FootprintsintheWind.com

I need to be about something meaningful. With this realization and others like it my decision to not retire but stay active in the work begins to give me joy.

:- Doug.

Given that we have within us Bull Puckee detectors, we also have detectors of the profound and the spirit. Witness a sunset or place a small child’s hand in ours and we know.

:- Doug.

Tell me about a time (as a member of a group) when you felt you really accomplished something. Please describe it. Tell me how it felt. At the time, did you feel your humanity rising or declining?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 966

You are not alive
You have not life
Life is the stream which carries you along
Life has you
For a time and half a time
Then casts you aside
This is the great white hot hope
You bring to the world:
You can bend life
Do you choose?
But in which direction?
We the generations wait
‘Tis not you who converses
Birthing action
Rather you take the actions
Growing out of you when
Conversation births you
Life is Conversation
& each of us is a knot on the thread

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

When we are sitting in a circle of friends and we are working intently on something that matters to us, we feel alive, yes? When we are sitting in a lecture and the subject bores us, we feel a little less human, true? Most of us have experienced this. It is also evidence of something at work, the basis of something as important as life itself.

:- Doug.

Humanity rising
Or falling
Which do we want?
Is it that which we
Chose but 5 minutes ago?
Can we do better this time?
Can we invite
Humanity rising?

:- Doug.

The person who will not take part in living is no better than the person who commits suicide.

:- Doug.

G*d is empty: the still small whisper, the breeze, the babe in a feeding trough, the vibrant man consenting to his own execution. This is living, this is G*d: to enter in, to meet. Our job then is to meet. We must converse. We must take the world into our own hands to mold, to invite, to meet. If we turn away from the world and lose ourselves in drugs, video games, books, the pursuit of money or fame, we have done no other than suicide. We have thrown away living.

But if we meet living, we breed it. We breed conversation; we breed living.

The person who meets living, who converses with living on purpose, is the one who creates worlds, makes living anew.

:- Doug.

To nurture living, engage. Meet it.

:- Doug.

In big ways and small I nurture living. Not always mindfully, not always successfully, not always as largely as I’d like. Try again in the morning.

:- Doug.

G*d is that incomplete thing called living.

:- Doug.

It’s simple really. I’m hear to promote living.

:- Doug.

I have one major project for today and they all center on farming: nurturing life.

:- Doug.

We are moving from stars to Queen’s court constellations.

:- Doug.

Save us from knowing all the problems!

:- Doug.

How will we arrange to make it possible?
The good that to this life we would bring?
With all the measuring sticks and hurry ups?
& all the voices—all our own?—saying it’s not practical?

:- Doug.

We seek a personal God
In the most personal
Is the most life
That’s why

The personal means us
We do not want a God
Who is a person
We want one who sees us

:- Doug.

We’re not here to make ourselves perfect: we’re here to be with.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 965

We are caterpillars to the power of butterflies. If we wish.

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

In its deepest nature, the human self is part of the wholeness of the world and not of it an enemy.

:- Doug.

We are not pieces of life
We are part of the whole
Bigger when holding together

:- Doug.

Butterfly life is just a part of all life
We are jewels along the string
The string’s the thing
String theory?

:- Doug.

Conversation is life and calls us to sustain and enlarge life.

:- Doug.