1. A New Kind of Conversation

Last Saturday was the largest Between-Us gathering since the project began more than three years ago. Eighteen faces appeared in their small Zoom windows, waiting for the meeting to find its rhythm. Some were long-time participants; others had drifted away and now felt called back after reading the book. There were smiles, warmth, a quiet anticipation — and, at the same time, a depth of stillness that settled over the call almost immediately.
 
Even before anyone spoke, there was a tangible silence in the space: not the absence of sound, but a shared presence that drew attention both inward and outward at once. When words did begin to appear, several people remarked that the silence hadn’t gone anywhere. It was carrying the meeting underneath the words, as if it were a participant in its own right.

One person described it as a kind of gravitational pull. Words, they said, struggled to reach escape velocity; they rose up, tried to form, then fell gently back into quiet, leaving the stillness untouched. And yet a flow gradually emerged. One voice opened a door for another, and the group settled into a rhythm — slow, spacious, attentive.

What was most striking was how eighteen individuals began softening into something more like eighteen expressions of a single, connected field. Eighteen unique perspectives, yet seamlessly integrated. Not merged, not losing themselves, but participating in an atmosphere that held everyone equally. Identity did not disappear; it simply loosened enough to let something more universal speak through each person in turn...