If there were no time
If there were no time to wash through our fingers, then memory is complete, stories end not, and conversation draws in all happenings and persons.
:- Doug.
sweaty work, no goal
Responsibility to and for a community, expressed in the work and by the work, helps that community become beloved. It is not a work ever to be accomplished. It is not a goal. It is a sweaty work, continuing. The accomplishment is there in the sweat, daily.
:- Doug.
between us when
This is contemplative, exploratory writing—What after all is really going on between us when we talk?
:- Doug.
is when what we want is does
God is where your story and mine meet. Only there is no is. God weaves. And bobs. Intricately. Herein, making. English gives us is when what we want is does—action over thing. God is no thing. Not even a principle. Not weaving, not complex. Adjectives and verbs, free standing, free acting, free wheeling. God is how.
:- Doug.
chitter chat all day
By now you may have worked it out that I
Can find a conversation just about
Anyplace: Let us count some places:
In the South Bend Chocolate Café they chit-
Ter chat all day—& some even drink hot chocolate!
:- Doug.
don’t want to know
Curious minds don’t want to know—they want to find out, then find out more.
:- Doug.
eye-siphon
Sinuous, my eyes reach out, attaching eye-siphon hoses to
The pond over there past those trees
Pulling into my essence its tranquility
:- Doug.
same names for me
More people know my name than whose names I know
Always have
Some even use the same names for me I do
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 2529–in here calling
Footprints in the Windsm # 2529
My word-caller-upper is impish; that does not mean I am not in here calling!
Please pass it on.
© c 2026, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com
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Speak adverbially
When you two are wrestling, when you two are hugging, there exists no between of you, there exists no space for new, surprises, unexpected, unprogrammed, unpredicted, lively. Wrestling and hugging might stimulate these. Wrestling and hugging benefit from a step apart to create the between. Between and together relate to one another. The more between of us, the more lively and all these adverbs. Generations speak adverbially!
:- Doug.
trying to say
It’s not that I was trying to say something, but I was searching for something that needed to be said.
:- Doug.
don’t have to prove anything
I don’t have to prove anything
Just say it
Others will probe it with me
:- Doug.
in relation made
Life is about survival and propagation. But that prevails only for brief periods. Step thro’ those quickly. Leave the hard shells (thunka-thunka) behind to enter the vulnerable memory-making, relation-making, story-making, conversation-making, person-making state. Persons are in relation made. So persons contain multitudes; in this very way, persons are rich. I hear the old ones saying, Give up speed, savor complexity.
:- Doug.
Those images still singing
Memory, and some kin of it larger, resides in the place, and the trees, rocks, and generations of skittering little animals of the place. When they are chopped down, dug out, killed or their habitat destroyed to make a cornfield for your invading culture; when the face of the sacred mountain is carved into the faces of your country’s heroes; indigenous lifeways are severed from whole peoples. But the peoples, their old ones, still carry vivid images, those images still singing.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 2528–There are patterns
Footprints in the Windsm # 2528
There are patterns
In the seasons, in the things we do culturally,
Legally.
Tax returns sprout in spring. I rush in autumn to get the grass mowed & water hoses put away.
People seek mates around twenties, seek grandchildren around sixties, seek patterns in all this around seventies.
Sunrise, sunset comes the song.
Flow of Spirit in Meeting—settling, speaking, restlessness, Potluck days.
Shapes of clouds.
Spaghetti Bowl in Chicago.
Peace testimony of Quakers; war testimony of others.
All attest to our need for: Making meaning; making patterns.
Please pass it on.
© c 2026, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com
Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com
Winter of life?
Did you think you were in the winter of your life?What told you so? Your culture? Something you read once? Was that from your culture too?
:- Doug.
