Plex: 17 December 2025
What's Going On: Interpretation (John Warinner); Sunset On Inuksuk Ridge (Scott Moehring)
The Biweekly Plex Dispatch is an inter-community newspaper published on the first and third Wednesdays of each month.
In This Issue
- Interpretation (John Warinner)
- Sunset On Inuksuk Ridge (Scott Moehring)
WHAT’S GOING ON
Interpretation - a magnificent seven in Rumi's field
by John Warinner
The soil exhales through the tall grass across the wide and quiet field as the sun sets beyond the hill.
The friends gather around and sit.
As Rumi settles, he touches the grass, gazes toward the horizon, and closes his eyes.
“Out here, beyond right and wrong,” he murmurs, “there is only perceiving.”
“I often wonder,” Viktor says, “what we are really choosing when we interpret situations. Perhaps it is not meaning we seek, but freedom in the face of the world’s ambiguity.”
“It is all feedback, isn’t it?” Donella offers. “A conversation breathing between our inner models and the response of the world. Sometimes the situation taps us on the shoulder, asking if we’re paying attention.”
A soft breeze wafts through the tall grass.
“In each moment of unfolding,” Christopher adds, “there is an expression of a whole. Interpretation is our attempt to gather that wholeness… though our eyes and ears may only capture a fragment.”
From a distance, a blackbird’s trill carries a song of water, moist soil, and wild plums.
“I’m not sure we interpret the land,” Aldo says, in his quiet, sturdy way. “More often, I believe the land interprets us. It watches how we move, what we take, what we return. Our actions become its language… its message.”
“Stories,” Ursula says, “are our oldest way of interpreting. But we must not mistake the story for the situation. Each story is a version… not a verdict.”
“Our interpretations depend on how we pay attention,” Iain muses. “There are ways of attending that open the world, and ways that close it. Perhaps the deepest interpretation is not what we make of the world, but how we receive it.”
The circle of seven falls quiet, their voices settling into the grass as light filters into water.
Rumi smiles. “Then interpretation is not a judgment,” he says, “but a gathering… a mingling…”
“…and a settling,” Aldo adds.
Viktor nods. “And a responsibility.”
Donella smiles. “And a feedback loop.”
Christopher interlaces his fingers. “A living structure remaining coherent.”
Ursula closes her eyes. “A story we enter together.”
Aldo breathes deeply. “A relationship with what sustains us.”
Iain pauses as the silence thickens. “A way of attending that allows the world to be more than our ideas about it.”
As daylight fades, the stars begin arriving one by one — the contrast of light within darkness interpreting the night.
For a long moment, no one speaks.
Each listens—to the others, to the wind, to the field, and to something more ancient than language.
Then Rumi whispers: “What’s going on, my friends?”
“We are learning to see what we look at,” says Viktor.
“We are learning to listen to what we hear,” says Donella.
“We are learning to feel the whole,” says Christopher.
“We perceive and we imagine, weaving threads into cloth,” Ursula adds.
“Perhaps we are learning to belong,” says Aldo.
“And learning to attend,” adds Iain.
Rumi smiles. “And perhaps,” he says, “interpretation leads us back to the field itself… the place where everything is meeting everything else.”
And at once I knew,
I was not magnificent.
Bon Iver
Holocene
Sunset on Inuksuk Ridge
by Scott Moehring
The path was getting steeper. Tuktut breathed a little harder in the cold air, and pressed on and up. She had found the hidden path marked by the tall Inuksuk. It was a fantastic human figure of stacked rocks covered in fuzzy lichens and light snow. She marveled at how expressive it was, both pointing and beckoning. Something deep within had compelled her to follow the faint depression that went into the trees and up the hill.
During the long climb, her vision was obscured by the thick woods all around. At times she could barely make out the way ahead. As she finally got to the top, she took a few more steps and arrived at a rocky ridge. The trees fell away and she could suddenly see for miles in every direction. The low snow-covered valley below, the curving icy river, the gentle hills, the distant mountains – it took her breath away. She stopped, breathing heavily and transfixed by the sight.
There was a large flat rock a few feet off the path. She stepped onto it and sat down on a small boulder to rest. A cold breeze whispered through the pines and refreshed her. She sat for a long time, just breathing and looking. The vast distance she could see echoed the weight of time she felt in the surrounding rocks.
She wished she could share the feeling of this special secret place. It was so beautiful and peaceful that she found herself saying aloud “I just want to stay here forever”.
A sudden gust of wind blew up and circled around her. She watched snowflakes caught up in the spinning air. It seemed odd, but entrancing. It then faded away as suddenly as it had come.
The sun was getting low in the sky. Her legs felt heavy and stiff from sitting on the cold stone, but she knew she had better get started on her long climb down. She stood up and took one last longing look at the landscape, thinking “I wish I didn’t have to leave”.
She went to take a step towards the path, but her foot didn’t move. She chuckled to herself, “I’ve been here so long my boot is probably frozen to the ground”. She pulled at her other foot, but it didn’t move either. She pulled harder. Her curiosity became a sudden panic that gripped her as tightly as the flat rock. Her feet weren’t moving at all, and now she could feel her ankles locking up. She twisted and pulled for several frantic minutes, but nothing would break them free.
As she looked wildly around her for anything to help, the setting sun flashed an intense orange and caught her eye. Tired from her struggles and distracted by the brilliant light, she unexpectedly exhaled a sigh at the beauty of it all. As she momentarily relaxed, she felt the stiffening move a few inches higher up her body. The fear returned, but it was somehow less intense. It was tempered with a new emotion, faint and difficult to name.
Her legs felt like stone, but she was being overwhelmed with a strange and deepening connection with the hill beneath her. She became aware that she could finally name the feeling that was growing and pushing out her fear. It was a deep peace and stoic sense of purpose, that of old witness trees and ancient mountains. She pictured her body as a semiotic stack of rocks, preserved for eons as a marker to others of that perfect spot from which to view the world around.
Tuktut focused her gaze on the last light of the sun before her, exhaled in acceptance, and was stone.
Thank you for reading! The next issue will be published on 7 January 2026.
Grateful appreciation and many thanks to John for his kind contribution to this issue.
The Plex Dispatch team welcomes contributions. Email Kevin with suggested submissions.
Kevin Jones works at the intersection of faith and economic justice with people repairing local economies. Email Kevin.
John Warinner helps people design and sustain systems that enable all members to flourish together. Email John.