enter a sacred space
I enter a sacred space
The space of community
Hear: to see what arises
Hear: to touch divinity emerging
Together we bring the space
:- Doug.
Archive for June, 2008
Footprints in the Windsm # 868
Footprints in the Windsm # 868
If we see wind and breath and spirit as understandings of one word we owe it to ourselves to keep all in mind as we apply that word. If we hear a calling to include unheard voices and marginalized peoples and another to meet our budgets, we owe it to ourselves and our grandchildren to work to include both in our response. We progress when we include more criteria for progress.
Please pass it on.
© c 2008, 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.
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10 or so Remands
1. Loving is our work: loving those who live with us in our homes, neighborhoods and worlds; loving those who have no one; loving those who are hard to love; loving wastefully, expecting no thanks and no repayment; loving even ourselves when we fall short, loving our efforts and intentions and attempts.
2. We will walk and work together, knowing that community is the completing of us, that community is of G*d.
3. We take into ourselves the responsibility to grow into a fuller humanity, including all, however they differ, knowing that love and truth are in our differences, and that love is superior to truth. We will seek truth wherever we can find it, will listen to all and seek them out, and will discard as readily as we can what is no longer truth. We will uplift each other, showing each other a new more excellent way.
4. We take responsibility for the health of our world—the earth, the universe, and all children even beyond the seventh generation. We will use resources wisely, restoring what we take, leaving the place cleaner than we found it, giving life.
5. We pledge to each other to make all our decisions for the welfare of the whole human race. We will work to: curb our spiraling birthrate; use our rich resources to feed both rich and poor; bring to center whomever is marginalized; remember the oneness of all; and live as if we all mattered.
6. We will bring to living, loving and being the wonder and hope of life and what is sacred and divine among us. We pledge to each other to grow in vision and maturity, taking responsibility for loving.
7. We will all together and each take responsibility for adding, changing, varying and contradicting these Remands, knowing that living, loving and being are always growing….
:- Doug.
(For this full article, see here.)
Disconnected from life and responsibility
We have disconnected ourselves from life and from our responsibility to life. All around we see it—passion’s absence, people going through motions, tired of it all. There is more and it is in life!
:- Doug.
Who has talents he or she does not recognize?
Whom do you know who has talents he or she does not recognize? What three or five people can we bring together to develop talent teams, to make something new happen in the world?
:- Doug.
Conversation is loving, living, being
Engage persons in conversation, which is to say in loving, living and being. Loving, living and being is widely, deeply, intricately, committing to causing.
:- Doug.
Engage and encourage community
Engage and encourage community, for G*d is community. Here lives the divine human.
:- Doug.
Where is it written?
Where is it written? Do you need to find it written? Here, I’ll write it for you.
:- Doug.
What being do we share?
What being do we share? Not merely within each of us, but between and among us?
:- Doug.
Fullness of life
Fullness of life
Fullness of love
Fullness of being
This is fullness
Inviting
:- Doug.
Two birds
Two birds fly by my window—one just clearing the roof line, one barely missing the corner of the building. Where are the birds flying? They can find seeds and grubs on any square yard of lawn, so they could walk. They may need to get up into the trees to get away from predators, but why then fly this moment, this sunny morning, when they are not escaping nor heading for a nest? Is there joy? Is there looking for something better elsewhere? Is there scattered thinking? Do they have a shadow? What is for them the more?
:- Doug.
The wholeness of good and evil
The wholeness of good and evil, light and dark adds new meaning to depth in conversing: the good and the evil each give relief to the other, allow them to be seen, allowing us to choose the better, wholer way.
:- Doug.
Community’s role is central
The job of working out wholeness belongs to the community. Community’s role is central. We cannot be whole as individuals because there is much more of us out there. The good need the evil and vice versa. It is not about cutting this out of people for it is part of our being; it is somehow about loving including. What does that mean and what can it look like? This is the task of community.
:- Doug.
Life is not a battle with evil
Life is not in battle with death, with evil, for evil is a part of each of us, or humanity, as much as death. As if the right foot were at war against the left! We cannot chop off evil; we can only love the person, can only practice wholeness. This is precisely why hurt and hope arise at once in the telling of human stories. Telling and hearing are in community: they are essential to wholeness and therefore so is community. Because hearing is necessary to telling, community is necessary to wholing.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 867
Footprints in the Windsm # 867
I’m after bigger fish. I’m after life, that is, G*d.
This is news we can use, because when we find a hook for G*d, we have found a hook for persons, life and change.
If we are fishers of humans, we are fishers of G*d. When we hook each other, we have hooked G*d!
Please pass it on.
© c 2008, 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
In our early history
In our early history much was done for the survival of the tribe: subjugation of women; lifetime mating to ensure continued reproduction (for if women were free to choose mates—or not—there might be fewer warriors, workers, or survivors); group hunting; avoidance of or war with threatening tribes. But today we need a different calibre of working together: working across tribes; working beyond survival to creativity; working beyond fear to possibility.
:- Doug.
Never had to
We have never had to talk this way before. Circumstances now are demanding that we talk more openly, inclusively, chargeably than we have ever.
:- Doug.
Be kind to myself
Be kind to myself, loving: I am evolving, getting more open, more loving, more whole. So all.
:- Doug.
Some do not wish to see more
You, sitting where you are, see what is behind me, a whole different panorama from what I see behind you and to your left and right. I can learn from your point of view, from your wisdom, from your experience, and together we can create new wisdom and knowledge and possibility—O! the possibility! Instead, I elect to construct a wall between us, saying I do not wish to see what you see, I do not want to see more.
:- Doug.
We must respond
It is not the issue that this is new, that this is something we have not done. The issue is that we are presented with a new setting and we must respond: the best response is to see together what the best response is.
:- Doug.
