FootprintsintheWind.com

Can we value ourselves for our aliveness?

:- Doug.

We are already capable of much more.

:- Doug.

It is in opening that we grow.

:- Doug.

Work has a greater value than the merely economic.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 653

Do I need to be doing something more exciting, grander than this? To help others draw upon their hearts floor plans for flying new cathedrals, for awesome communities of creatives?

For I see that grander things are possible, if I go beyond today, if I touch the spark inside and let it set off the real person within.

For I do hold back, I do not let my spark set off the real person inside. I want to fly, I want to explode! My God! What a thing to say! And yet it is my essence that has said it, this something inside that wants to set off my sparks, and sparks of others deep inside, to create grand new worlds, to create inconceivable grand new worlds! O!

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© c 2006, 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

Beyond “What do you live for?” ask “What is the central question you are contending with now in your life?” There may be a whole storm of questions: How do I live my calling? Who do I make a living? What do I do about redesigning the Website? How do I get to work today now that the car is in the shop? But these swirl around a larger one, the eye of the storm: How do I serve G-d? Or, Who exactly am I, once the baggage is stripped away? These contending questions are not to be answered, nor even overcome. They wrestle you at night and give you their blessing–and a curious limp–in the morning.

But what is beyond questions? The wrestling, the blessing, the limp, the story, the conversation? The new life, the compassion, the growth, the invitation? Happiness, acceptance, service, seeding?

Questions involve a certain striving after, a certain lack thinking, an amount of analysis. Even asking What does all this mean, What are the patterns, the tunes? is taking things apart, trying to put them into categories, rather than letting them be what and who they are. It is fiddling instead of enjoying. It is putting constructs on things that may not have been there to start.

What is beyond the questions?

:- Doug.

About what do we feel deeply?

:- Doug.

What gives us cause to hope?

:- Doug.

As Alpha goes from pointed and closed to Omega’s round and open, so go we humans.

:- Doug.

G*d is touched by all of this—the animals, the greening earth, our struggles, each one of us, each star, each insect, touched, and G*d’s heart flows.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 652

Let us write a new Bible. Every year. Let us tell tales of men and women hearing the voice of G*d, leaving their lives to go on pilgrimages at any age; let us prophesy and turn our lives into object lessons; let us sing new songs and write grand flowing poetry; let us write letters to uplift each other, memorable letters to speak to generations; let us listen from the heart to others, daring to quietly share our vulnerabilities; let us tell our visions and revelations. Let us write not with pen and ink, but with lives afire. Save us for our living response to the Word wind-whispered to us by a G*d truly met, from being wizened men and women whose stiff fingers turn delicate pages seeking to divine small lessons for shriveling lives. Our Bible is living; we are its breath. Our story is its story. Let us dare to meet this G*d who dares to listen to us, let us respond by casting our lives into the mix, let us write the next page.

Please pass it on.

© c 2006, 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

This morning’s romp and glimpse about Kingdom of G*d has led me to this: What might be fun would be to ask people What the Kingdom of G-d means to them.

What would it look like to institute it on earth here and now?

Do you feel that is your duty—to make that heaven on earth now?

Why does that feel like an hypothetical question to you, and not one which is on fire for you? What would make it on fire for you?

What can we do, here and now?

What would a year of jubilee mean to our society, if we actually took it seriously?

What would it mean to seek first this kin-dom and let everything else go? What does Bucky’s 50 year experiment teach us? Can we throw down our lives for all of humanity and see? Am I willing to throw down mine? And what of the people who depend upon me? Could I convince them to come along, like Abraham had to with his entourage?

Lord, tough questions you are giving me today, dangerous and exciting. Help me to address you.

:- Doug.

We’ve lost touch with what we mean by
Kingdom of G*d.
It is the kin-dom of with all and
our kin-dom with G*d.
It is justice-ing, inviting, welcoming, embracing.
So we are all working toward
the Kin-dom of G*d:
where the world G*d so loves is
the world we love, too.
Where the ones G*d would rescue
we too would rescue.
Where the ones G*d would visit, encourage, bind up, inspire, we
too visit, encourage, bind up, and inspire.

:- Doug.

Is our deepest fear we may never
become who we dreamed
we’d be?
Could this be
a more fundamental fear
than fear of death?
Live, live
against the dying of this light–
in the angry youth
the tired politician
the goal-centered
in yourself
in your friends.
Live, live
bring alive
the dreams
of whom we still can be.

:- Doug.

Maybe money needs an expiration date.

:- Doug.

What good are we?
What will we do?
What will have we?
With whom must we speak?
To whom must we listen?
Who needs our hand?
Who needs our heart?
With each other must we speak
else
What good are we?
With each other must we speak
to find out
What good are we?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 651

We are born to an eternal birth–we are always nothing coming into being–creating, bringing happiness, drawing others, and discovering what is. It is not that we shall never die, but that we shall ever be born!

Please pass it on.

© c 2006, 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

The curse of the alphabet is not so much that it forces us to use our right hands, but that it concentrates our attention on what is inside us and abstract, taking us away from what is outside: others and a world to love. Our task now is to rejoin these two birth twins in the service of living.

:- Doug.

How can play make the world better? Could we have play Open Space?

:- Doug.

As our bodies grow older
our spirits can grow younger
What can that mean?
Sing, sing
Dance, dance
Play, play, play, play:
A younger spirit can
create more

:- Doug.

Religion! What a blasphemous word! If to you God exists, then confining your God to a mere category of your life is ludicrous. And if to you God does not exist then your religion is false and others’ too: yours a sham, theirs idolatry. Banish the word religion and call it what it is: falsity, wast of time, truth, life.

:- Doug.

It is not our task to become perfect. This appropriates to us godhead. Our task is to use our imperfections in the service of something better. Imperfection puts the ever into better ever better.

:- Doug.

Your goal is too small.

:- Doug.