FootprintsintheWind.com

It is important that we do what we can—all that we can. We are able to do more than we think, especially when we are with people who like us have tasted the power of a community doing.

:- Doug.

The work of conversation is drawing out from each other our light. Here we dare to glimpse a new earth and a new heaven.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 660

We are seeing a bigger world–our neighbor in pain, peace in the clutches of angry combatants, nature at risk, our children to the seventh generation also at risk. At the same time we are seeing a bigger inside–our psyche, our spirits, our oneness with all creation, our relations to the divine. It all adds up to bigger possibilities, bigger futures that extend beyond what we know. Conscious evolution? Maybe. Or maybe something larger.

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

Our scriptures reveal more to us of us than they do of divinity. They tell us how we think of the sacred, and so reveal only snatches of what is real. What is real is always much larger.

:- Doug.

You don’t have to do anything—you are free to do!

:- Doug.

For ever is spatial as well as temporal—we are to live for ever—in all places and reaching beyond!

:- Doug.

You can fight city hall. You only have to decide. Then you are free to decide to work with.

:- Doug.

Become Jesus of the sacrifice
Then you live forever.

:- Doug.

Bring people together for change. It is the only way that will ever work.

:- Doug.

When our worldview allows for an immanent as well as a transcendent G*d, we begin to see that all are connected, we see that we are one, that among us lives divinity, and the breaths we walk among are sacred. More significantly, we see that we do matter—to others and to the world and to the future—and matter materially. Most epochally, we now must throw our lives into the world mix, we must become our part, we must give up our lives for others. So, we live.

:- Doug.

Please introduce me to someone doing something epoch-making.

:- Doug.

Have you ever gotten anything significant done without a conversation?

:- Doug.

Where is it written that humans must give all their efforts and all their thoughts to earning their food, clothing and shelter? If we as a society think only of the goals of making more money, have we advanced beyond the aboriginals who to this day can spend hours around the fire talking of their dreams? Or have we regressed? Is there nothing more important?

:- Doug.

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.

There is work to be done: do it. Worry not about your pay. Find the biggest work you can do: do that.

:- Doug.

It is only money which is in short supply. Money is artfully kept scarce.

:- Doug.

Many there are who see and tell of
Scarcity.
I see differently—
For every hand held out in
Need
There are two available to give
Help.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 659

In our age, we have forgotten the way. I am Jesus knew and knew well was a Hebrew name of G-d, the original name G-d called G-d’s self. So we can some days hear Jesus saying I am–G-d is–you are–each creature is–the way, the truth, the life. All is part and parcel of G-d. G-d is made up of this, or more accurately, makes this up. You are the way. Life is the way. Creation is the way. The way is the way. This we have forgotten. We have thought doing something, collecting something, building something, getting known, is the way. No, you are the way. Try to remember…and follow.

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

Some hear whispers of the music
from time to time
Some seldom do
Yet all move to the
Rhythm

:- Doug.

If you want to see a wider panorama from a higher place, it will take some climbing…and more than a few missteps.

:- Doug.

Do not insert yourself in the middle of factions; go to the center.

:- Doug.