Barriers We Create

Traveling through the Colorado Rockies this past month, we came across a setting that was both beautiful and forbidding:

• Beautiful because of the majestic peaks in the distance and the summer fullness of pastures green and full of wild flowers;
• Forbidding in that a barrier was separating us from the Beauty Beyond.

I wondered:

• How often am I separated from the beauty that is out of reach?
• Are there obstacles between us, where we are unable to experience the beauty in one another?

Barriers We Create:  Beauty Beyond
(Rocky Mountain National Park)

In these moments where barriers protect or separate us, life seems endless.  The road ahead suggests emptiness when others cannot journey alongside.

Who can we share the Rugged Moments, the difficult lessons and hardships that rise up unexpectedly?

Barriers We Create:  Empty Roads
(Route 128, River Road)

Later in the week, our group stayed at a National Landmark hotel.  In the lobby, an old fashioned phone sat waiting to be used.

No, it was not a smart phone!   No calendar or reminders.  No camera or photo gallery.  No games or other apps.  Nothing to distract us... only a speaker and a receiver with a simple way to dial in.  Its sole purpose: to talk to another person.

Barriers We Create:  Waiting to Be Used
(Strater Hotel, Durango, Colorado)

How fitting near the end of a journey to be reminded that dialogue -- talking to another person -- is the way to overcome barriers placed before us.  Kind of old fashioned... but it still works!

This week:

• May we notice the barriers that separate us from the Beauty Surrounding;
• May we open our empty roads and lives by sharing the Rugged Times; and,
• May we engage in the time-honored Dialogue that respects where we are and where we have been.

Larry Gardepie

Dialogue San Diego Consulting

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