FootprintsintheWind.com

To our good friends–

This complementary currency stuff holds promise to me of worth of the people on the margins, because we can value their efforts, creativities and extras. They smile, they point out beauty, they love. This is all of us. Their art—storytelling, music, meaning, wisdom—is valued to the point of giving currency and flow. They are part of us, part with us. So when they pick up litter from the street, or smile for us in the grocery, we give them something from our heart.

Heart currency perhaps this is.

Giving money is crass, beneath the dignity of the persons involved in the intercourse.

This changes how people think. This changes how people interact. This changes how people see one another. It changes all this because it causes us to look at one another and our essential movements anew. We see the heart of another in the little extras they give us. It is extra currency. It is extra notice we give, extra attention. As a result we are paying extra value. To others, to ourselves.

I guess I am seeing this as a way to sustain my wife and I after we can no longer “work.” What is work? This causes us to redefine this word. It is no longer a 4-letter word, but bigger than this. It is no longer a commercial exchange, but a human exchange: We see each other, we exchange our humanity in gifts bestowed, not favors bought. The value of each of us goes up. We say “You can eat because you have been loving to me. I can eat your love for me. I can live on that for a week.”

So could people make a living, and a life, doing primarily complementary currencies? What could that look like?

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

I am not particularly in to the church services for Good Friday this year. But right on cue there is a darkness coming, and the weather suggests a 40% chance of thunderstorms today. Yes, I know you died to make a point that life is bigger than death. There was much pain around your death. There are lessons to learn from what you said and how you lived those last few hours. Yet I am wondering if there is perhaps a larger lesson wisdom from it. Died for our sins is a peculiarly temple way to look at what happened—this relates to the notion of priests and sacrifices. I don’t see a God who wants sacrifice as the key to this. I see a G*d who wants to say, You matter so much to me, see, I will have my son suffer, just to make that point, and the point that your life is larger than your death. It is not that you will survive and live in some Heaven years from now: it is that you can do much larger things now! If I give myself to the full price, you can too, and you will then really live. You will live here and now and there will be a heavenly realm now, on this earth. You will have brought about the new Heaven and the new Earth, in an instant! Live, will you, live!

So, rather than being a somber humorless time, I see this as a time of celebration: look what happens when you can give away your life. Today. It is not that death was conquered, death never had a hold to begin with, death never was real.

Sure, we can re-live what the disciples went through and witness the pain on the cross: it is saying this is real, this is earnest, this is blood and mud and no beer. So is our need to get in there and work at love. Love is hard work. Love is dangerous work. Love is sweaty and working against and over obstacles, love is clearing the woods to build, love is planting the crops, love is hoeing the weeds, love is pounding the fiery iron into shape, love is getting your blood drawn and your body quartered, in some way. Love is living on this muddy ball.

:- Doug.

There is so much to do, time is so fast, we need to do what we see to do now.

:- Doug.