Touch

Abstract

In one version of the story, God, “all ages sitting lonesome in his golden chair,” created the universe in order to have someone to play with, to love and be loved by. But since God is being, existence itself, it was impossible to create any thing that was not God, or to step outside the creation in order to meet it, or even to sit back and watch it as an audience. In the nature of the case, God had to be creation as well as creator. And so, in order for there to be any encounter at all, forgetting was also invented. The world was to be an ironic dance where reality meets itself and discovers with amazement what it already knows.

In humane affairs ... there is no such thing as competence without love.... The events of the field—which are often of the most subtle and elusive kind—cannot even be discerned unless there is a responding sensitivity in the observer.... The world is attractive. It is attractive in its sensual forms. Our knowledge of its forms begins in response (which soon becomes creative), and we cannot respond except with our senses.... There is no other path except this ground of attracted care by which the events and forms of the world can reach fruition as mind.

George Dennison, The Lives of Children 1969, 275–278

The paradox of infinite sexuality is that by regarding sexuality as an expression of the person and not the body, it becomes fully embodied play. It becomes a drama of touching.

James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games 1986, 85