FootprintsintheWind.com

Just as we ask “Saved for what?” we need to be asking “Sustainability for what?” “Long-term survival of our species for what?”

:- Doug.

The hearer calls the notes
from out our mouths
—and hears no tune
but only garbled words—
and we ourselves are denied
our tune
until the hearer calls

:- Doug.

Transformation is a slight change
in attention
intention
Small changes, initial conditions, new worlds!
The and is central to I and Thou
The stretch of conversation brings us to life
The stretch begins with a slight change
in attention
intention
Slight change
Little and
attend
intend
stretch
the root of attend intend is stretch
stretching perspective
conversation turns us
seeds transformation

:- Doug.

The key to I and Thou is in the and. Here we add; here we are more than we are. Here we meet and birth and are birthed. Here we exist and probably no place else. Here in and. Whom can you be and with?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 769

All we have is slight changes. From here we move worlds. If you change your trajectory by one ten-billionth of a degree, you land upon a different star.

Please pass it on.

© c 2007, 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

We are admonished, and rightly, to get beyond dualism: them/us; good/bad; war/peace; rich/poor; and on. Less recognized are the dualisms inner/outer, subjective/objective, inside me/out in the world; even me/you. If we get beyond, what then? What if there were not just in here and out there, but in between? What if there were only in between, and the rest just aspects of the between?

:- Doug.

In conversation we discover other people. Sometimes they are us.

:- Doug.

What distinguishes debate and selling from conversation is people choosing to stretch and be stretched.

:- Doug.

This morning I read something about the truth and reconciliation commissions around the world and wondered if that might be an alternative in Iraq. We think we have two options: more guns or leave. Truth and reconciliation might require something that is not present: a desire for reconciliation, but the thought of how that has worked in other tough places might give us pause to consider third alternatives. Another: how about if we get someone from Northern Ireland to go to Iraq to talk with the dissidents? Might there be some reason brought into the mix? How about instead of either going in with guns blazing or running away, we walked into the fire with some other approach? If we see the options as only these two, we have a failure of imagination. We have also given up…whatever is our real power and opportunity. Who are we: the jack-boots? Or inviters of something higher and better?

Could truth and reconciliation commissions work in Iraq? The specific answer matters little. What the question suggests is that our approach puts blinders on us for other approaches. Let us open our eyes. Let us try something else, since this is not working. There is hope.

:- Doug.

Last evening I read an interesting piece from Vaclav Havel on power and powerlessness. He offers a glimpse into life in a totalitarian society. He talks about the greengrocer who is given a sign to place in his window, “Workers of the world, unite!” He speaks of how he could protest or just not do it, but then he loses his job, his child loses his entrance into college and on and on. It is a matter that the requests are subtle, easy, and they do not call to mind that the state has total control or that you are ceding that to the state. Protest then is a matter of choice and self-exile from friends and system and community, but toward truth. Protest takes effort and resolve. Protest may be costly. But what of the cost? Eventually we die anyway. Truth lives on. Spirit lives on. This is the only hope that life will get better.

:- Doug.

The magic of conversation comes from the stretch—it stretches us outside ourselves and outside our assumptions and outside our perceived and maybe real abilities—to whom we might yet be. Only when we stretch do we converse.

Some stretching arises from or draws us into the between, some we choose, some we can seek. Some opens our eyes, some engages our brains or even our minds, some shakes our being, some changes the world we hold in common. All engages our hearts or spirits. It might be wholly involuntary or partially.

If we meet we are changed. We grow or we break. Either way we grow. Either way we gain life. In all cases stretching is core and cor. This distinguishes chit-chat and debate. For we can stretch the mind in debate, searching for a stronger come-back, but it is not conversation. Conversation involves the turning of the compost and the spinning of the dancers: that is stretching. This stretching is of the kind that we seldom can go back to our prior size or shape.

:- Doug.

How can we stretch what works to make it better?

:- Doug.

Raise more questions!

:- Doug.

If you want your dreams to go, you have to risk your dream going (away from you).

:- Doug.

If we are both the creators of our conversations and the products of our conversations, what does this open up to us?

:- Doug.

Do you want to think together about getting people involved in the work of making a better world? A better world is one marked by cooperation, compassion, lovingkindness, creativity, and altruism.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 768

Can you hear me?
We need to talk
I need you to run to the shoe store
My spouse calls to me
calls me to
the mundane
the humus
the human
my feet
where I touch and am touched
away from
my head
my imagined imagination
Can you hear me?

Please pass it on.

© c 2007, 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 challenges are bigger than any one of us, but can yield to our collective thinking.

:- Doug.

Bees communicate by the dance, the movement they make. So, too, perhaps, bumblebees in open space.

:- Doug.

I wonder about words as separate from writing. Words are the forming of thought, the expressing of thought. Where did words come from? What function do they perform? Words are the working tools for humans working together. Other animals seem to have communication, as well. What can you add?

:- Doug.

What’s the most important fear people experience around conversing? That they will not be heard.

:- Doug.

I want to bring people together in a new-old way, a way that peels away the layers down to the core of what it means to be human, a way that works toward making life together better.

:- Doug.

Our government is created and maintained in dialogue. It is therefore public property. The more people who are heard, the richer the community. Let us engage as many people as we can as often as we can in as many ways as we can, starting now. We have a larger purpose—to expand our now.

We start with meetings in neighborhoods. We gather ideas. We mobilize people. These are action councils, creativity councils.

:- Doug.