FootprintsintheWind.com

I am seeing dimly some sort of world where the eat-it-all-up-now, more-more-more has crashed. It lightens me. Maybe some early morn we all know it for what it was—empty. Then we go the gentle road, sharing the plenty and the beauty of all life—and the joy and pain of living.

:- Doug.

We can’t help but give it all away to the future. But we can help by how we give, and by what we choose to pack in it. We can pack it in little tickly bundles of imagination. We can pack in a seed bank of ideas. All of which obligates you and me to meet and converse and generate both seed and whirly bird to carry it on the winds. After us, other relatives might imagine themselves anew.

:- Doug.

After turning to one another
We turn outward together
To walk with all our relations

:- Doug.

It is our place to open space for the good, the true, the beautiful in all our relations.

:- Doug.

To be generative for coming kin we must, at base, become compost for them.

:- Doug.

What is outward? It is extending acts of love to those we don’t think can return it. But do they not? When I read the work of Tolstoy, Whitman, Rúmí, do I not converse with them, argue with them, carry their being into mine and into my world, returning it to the earth from which it came? That is the circle that conversation describes, yes?

:- Doug.

An ancestor is one for whom unknowing going is the name of life. What people will do with what he or she left them cannot be imagined. It is the way of trusting folks unmet. It is saying human nature—life’s nature—can be depended upon. Will it be for good or ill? That simply names the shape of your mind, O ancestor.

:- Doug.

Did you realize the earth, the one after today, will count you its ancestor, the earth and all its living sheath? What is an ancestor? Primarily a story bearer, a story carrier, but especially, an ancestor is a story. A story often untold, unknown. What story am I? Are you?

:- Doug.

Write less, say more.

:- Doug.

Where mystery
there danger
we desire

:- Doug.

What’s the largest thing you are working on? When will it be done?

:- Doug.

If we are working on something we can complete in the time remaining to us, we are thinking eleven generations too small. We ought put our minds together with theirs, starting with us two.

:- Doug.

An ancestor is called to account by her ancestors. Do you know yours? I don’t. I must think on them. Do you sing to your land? I barely sing.

:- Doug.

Come to the land
you can imagine
where persons walked
how they warmed themselves
whom they will dream
their songs and stories
of yet

:- Doug.

What kind of ancestor have I been up to now? Ignorant, that’s what. Oblivious. You? What questions can we ask each other to get better? Is any generation away from us? Consider.

:- Doug.

Spaces
between droplets
of mists
are ever there        here
even       especially
when coming together
and you dissolve

:- Doug.

Do you believe you are an ancestor even if not remembered?

:- Doug.

My writing wants to tend.

:- Doug.

Most important humanity: someone there with you at end.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2486

stare into
hot chocolate mug
stir
wait
at last
opening
flows

Please pass it on.

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As ancestors how do we converse with the generations?

:- Doug.

Antecessor does not have to be
a heavy thing
most are not aware
today
they are making
someone else’s
headwaters

:- Doug.

No gathering but in loosening.

:- Doug.