The fact of the matter is we’re all we’ve got. If any superlative thing is to be done, it must come from us. The fact of the matter is, we are more than we realize. We can make anything real.
:- Doug.
Being heard is embodying: tongue and all mouth, ear, heart and gut, kinesthesia.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 685
In our meeting will be
awful masculine truth
and feminine desire to nurture
if they embrace
ahh! a child could be born
a child whose name is called
“our hope is with us.”
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
Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com
To our good friends–
I got a mailer yesterday from our Congressman. Its theme is securing our borders.
I am saddened by it. It is fear mongering. It is not a specific fear: they would not monger well if they specified what the fear really is.
Even more sadly for me, it is exclusionary. We have something and we are going to grasp it tight and not let anyone else have even a crumb of it. Especially if you are seen as different.
There is so much to be learned and gained from interchange.
Yet the secure our borders people will say That is too idealistic, the world is a dangerous place filled with terrorists.
Terrorists, always terrorists: an amorphous enemy for all times, we do not even have to attach it to any particular country. It is a free-floating anxiety that we can tap into to sell any bill of goods we want, from political to religious to business. The fact is that 99.99% of the world’s population wants peace and to be left alone to love and be loved; they want to help others. There are a few we need to be on the alert for, but to put the whole at the service of the fear of the aberrant is to put us all in a prison camp.
One difficulty in a pluralistic world is to train our vigilance to spot the dangers. It is a continually evolving thing. But it is lunacy to put bars on all the windows and search every person on the theory that it will deter the bad guys. The bad guys will watch and see where the holes in the fence are and will enter as if there were no fence.
We have created an American Myth: the rich and bountiful. And then when others come to ask their opportunity to share, we yank it away (is that one reason they call us Yanks?) and say You cannot have. We hold out the cookie jar to a hungry child and then slap her hand when she reaches for one.
It is not a matter of laws being broken; it is a matter that we are breaking a higher one: the law of the sharing of life. You shall not kill. Yet if we have the food and withhold it from a starving one, are we not killers?
Show me on the picture of our blue planet where is the United States, Mexico, Canada, Indiana, Michigan, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, Germany, Holland, Poland. It is one world and the lines we draw are artificial. So too our laws, and we can redraw them any time we see a larger light.
Here are some questions I still have: How long does it take to enter this country legally to work and live here, from Mexico, from other countries? Why do people want to come here in such numbers from Mexico? Why not work in the factories that have relocated from the US to Mexico under NAFTA or otherwise? Why have they been forced from traditional work? Can they make a living in Mexico? How are their problems our problems? Why do people not apply for citizenship more often once they are here? Are people in any sort of a box once they come here? What are the advantages to Americans from immigration? What are the disadvantages?
Why are we so incensed over immigration and commerce which we call “illegal?” Is it the very notion that someone is thumbing their nose at our laws? Are we afraid that we might have to actually speak with someone with a darker skin, a relative of the Indians our ancestors threw off the land? Is it a racial issue: are we still trying to put down the “Indians?”
I have no answers. That is probably good, for therefore I can still dialogue. Therefore change is still possible. Not change that is imposed by those with the power and money to beat the rest of us into submission. Rather, change that is integral to us, that runs heart and gut deep.
:- Doug.
Dialogue is a capacity we grow. We do not when we open our mouth have it at the ready. Study, experiment, test, learn, laugh.
:- Doug.
Do you cheat life?
Do you hold back from others
from yourself
of yourself?
of our self?
What does life have a
right
to expect of you?
Have you given it?
Are you giving your
all?
best?
:- Doug.
In what directions do we want our perceptions to grow? Wider, more open? Narrower, “focused?” What do we want to take in? More or less? Life or death? Careful: any answer may be the better or worse path.
:- Doug.
Life is a series of acts moving about a mystery at the center, and the line they describe is a hug.
:- Doug.
What do I want to bring forth in the world? Us!
:- Doug.
Dialogue leads us to see the other, then to stand face to face, then to see the us, then to be the us.
:- Doug.
Can I lose the edge? Do I need it? I’d prefer not to have it. To be whole, it is a tool I need have ready. To seek justice it may at times be necessary. Do not get hooked: there is something larger. I must work to bring it all in.
:- Doug.
G*d is the archetypal
circle river hole woods waters we
we the particular
the seminal one always means the particular
the particular if aware sees
the curve is cosmic
ours the pucker the turn the swerve
who can say which one gives the beauty?
:- Doug.
The error of the doctrine of original sin is its emphasis. It tells us that since the first humans sinned, humans are sinful, solely. What is true is that we have within our capacities: life and death; sinner and saint; missing the mark and hitting it; rightness and wrong-headedness. It sees only black when we are shades of rainbows. It seeks only to mourn; life seeks at times to dance.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 685
We are not in competition with the universe
We are not in competition with each other
We are part.We are not uncaring,
Trampling earth’s species
We are opening our eyes
We are part.
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
Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com
What did Thoreau and his friends converse about in the woods? Do we require a place apart in order to converse?
:- Doug.
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= open, generous, hugging