FootprintsintheWind.com

Six people leaning in to each other.

Why? People can create the world better Now. It is about Living, Loving and Being. All three at once.

:- Doug.

Dissent is based upon choice and leads to going a different direction.

:- Doug.

An invitation needs to bring unease around “I need to go but am afraid.” Let people know something is required of them.

:- Doug.

Sometimes in your words I hear “There is nothing anyone can do.” Sometimes I hear “The present is good enough.”

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 876

Invite without ceasing.

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© 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

I want to bring those on the margins to the center of our juiciest conversations.

:- Doug.

The hum of living
And loving
And existing
All supports

:- Doug.

Invite anxiety: what can we do, what will we commit?

:- Doug.

If I do this, what will I be risking? I will be risking that people will think me a kook, that I will be trying too hard, that I will not fit in with the people who go with the flow, who are effects not causes. That is a big risk! That is anxiety! We might fail. We might succeed, too.

:- Doug.

We are looking for people who are imaginative-in-place. People who are willing to work with other people to create new conversations.

:- Doug.

It is not just engaging people in their community, but how we engage them. We look for gifts. We gather and hear all voices. We gather in small groups and take charge.

The message of hope is this: we can take charge, we can make a change for the better in our world, to do so we have the responsibility. There is no one else. Invite people to a new way of meeting and conversing—new for us if not for our species.

:- Doug.

It’s possible people have seen how radical this is and are reaching for it, wanting to embrace us, to embrace largeness, generosity.

:- Doug.

What I’m after is community in conversation: moving, engaging, owning, doing, touching, belonging: things we don’t do, maybe have never done before now. Changing our Now, actively seeking our diversities and capacities. Living, loving being as large and as wastefully as we can.

:- Doug.

I may be holding back and not telling my story big enough, not making my request big enough. This is a change in how we see our role in the world—we cause the world.

:- Doug.

We want people to experience the power and the exhilaration of owning their world. This is the real actualization—of us, of our world. Actualizing our connections with the divine. Making real our human-divine nature, making the world all it can be, and us as part of it. Making love and life all it can be—living and living abundantly.

:- Doug.

Today I saw children at play in a playground. Whatever their age, children are involved with manipulating their world, seeing what works and what does not and what the results might be. Experimenting. When do we lose that curiosity and enter the adult world of grindstones and same old?

:- Doug.

Do you want to change the community? Are there things that could be improved? What if our present were discontinuous from our past? What if we could dream our present discontinuous from our past? If that is what we want, then we need to change the conversation—both topics and who is included.

:- Doug.

Small acts equal big changes. Big changes in how we think. Big changes in our conversations. Big changes in our ideas of who we are and what authority we have in the world. We must get intentional about the conversations we have and the communities we grow.

Small acts are the way to big changes. From small acts all the rest grows. Small acts grow from possible conversations, possibility conversations.

:- Doug.

This work is a journey into loving wastefully, living overflowingly, and being daringly.

:- Doug.

Goal setting, straight-line thinking, and problem solving are symptoms of the same kind of thinking: improving symptoms without ever changing the cause. The cause is us. All the former says the future is caused by the past. The present has no hope of severing the chain. The present has no hope.

:- Doug.

Something new happens in history with every true conversation. It better. Our grandchildren need us to take charge because we are in charge.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 875

My G*d cried in the garden
My G*d died
My G*d showed weakness
Vulnerability
Tears
Powerlessness
My G*d is near
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© 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

Healing includes sickness because a whole life includes sickness, darkness and evil. The work of our being is becoming whole.

:- Doug.