A turtle suns upon the edge of the pond
A turtle suns upon the edge of the pond
his or her perch looks precarious to me
but how’s it look to the turtle?
Perhaps a sunny beach and safe enough
by way of center of gravity.
:- Doug.
Archive for September, 2006
How does water get clear?
How does water get clear?
Settling
Running through the ground
Transmogrifying into vapor and rain
How do we get clear?
:- Doug.
me figured out
I don’t like it when people have me figured out. I don’t even have me figured out.
:- Doug.
Be the conversations
Be the conversations you want to have in the world. Use the long stick to probe for authentic springs. The connecting thread is that we are all so uncommonly.
:- Doug.
To receive
We dance
you lead
so I may see
how I can help
Shy, aggressive,
flowing: each calls
for a different
fitting.
Will we accept from out the dance
that which makes us new?
They also change the world
whose favored step is to receive.
And stumbling
—ahh stumbling!—
can we do that together
and do it well, without intervening?
:- Doug.
Retreats: a modest proposal
We have retreats to get away from the day to day pressures and find something new in ourselves. We ought not be surprised that much of it does not stick when we return to the fray.
So let’s design these “retreats” differently. Let’s still go off site to get the perspective. But then let’s come back on site and live the perspective for a half day then a full day at a time, interspersing times—generous times—to reflect and figure out how to make it stick. Or find another way.
:- Doug.
where in you comes the need?
If your god is a god of retribution, perhaps you could ask from where in you comes the need for retribution? Or guilt, or holding at a distance, or compassion.
How much of your god is your mind telling you what god is, and how much really meets you?
:- Doug.
Persons in meeting
Ask those you meet what they see, what they want to invite, help them grow muscle on the bones of their own dreams. Find out their dreams, call them out into the circle. The circle of humanity. Ask them what others think the dreams are, what the invitation might mean to them. What are the live questions?
The key is to probe for the live questions, the ouches and the gotta-dos. Here is life. Here is conversation. Here is G*d. Here is the multi-colored life that is persons, persons in meeting.
:- Doug.
Some surprises of conversation
Some surprises of conversation:
* you say something you didn’t know you thought
* someone else says what you were going to say
* someone asks “Did you hear what you said? That was profound.”
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Wind sm # 701
Footprints in the Windsm # 701
We can get creativity
and activity (but that’s not doing)
In good time we can get the quiet signal
the long insight
Please pass it on.
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Responsibility for changing the world
Chris Corrigan writes about 9/11, that if the attacks changed the world, then the terrorists are in control. The other choice in assigning responsibility is this:
“if the responsibility for world-changing rests with us individually and collectively, then we are confronted with the thought that we must bear some responsibility for how the world has changed, and know that it is entirely within our capabilities to change it again.”
Yes! We do not just have the power to change the world or our little corner of it, but we have the duty.
Chris, challenge us more!
:- Doug.
Conversations are questions
Conversations are questions. What if we did not live the questions but the questions lived us? What if the questions used us as carriers?
:- Doug.
What questions are your groups asking?
What are the questions your groups are asking? What questions do they dance around, not quite get voiced? What’s the buzz?
:- Doug.
Not products but bringing forth
The task of any group of conversants is not to make a product, but to meet their questions in a way that brings forth what is in them.
The questions are us. The questions live through us and we live when we engage truly. Seek not results but your self’s abandon.
:- Doug.
In person?
To our good friends–
What does it mean to speak in person? When are we in person? When are we in our own person? When is another person in us and we in them? What does it mean to be “in?” Presence?
Who is a person? What? Presence again?
To be goodness, truth or beauty embodied for another and for ourselves?
To be truly there for and with that person? Might this be an unpacking of what presence means? To allow the flow between persons that is conversation, dialogue, meeting? To find the gossamer strands of Indra’s net crossing and sparking a node for this instant and no longer?
Seeing, doing, being: Can we not only be in person for another, but see in person, do in person? Could we see into the person, do person with them?
:- Doug.
September 11, 1906
A friend called today to say that September 11 was also the anniversary of the start of Gandhi’s peace movement, in 1906.
On September 11, 1906, in Johannesburg, South Africa, a young lawyer named Mohandas K. Gandhi called together a group of people to oppose racial limiting legislation. 3,000 people that day signed an agreement to disobey the proposed law by nonviolent means, whatever the cost.
What can this “coincidence” mean? That good and bad are part of us: terror is as much part of the human way as is peace? That we may not have to lash out against terrorism with violence, but that there is another way, viable and life giving?
Please tell me what you think; I am trying to understand.
:- Doug.
