FootprintsintheWind.com

To say
G*d is
May be
Beyond us
But it’s true
To say
G*d does
G*d loves
G*d meets

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 895

How would I like to respond?

“What don’t you know and how will you learn it?” There is more that I don’t know than I do. The simple answer is that I will ask you, including my so-called opponent. Together. In that one word, Together, is more. The important thing is to keep asking questions, for in questions is pregnancy, is new birth, is life of our community and country. Answers stop the questioning, stop the progress. Questions open us up, questions open us out. Together we have wisdom. So I ask you to take a few moments to ask yourself, What don’t we know? What are our really big questions? I ask you now, in silence, to find the larger questions, the questions to enliven us.

Then I would shut up for the rest of my allotted time.

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

Friend, meet, encounter with me. Commune. This is more important than magic tricks, responding like a puppet when I pull your strings, real or imaginary. I think there are strings, and some are real. But for a friend, we ask help when we need it, give it when needed, asked. The help may be exactly what we ask, it may be something else. Love is fulfilling, ever fulfilling.

:- Doug.

Love is the stuff that pulls us together. Then even in conflict there is love, because we will not let the other wrestler go. Something brings us together, and that something has another name: love. It is what attracts us, draws us together. It is not about getting money from them, but respect: love.

:- Doug

One lawyer says
It is all about money
It is not:
It is about love
It is about how people
Choose to be with each other:
Growlingly, it-ly,
Aloofly, nastily,
Or kindly, respectfully,
Treating each other well,
As persons

:- Doug.

I am stirring up things for my friends: stirring up other people, inviting people to the pot, the cook with the 4 stones, asking them to throw in their carrots and beets and pieces of meat, nuts and corn and nourishment and yes, love.

I am a cook. I can only put in what you bring. I can only suggest flavors: you choose what to put in the pot, what to withhold.

:- Doug.

You can use your computer without ever connecting to the Internet, but would you want to?

You can live your life withdrawn from others, but O what you’d be missing!

:- Doug.

You are the one who sustains us. You mean it all; you mean us all.

:- Doug.

Why disorganize our community? Do you want a serious answer, or a light-hearted one? Jugular or jocular?

:- Doug.

No final answers, a continuing of the search, the path: working on bringing your divinity to my world, the world, repairing the world, turning it upside down, disorganizing, meeting. WEave!

:- Doug.

Mountains, fire, wind howling
Brush strokes across the skies
These speak to me of G*d
Who do they say you?

:- Doug.

We have told ourselves stories of God, making “him” into an angry old man on a judgment seat, a lover of music and incense and blood-sacrifice, or a good natured father, dandling children on “his” knee, passing out sugar plums. Our difficult task is to shed those images, true or otherwise, to find who is G*d. Who lives?

:- Doug.

Fear locks me, fear blocks me, when I am in front of people, putting on a show, wanting to get it right. My task is to recall that meeting, hearing, now is my task. Nothing more—is more.

:- Doug.

Coming up out of the unexpected
Emergence’s image is of the same stuff
As arising’s and resurrection’s

:- Doug.

“Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal….”
Life is play! Play is earnest!
And our play surpasses old Big Bangs

:- Doug.

“Glass pants”
My father laughed to tell the story
It is the way the world works—yes?
Clasped hands
In greeting
In pulling together
In contending
It is the way you choose to work—yes?

:- Doug.

My life is meeting
G*d
is meeting

:- Doug.

By gathering
Finding our extraordinary
Commons
Our desire—& need to act
We become a people

:- Doug.

To live spontaneously
What does it require &
What does it fire
Of us?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 894

The cloud advances imperceptibly
But look away a moment
There it is as if it had leaped!
By billows, by thinning,
By drawing moisture from beneath
By embracing, by moving on
Whether embraced or not
This cloud brings fog
Or cleansing rain
Your hands can stop it not
It moves to shade another
This cloud does its work
Cry it might or storm
Then dissipate in the wind
Surely part of its work is beauty
And setting boys and girls dreaming
Maybe you too
Arguing with it concerns it not
It does its work and moves along
Maybe you too

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

Wind—rippling the leaves
Sometimes in our hair
Storming you are known to be
Raining, pelting, thundering, driving us in doors
Yet we need you

:- Doug.

Love’s a-meeting
G*d’s a-meeting

:- Doug.

We are called to meet. G*d is meeting. Us. Each other. The dynamics. We are invited to meet.

:- Doug.