FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 910

What if our death were not an end
Nor a beginning over again
In angelic realms?
What if it were a culmination,
A fruit, a seed, a chrysalis,
Exploding colors, sounds, flavors,
Aromas—A Big Bang:
And here we are a dot in
Someone’s death!

Please pass it on.

© c 2009, 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

Just how many peak experiences have you had sitting listening in a lecture hall?

:- Doug.

It is all of a piece
This life, yes?
A great complex piece

:- Doug.

Love with waste

:- Doug.

We lack the courage
To ask each other
To be real
When that is what we want most
From them
From ourselves

:- Doug.

Yes, I believe G*d is lyrical as the Psalms, weak as a babe in a cattle trough, powerless as an about to be executed prisoner, one who speaks only as loudly as a still small whisper, and who resides in all creatures, small and great. No, I do not believe it even interesting to ask a real G*d to do magic tricks. Perhaps I believe in a G*d whose periphery is nowhere to be found but whose heart is everywhere, a G*d without metaphors, shape-shifting, changing, diffuse, and above all meeting.

It is this divinity with us, that of G*d in all, that I seek to have all people, and you, see and act upon.

:- Doug.

Jesus was never about guilt. Jesus was ever about freedom from guilt. Getting on with it. Forgetting self. He kept saying, It does not matter. Help one another. Love one another. You are the needed spice of the earth.

:- Doug.

Make more time
Say your message whole
In the face of your listener
Demand something

:- Doug.

When you invite someone
ask of them something
difficult—
work,
themselves,
days of their lives,
—a thing of great worth

:- Doug.

I think it wrong to clasp irons of guilt around the legs of women and men whom you have set free.

:- Doug.

A poem should exceed the poet’s grasp, or what’s a versing for?

:- Doug.

This was my morning driving
along a busy street:
red flashing lights
van ahead, cars other side
all pull over, wait
as ambulance pulls into
nursing home facility
we all ease back onto the street
having helped
one of us unknown
complied too with law
Law is society’s
minimum kindness

:- Doug.

Life is an occasion for being kind.

:- Doug.

Oh poor me
the cry of the
clinger-on
hypochondriac
one who won’t try
expecting to be done for
These are the prayers
to nauseate divinity

:- Doug.

Single-pointing my attention on one thing—that leaf dancing on the end of the twig in the breezy autumn air—is not boring: it is difficult; my mind wants to jump elsewhere, such as to writing this. Come back, come back.

:- Doug.

What is the best thing you ever did?

:- Doug.

G*d is Bud. Hey, Bud!

:- Doug.

I have never liked war and argument and stressing people. I love loving and conversing and engaging people.

:- Doug.

All Budding Whole. You are All Budding Whole.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 909

Today my dental hygienist told of her neighbor—an older lady—who really needs people to look out for her, but she does not want help. This living story shows we need to invent ways to be neighbors again (or actually from scratch in our new society). It has been a generation or two since people were neighbors and so for the most part we don’t know the art. We will need to create it. And that is good, for our times require of us a neighborly actions to fit our times.

Please pass it on.

© c 2009, 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

Ask each other bigger questions.

:- Doug.

All my writing is of God:
each piece another part of God

:- Doug.

We may not be able to find an image for God; we may be incapable, large as our imaginations are; or God as spirit may defy image.

You might morph. You might be understandable to some people as the old grey man on a big chair. You might appear to others as Om or sound or turtles all the way down or an elephant or giraffe. That is all OK, now. I do not have to go searching for an image that works for all and for all time. I can see you as verb or adjective or no thing at all. You are there, you are loving me. All OK now.

So we learn to live with an imageless God. We allow others their images and perhaps they allow us ours. Our images may come and go, shape-shifting. Or we have none at all. Could we live our lives with no images of ourselves?

All OK now.

:- Doug.