FootprintsintheWind.com

Make a poem of life
bring the parts to whole

:- Doug.

With my I am list comes paradox: I am trying to develop connection with others by expressing difference. Yet we need some difference to come together.

Say only I am. Then you have said the whole. The key is for me not to make it my observation place.

The I ams are for me not to distinguish me but to call to my mind what I am about.

:- Doug.

For a long time I have noticed that I speed from insight to insight, aha! to aha! I worried that I was flitting, missing life. It has been dawning on me recently that this is my process of growth and life. I ought therefore to welcome, invite and encourage it. Life is in the daily, and to be celebrated.

To be discovered, ferreted out. Life is bigger than I can know, all in one lifetime.

Encourage the process by full immersion living.

:- Doug.

I am a lawyer and a poet, a poet-lawyer. I wish to state the larger laws, the laws of human spirit, whereby we don’t just subsist, we live!

:- Doug.

Throw everything you have at life!
You will eventually, anyway.

More accurately, by withholding, you threw away
who you could have been.

:- Doug.

No, I do not hold this ism or that
I have no time to understand doctrines so you can classify me
Here! I’ll tell you how to classify me:
I am a lover of G*d

:- Doug.

The harmony calls the instrument and the voice together.

:- Doug.

Literally we are walking relations. Composed of atoms, particles spinning about other particles, held together by invisible forces, living on a spinning ball, spinning around a fire itself spinning around numberless other fires—that’s just the start of us. We are relations spinning around relations, held together by relations. Relation means spirit; relation means love. We are held together in our bodies by something physical. Add life and you’ve added movement. All movement is movement toward. To what does life move? Life is what attracts. That attraction, that to, that glue is love. We are love, we are relation.

:- Doug.

We have no effect without someone or something to have an effect with. We are neither noun nor verb, rather dynamics, swirling, a dust devil. But when two dust devils knock into each other, then something happens. With only our own counsel we go crazy. With only our own thought we accomplish nothing. But give us a problem to work on, people to help, and watch us stride! We are relationship. Without someone to relate with, we fade to nothing. The laser needs the glass; the glass needs the laser: together the hologram. We are the hologram.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 688

There is always more than we are seeing
our line of sight has a limit
the hill, the direction we are looking,
the blinkers we think bejewel us,
others we do not see any more

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

G*d is the one in whom we live and move and have our being
We are somehow with this One
Within and a part
Children of the wind
Born not crafted
Of something else
But sharing substance

:- Doug.

Many are related but few are met.

Relation is bigger than meeting,
—we are related to all—
few do we meet.

To watch a swimmer crest the wave
To see his kick, to mimic her stroke
To know how to swim
All is thrown aside when I dive in

Meet the water
Knowing the water means me.

Many are invited but few choose to meet.

:- Doug.

What leaves you breathless? What, after all these years, O jaded one?

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

Things happen by themselves. Things are invited. Both are true. We can be affected; we can affect. Both are meeting. For which is this time? We have a once per life point of view which we owe to the world. Offering it is sometimes served by accepting from the flow. Even when we’d rather give. We must exercise the courage to inject our piece, even when we have to stand against the raging sea. We must exercise the courage to sit and wait. Stand up, speak up: even if you have to sit down and shut up to do it. Action and inaction have one origin. That is why the poet changes the world without muscle, accomplishes without effort.

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

The idea of celebrating our imperfection is not to say there is no bad in us nor to say the bad is good. Rather it is to take a clear eye to it to see if it is A. “poor me” or B. “wretched me” or C. “evil me” or D. “me.” If it is just “me” then there is something we can do with that, yes? We can grow from there, do? We can meet and meet G*d? With the others our choices are limited: moan, belittle, beg, imprison, kill. Choose clear-eyed. Choose life.

:- Doug.

Spirit meeting relation swirl
—they are of one substance—
In here we are touched touch are

:- Doug.

In these meetings people may be organizing in unexpected even unwanted ways, choosing to do upsetting, novel, and creative things. But please note: they are organizing. They are doing. They own the action. They carry through. They have got something and it has got them. Something they have perhaps not done before.

:- Doug.

The world needs conversation.

:- Doug.

The world means you. Therefore, to change the world is a very personal thing. It changes you, it changes me.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 687

What’s on your mind that’s hard to voice?

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

I come, and I come to bring you out.

:- Doug.

Mystery: What is the role of creativity in meeting?

:- Doug.

A conversation is a party—a working party—of change makers.

:- Doug.