FootprintsintheWind.com

Everything negative sprouts
from fear

:- Doug.

You cannot see because
You are so busy preparing for now

:- Doug.

Pulling apart will not bring us together.

:- Doug.

Tears dissolve barriers
Then we can, we must
Ask too much

:- Doug.

A team is individuals harnessed together to force them to pull in the same direction. What if they came together voluntarily seeing that the task is their mutual fulfillment?

:- Doug.

When we need help, we come offering help.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 960

Birdsong in the distance
echoing under the canopy
of the cathedral’d woods

borne on the winds
to our ears
All is well—

life means possibility—
sing with me
let your spirit wing—

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

The next stage of our unfolding is coming together—

:- Doug.

We have this ability to imagine, within which we enfold ourselves all day: sun catchers, music, poetry, figurines, photos, jokes, sayings. Think about this: it is up to us to consciously make use of this facility to grow our species into something beyond what it has become.

:- Doug.

Grieving and energizing are forms of imagination vying against the royal consciousness. They are white tulips, women in all white or all black standing in the public square, a lone man in front of a tank loving the world’s people. They are the stories told to true and reconcile.

They are you and I and our neighbors, conversing. They are small circles of people all around the world, leaning in toward one another, making good.

This, then, is love. Imagining is loving.

:- Doug.

This is where grieving comes in: it says This, the what is, is a shame, something to cry over, not how it should be, not how it could be. It gives us a heaven to reach for. Then imagination comes in and extends this, saying, This is possible, there is more, what we can imagine spirit can engender. It gives us emergence, something more: beauty, truth, goodness.

:- Doug.

Imagination. Is imagination spirit? Imagination is free as G*d is free, free to see something that is not yet here. Free of culture, regime, milieu. Imagination creates, as G*d creates, out of what is here, out of whole cloth. Imagination speaks to imagination as height speaks to height, depth to depth, spirit to spirit. Imagination loves as G*d loves, wildly loves. Imagination is prodigal as the prodigal father. Imagination gathers as does the hen her chicks. Imagination is vulnerable as the babe, weak as the prisoner crucified. Imagination goes to the extent of the universe and further. Dreaming & imagination call to mind all divinity.

While I do not know if they are the same, we are free to use one as alias for the other.

:- Doug.

See, this is a little change which is big: we can make change. It is little because it is what we already knew: a few of us can take our situation into our own hands and build a better playground, plant a garden, care for a person in pain. It is big because it is a change in how we daily see ourselves and our place in the world: a change from done to to acting with; a change from me to we.

:- Doug.

The work we are doing takes a certain level of imagination—do you have it?—or at least a quality or direction of imagination. Thus, instead of the imagination of worry or fear we turn to the imagination of possibility. The work is indeed upon imaginations.

:- Doug.

The whole of creation is braiding rugged individuals into caring community.

:- Doug.

The next stage in our unfolding is Community.

:- Doug.

The new person is not centered physically but consciously. We are conscious of 1. Being part of a whole 2. Acting with 3. Giving our particularities and peculiarities 4. Hearing & being heard 5. Growing 6. Movement with 7. Joy 8. Creating 9. Significance 10. Purpose 11. Cosmic reach 12. Stretching 13. Imagining 14. We shall seek our fulfillment in the fulfillment of the all there is.

:- Doug.

The time has come to weave the mighty together—the Tigris, Euphrates, Ganges, Niger, Mekong, Yangtze, Danube, Plata, Nile, Indus, Rio Grande, Mississippi, Missouri, Colorado, Columbia, Amazon—and see whom we might be.

:- Doug.

One mind, one heart, many hands: the human heard.

:- Doug.

The vision is: People rolling up their sleeves to make happen among them what they love, in this circle, this neighborhood, this hemisphere. People leaning in, hearing and heard. People with heads and hearts and hands open wide. People more than people. We are growing more than people here.

:- Doug.

We have replaced contracting with consuming. Contracting is meeting to get something done—we will work together in an agreed upon way to attain something.

Consuming ends in being consumed—look at our people trapped in huge all-consuming bodies and tell me it is not so. Look at our money system foreclosing our homes and taking our labor.

We no longer approach the world as neighbors—as agents acting upon the world—as life-givers, but as victims, as done-to couch potatoes.

If we want to be more, we must meet more, do more, come together.

:- Doug.

We have been individuals: we are now called to become whole.

:- Doug.

How in these hard economic times do we change the character of humanity? Change its heart?

:- Doug.