities, the difficulties, and frustrations involved in achieving truly constructive, positive and satisfying "couples communications!" In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made Reuel Howe's The Miracle of Dialogue's insights and title the basis of his SCLC's national program for reconciliation and overcoming racism, prejudice, and racial hostilities in the U. S., "Operation Dialogue.”
Rev. J. Roland Cole, colejr78@gmail.com, 6-10-19
Thank you for taking time to share all these details. I hope we will continue the conversation... I mean, dialogue.
Best to you.
e.
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