FootprintsintheWind.com

We carry our graves with us
the days of our living
forgetting that graves are empty

:- Doug.

Ideal is better than real, more real than real, ideal expands real, for it includes and transcends. This gives me hope.

:- Doug.

Poetry, poem: work
Dream, story: creating
Ideal, real: wholing

:- Doug.

Death, sacrifice, grief, joy, brightness, light, life
These all exist and in one:
person, event, life, living

:- Doug.

Distance
—from me to my spouse
—from me to G*d
—from me to myself
—from me to you
—from conversation to conversation
—from mind to mind & heart to heart
Distance adds dimension
Distance adds depth, profundity, texture
Distance is necessary to living fully
Distance gives riches, depth, death, grief
to emptiness, openness, living, celebrating
Distance is color, shadow,
the missing from the present
the more
beyond beyond
How far away are you?
May tell you how pregnant our life is

:- Doug.

What is the profundity, the deeper wisdom, underneath the common Christian symbols?

:- Doug.

Here & now is of the essence
not time—and its anxiety
if do we must then
let’s do what we can—and will

:- Doug.

We’re all poets and painters
given half a chance
even without pen or brush
our souls sing life’s dance

:- Doug.

It’s important we see in poetry
For our world is more than prose

:- Doug.

If you do not see poetry, the question is, What is the very best of which humans in this place are capable? Once you do see, you see the possible is within and among these people here now, however inchoate. All that’s left is for one to say, “Why, we can see to it!”

:- Doug.

Is there beauty, is there truth, is there goodness in your work?

:- Doug.

Ask people about their highest experiences—ecstasy, peak, flow, rapture, bliss.

:- Doug.

For what are you saved? For whom?

:- Doug.

Maslow asked how to make a good human being. We now must ask how to make good human inter-beings, that is people who birth and give the fullest life to each other. Presence, hearing, attention are clues. So too stories and questions and dreams.

:- Doug.

This is saving: saving for life. Saving for living of life. And the living is in the interconnections, in between people.

The “saving” then is a saving for engaging life, not for some far off domain in some never-time. It is here and now. It is about us, as humanity and not about individuals.

This is who G*d is: a divine human, represented perfectly in Jesus, aspired to by the vast majority of people, but not seen. So the saving is a saving from the emotion of guilt and the emotion of O poor me inadequacy, toward collaboration and action.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 918

Our job as children
Of whatever our age
Is to ever widen our view
Of our world
Taking in more & more
Calling it Me

Please pass it on.

© c 2009, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

I like these words: fathomless, mystery, meaning, purpose, plumb, boundless, compassion, universe-capable, jewels, flowers, complex, wondrous.

:- Doug.