journal_august_2026_release_full_edition - Flipbook - Page 46
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What I took from this was rather simple: good questions emerge from one9s
humanity, not from a manual. They belong to the uniqueness of the conversation
itself.
And perhaps that is where I find myself now, some 40 years after meeting Dustin
and his family. Looking back, I suspect the questions that shaped our
conversations emerged less from expertise than from an urgent curiosity
concerning what remained possible in circumstances that appeared increasingly
perilous. Rather than confirming vulnerability, they sought histories of
competence, forgotten knowledges, and possibilities not yet fully realised.
Perhaps, after all, this is something of what good questions do: they invite us into
relationships with capacities that suffering has rendered difficult to know.
Let me finish with Lorca9s account of what a guitar makes possible:
The Six Strings
The guitar
makes dreams weep.
The sobs of lost souls
escape from its round mouth.
And like a tarantula
it weaves a large star
to ensnare the sighs
that float in its black
wooden cistern.
—from Cante Jondo
What Is a Good Question—and What Does It Do? A Forty-Year Reflection on Inquiry in Narrative Therapy
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, August 2026 Release, p. 9-45.
www.journalcnt.com
