FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 797

This deep blue
These leaves catching
Red fire! and burnt orange
From each other
Preparing to take flight
These ask of you
What have you done
—you who are in charge—
For our world today?

This is how the earth renews itself, how life renews itself, how we all live: through giving in small ways and large, but giving in all cases our all.

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

The One the all helps, can help and does. The all intends us, loves us, attends us.

:- Doug.

What will the times be like in the future when there is no more America, when these times have passed and something else has risen? More importantly, where are we headed now? What should the prophet be speaking forth? We have a work to do, let us be at it!

What is that work? To discover the work, to seek it out and to do it. To give, to sacrifice, to abandon our lives to it. To work together in this world, for this is how the world is: not fragmented islands broken off and wanting to break off from others, but fragmented islands needing to rejoin the main, to make the main, underneath the sea connected. We are swirling and the swirling weaves the main.

:- Doug.

Blinders are blunders
in a world inter-plaited
look for the openings
seek out the threads
weave yourself part

:- Doug.

Every voice heard

:- Doug.

Wholes have holes
it’s the only way they work!
The world, not the moon,
is made of green cheese!

:- Doug.

My task is to see the visions
scatter the seeds
and live with them merrily

:- Doug.

When I speak of G*d
(I am not speaking of G*d)
I am speaking of me,
seeing

:- Doug.

The dominant culture is dominance
Free! you shout to us, Create! Diverge!
You holes of the whole

You create chambers for under-heard voices to reverberate
You open us for conflict and contraries and
Fearful symmetry and spiraling and movement

You edges of the holes bound our imaginations as
You set us free
Show us a tunnel to one new world at a time

You holes make room for diversity
You fit us for expansion
Your waves touch not just our midst

But erode our fractal borders
Suggest connections with wholes beyond the whole
You holes free us from confines of the whole

:- Doug.

Let us lift our eyes to larger views of the human setting. We have suppressed our imagination—others have not done it to us or for us. It is we ourselves.

But still we have taken the imagination away from the shadows thrown on the wall by hands in front of a light, and from sitting in front of a fire, and replaced them with the far easier pre-digested shadows—with living color—on a small screen, signifying nothing: leaving us no room to create for ourselves. Leaving us no room to create ourselves.

We need the freedom to create, and we have put that away in a box on a shelf so we can forget. We take our truth and our imagination from people in Washington, DC and in newsrooms—and that truth and that imagination in small doses, for fear that the medicine is too strong for us. Perhaps it is.

“Truth! You can’t handle the truth!” may be our own indictment of ourselves. Imagination! You can’t handle your imagination!

And yet, once in a while we have Star Wars or Phantasia or The White Tulip Movement which does change things, does bring the box off the shelf and we…become ourselves and us again.

Help us to throw away the box and forever keep the contents scattering, whirling, spiraling, weaving, living!

:- Doug.

We run to help
when someone’s in need
seldom do we feel so called
to help someone plow
a field without rock or weed
tears compel us more
than laughter
maybe they more quickly
give away our reality

:- Doug.

Yesterday we learned of a young man who was paralyzed from the chest down in a drive-by shooting. He has no money, no insurance, and cannot get state assistance. Picture a small group of 6 to 12 people who call a meeting of a larger group, perhaps as a party and working fund raiser, and there we get ideas for helping this member of our community.

Money is not the solution to this young man’s situation. It is not even the answer to our own human problem of finding a way to help. People are the solution. Only people can give him the hope to live, and the community with whom to share his struggles and within which to contribute what he can. People are whom we need.

:- Doug.

At a local church, I saw pain and suffering in lethargy of this congregation, people who felt like they had been doing the same old same old for 30 years. They had been pecking away at this shell of lassitude with a small committee from the inside, and a new pastor from the outside; but in a meeting called “How Then Shall We Serve?” you could see them break out. People went from lethargy to activity when someone was bold enough to ask “Should this fellowship hall be painted after 27 years?” With donated ladders, rollers, brushes, paint, skill and labor it was done—in 4 days! People are whom we need.

:- Doug.

The deeper part is to tell of pain, reconnect people to the suffering. This morning I wondered why this seems to reverberate through people so much. I think of the music of Phantom of the Opera and Evita—it is not just the deep thrum and beat, but the words and emotions, which seem to be dark. But it is not their darkness, not the pain and suffering itself that is there. The answer is partly in Meg Wheatley’s “People get hopeful whenever someone tells the truth.” There is a truth beneath this pain, suffering and truth. What? It is telling what life is really all about. Giving the idea that if you do X, things will be happy ever after is not real. People want the real, the full engagement. That is one. The pain has a way of pulling something common out of both the person in pain and the person observing him or her. What is this common string? That is two. Somehow the pain and suffering cut us to the quick, removing the shields and image we try to convey in more commercial moments. That is three. It does not have to be negative, but at least in these days it is in tragedy that we drop our masks, roll up our sleeves, and show our hearts. That is four. How could it be positive? That is what I have seen in Open Space—people talking of what matters and how to get there. Often there is a pain beneath it—the pain of never having been heard before. That might be five. It is working toward something, working against odds, flexing our muscles against some resistance, that gives us hope. That is six. It is not getting in the driver’s seat, but getting moving under our own volition that gives strength—this is muscle and body wisdom. That is seven.

:- Doug.

If the work is important
and if it doesn’t fit the format of what you’re doing
which will you choose?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 796

We have all gotten distracted and have forgotten that we are in charge of the world. We have abdicated that responsibility to governments and corporations and charities. So we need to disorganize ourselves first—the comfy let George do it place where we all want to live—to find out that we, each and together, are in charge and can change what needs making better. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

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

Bringing people together
to disorganize what needs to be ash-canned
to create better nows

:- Doug.

From earth to earth: earth is in charge of earth.

:- Doug.

When we die, we shed the limitations of this skin, these bones, and we fly. We make even better.

:- Doug.

This is how the earth renews itself, how life renews itself, how we all live: through giving in small ways and large, but giving in all cases our all.

:- Doug.

Disorganize your community, invite people to take charge for the world.

:- Doug.

In charge!
In charge!
Not they!
Not they!
We!
We, We, We,
All the way home!

:- Doug.

The bad news is “They” are not in charge; the good news is, it’s all up to us!

:- Doug.