FootprintsintheWind.com

Don’t live within the confines of your society and circumstances, live beyond: transcend limits. Be limit-less. What are circumstances? For me they include my religion, community, financial position.

:- Doug.

We want things fast because we have short attention spans. We want things clear because to figure them out is work.

:- Doug.

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.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 680

We are the artist
G-d is the palette
We choose our subject
Life chooses the colors to put on our palette
Living colors–
People and events
Who change hues and tones and shades.
And when our work of art is done–
Who can say when it is done?–
Standing back someone asks
What does it mean?
And someone may answer–
Maybe many do–
There are many right answers:
We are the artist,
What will we choose?

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 fearsome part of conversation is that in its purest form it lets people in. They may challenge us, even kill us, or worse, our pet ideas. Yet this is its promise: more eyes, more minds, more hands, more life. Let people in. In so doing you chance to meet G*d.

:- Doug.

Conversation lets persons in Conversation lets person in.

:- Doug.

Goals feed the part of us
which sees what we’re missing
—the deficient part of us—
which take us away from ourselves
which tell us the better life cannot be
here
which tell us there is a better life any place
but here
which deny to us our own life and its relation

:- Doug.

Can you in all matters think of the world…and first?

:- Doug.

What is the work you are performing upon the world?

:- Doug.

I asked “Have we progressed?”

An answer came “The evidence
is all about you.
Some moments Yes
Some moments Otherwise”

:- Doug.

Is it possible to have a life all of one piece?

Or maybe we should ask, Is it possible to see that one piece while we are living it?

:- Doug.

In e-mail, it is easier to send than receive. Which is the better thing?

:- Doug.

Are you ready for these meetings? Do you trust people? Do you have faith in these people that they can do world-class things? Are you ready for change you are not ready for?

:- Doug.

Conversation takes us above and beyond ourselves. Monologue and monologue pretending to be conversation has not this power.

:- Doug.

If you hate meetings, I can show you how to do meetings that produce change.

:- Doug.

There is more we can do
There is more we can understand
There is more we can suffer

:- Doug.

What is this life?
There is pain
There is loving
There is listening
There is hearing
There is action
There is allowing
There is much, too much
Yet there is
more.

:- Doug.

We live every day and too much in the unventured.

:- Doug.

Have we even progressed? Is it hubris to think we can consciously evolve?

:- Doug.

Contemplation is sniffing and sipping the good air together…with G*d.

:- Doug.

Conversation moves us above and beyond and even within ourselves—to where we need to be if we are to be and to grow.

:- Doug.

Best of all—lightning conversation—destroyer and life-bringer!

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 679

Labels may be a clew to falsity. Anytime we say who we are, we are being false. For we are of course more than any label, and labels always seek to delimit us, to draw a line around us, to lasso our soul, and souls are not to be lassoed. We are much more complex and playful than any label.

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