Can a small group
Can a small group change the world?
:- Doug.
It is not about pushing, but about loving who is. We are more than we are.
We are whole the way we are, and we can become more whole.
:- Doug.
Archive for September, 2008
Peace breaks out
It is important that we increase the human heard. Wars stem from people not being heard. Wars stem from governments who sometimes think they are there to not hear. Hear the people. When people are heard, peace breaks out. Because here is the source of love and life and being.
:- Doug.
If we leave any of us behind
If we leave any of us behind or out of the conversation, we increase the reasons people have to make war upon us. We increase the instances of disease and poverty of body and mind and heart. We need to see that when we espouse positions and platforms and any form of ready-made answers, we are stopping the flow of questions. Questions are our life. Here starts new. Here starts sparks. Here begins creativity. Life needs to be creative. Instead, we need to invite people and their questions and their creativity and life and body, mind, heart.
:- Doug.
Population compression inter-knotted
The world is suffering population compression. Our future is bleak—wars, hunger, thirst, pandemics, sickness & death—unless we engage each other in meaningful conversations. Our conversations need to be larger—taking a world view, a larger picture than we ever have till now. Our conversations need to involve everybody—no more excluding people because we think them different or stupid or alien.
Our conversations need so much mind power because what faces us is so inter-knotted that it will take all we have to make a fabric. We need to converse for each other, recognizing that when we do it for the least and greatest of these, we are doing it for us. All of us. We need to converse with the knowledge and intention that we are causes of our Now.
:- Doug.
It is our task
It is our task to meet. More than that, it is our task to invent the ways to meet.
We must meet in ways deep, wide, intricate, causal, and committing ourselves to each other.
:- Doug.
Our larger work
My larger work
In the world
Is to help small groups
Invent theirs
What’s yours?
:- Doug.
Where our new now can be found
This is where our new now can be found: ranging widely and deeply, inventing the new conversations, working intricately, causing, causing, committing ourselves to each other.
This is what happens in major catastrophes—people see themselves in the same place, they see these as real persons, and they respond, committing themselves to these others. It is not a general audience that we commit ourselves to, but to known real persons, persons we might not yet have met but real ones none the less.
Committing ourselves to each other.
People may not get it the first time we say it. No matter: keep inviting, poking, opening.
:- Doug.
What’s working?
What’s working? What could we use more of that we do well already? Where are our opportunities?
What would you like to see more of in our community? When we are functioning at our best, what is possible?
:- Doug.
What makes for a vibrant community?
What makes for a vibrant community? Widespread engagement, creativity, commitment, ownership? Let’s work on these. It will take the whole to revitalize the whole.
:- Doug.
Who will?
The problem is, we don’t think we can make a difference. But if we can’t who will? If we don’t have the resolve who does? The fundamental fact is, we can, and we are the ones who must.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 886
Footprints in the Windsm # 886
Getting captivated by imagination is almost the whole of meeting.
Please pass it on.
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Governments do not have the solutions
Governments do not have the solutions—or they would have been applying them. They are too busy with fixing potholes and rewriting departmental budgets. We need to all take time to see the bigger picture, to invent new ways of addressing what is essential. I do not know what is essential. Neither do you. But all of us together can work it out.
:- Doug.
Hear the distant beating of drums?
In “The Sound of Music” one can hear the distant beating of the war drums. In our day, we can hear the distant drums, too: a dying Mother earth. We have it in our power to restore her health, to prosper her children. Or we can pour out her last drop of water, plow under her food, withhold the cool from her brow. We can turn our back on her, or tend to her. Will we choose wisely?
:- Doug.
What do these have in common?
Farmers, food, water tables, Colorado River, rivers full, water thrown away, famine, pestilence, soil erosion, dust storms, deserts, crops, hunger, global warming, yields, storms, floods, dust storms, life expectancy, poverty, illiteracy, disease, HIV, AIDS, unrest, growth, population compression, conflict, war, terrorism, overwhelmed, irrigation, productivity, rainwater, wind, solar, land, water, multiple cropping, efficiency, effectiveness, feeding on wastes, ethanol, using what we throw away, cropland, energy, hydrogen, geothermal, carbon, greenhouse, basic education, basic health, saving money, school lunches, mobilization, taxes, subsidies, calling, waste, bird flu, pandemics:
What do all these have in common?—Us!
:- Doug.
World ends in fire or ice?
Will the world end in fire or ice? It’s beginning to look like it will be a cough. Or a wheeze. Or a groan.
:- Doug.
Not puppets but people
G*d is not a puppet master because G*d wants not puppets but people.
:- Doug.
by smaller-scale people
The crises we now face require some larger-scale thinking—and working—by smaller-scale people.
:- Doug.
The elements
The elements of our environmental challenge are earth, air, fire, water—and us.
:- Doug.
