‘Only connect! Only connect the prose and the passion and each will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no more’ E.M.Forster ‘Howards End’ (1910)

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‘At the still point of the turning world…at the still point, there the dance is,’   T.S. Eliot ‘Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton (1935)

What can I expect?

(An elder Family Therapist offers a view)

‘What can I expect

If I connect?

When I set my foot upon the Rainbow Bridge

Which for Forster was the way to join

The prose and the passion

And is the way to reconcile

The fragments that we cling to

At our peril?’ I say:

Have a go! accept the challenge of

A century or more of disconnection,

But watch your step,

As you start out on the bridge.

However miraculous

It is, after all,

A mere optical effect which,

Like human kind ,

May not bear much ‘reality.’

If you connect

You can expect:

To find beauty, truth and meaning

In unexpected places.

Random encounters

May hold the keys

To understandings which otherwise

Seem locked.

You may recognise

What transcends language

Visions which, once seen,

You cannot ‘un-see’.

You will feel the pain of others

And even learn to value

How it is hidden.

You may learn preference for

Bateson’s Ecological view

And in time find answers

For those who say

You don’t know where to stop!

In the end

You may find wisdom

To sustain you

In the garden

Or on the seashore

Or in the sky at night

And in the special places

You have shared with others.

Liz Burns 2023