FootprintsintheWind.com

Wholeness is what we are after, after all. We want to be complete.

When we come together, we come together to engender wholeness, and there can be ever more of that.

:- Doug.

And yet the butterfly…
Can the butterfly return to the chrysalis?
Where do butterflies go to die?
Butterfly, lay your eggs
then you may see your end
from here emerges caterpillar
to go to the chrysalis
& the soup inside
till butterfly emerges
another flight another circle
Who is to say it is a different butterfly
when running through might be
simply one life

:- Doug.

Ours is a wider, more qualitative view of conversation. Conversation is wider than we’re given to think of it in that it includes all that flows between us, not just vocal activity: writing and reading, touching, intuition, knowing glances, movements, the flow of streams, and poetry are all forms of conversation. There are degrees of the quality of conversation: chit chat about things that don’t matter are on the trivial end of the scale; sharing our vulnerabilities are toward the other, the one with more value.

:- Doug.

Our work is increasing the amount of living in the world—that only happens in conversation.

:- Doug.

Keep thinking of flow of betweens and meetings, so that we can see how we might nurture new life, new habits and adaptations.

:- Doug.

We are agglomerations of edges. Edges on many sides, since humans have different kinds of sides, nothing squared off, except perhaps some pieces of our minds.

What would it mean to see humans as edges of somethings? Say edges of thoughts, edges of actions, edges of movements? We are certainly collections of many things: thoughts, emotions, animality. And when we meet, we create borders, spaces between, where new laws—habits and adaptations—can arise. If they are good, if they are pleasant, if they attract us, they can keep arising. Each time they arise, they become more substantial, increase in strength.

So we are creating ways for life to emerge, and we can do this consciously, purposely, where before when we could not see it seemed to happen by chance. The new life we now know is in the betweens. It needs borders and good shape and positive space—lots of things which we can use to nourish life.

:- Doug.

Processing takes place in naps, too—this is a meeting.

:- Doug.

The walls of the lung extract from air
pass to blood, release carbon dioxide
the flood plain nourishes life
though its laws are neither land nor river

Where the two meet
—the boundary—
is where
the work gets done
different laws apply
new things happen
that could not on either side

:- Doug.

My developing picture of life is really very simple: plaiting living. Life engenders life and it plaits as it goes, engendering living. Nothing stays the same, everything is in flow, everything converses with all it meets. Conversing is braiding.

:- Doug.

Where are you in your grieving? How has grieving touched you? What is going on in your grieving now?

:- Doug.

Our live questions help us engender life in space.

:- Doug.

Choose life or choose ego.

:- Doug.

The value, the one we all pursue, is life. If we chose only money that has no life. It is not merely dead to me, it is dead.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 964

You kept your smile
While those around traded
Theirs for shouting, anger
But tell me—tell us all—
Did you do it to get
A better replacement ticket
Or for this gate agent
The world to make more human?

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 affront of open space to the world of command and control is that it is not separate: not separate from the world; not separate from the people. It says the people matter—what they think and do. It says the people, not just the commanders, have the best ways forward, will in fact, if we let them, carry us through. This offends those who have the answer and who fear other opinions.

:- Doug.

Life will live
—This it gives
—This it must have

:- Doug.

I’m exploring a different playground.

:- Doug.

The meeting of the leaky edges
Here between we discover our
Edges are not so brick & mortar
Even brick & mortar accepts the rains
& and lets them out again
Yet flesh is leaky still
& Spirit more so
Who are you & who am I
& who are we?
Leaky edges meeting become
Leaky wholes

We leak back and forth with
World on the right
Divinity on the left
& each through our leaking becomes
The other
And more

Our tears leak us

:- Doug.

People who make up the differences between two others: peacemakers.

:- Doug.

Would that I had a more complete picture of you…but maybe not, for this way I see there is ever more of you to touch, smell, hear, love. Knowing that you are incomplete, at least in my mind, and seeking completing in all and sundries, allows my spirit to wing…for ever….

:- Doug.

In human affairs we cannot survive if we all are an amorphous blob. We need sharp edges and conflict. We are having tough times with that now, nationally and internationally, and that may be a matter that we need to devise ways to have our conflict without it fragmenting us.

:- Doug.

Some people are not comfortable in a setting where there are no assigned seats and they are called upon to participate and where the world around them is in flux. Yet that is the world, and learning to work within a world of that sort breeds skills worth attending. The world does not present us targets which stand still or even remain as targets

:- Doug.

People are centers. Centers of action. Centers of swirling toward the future. They can touch and spin each other. In this way they create vibrancy, living interacting. This is something new in the world, and every time they meet in this way they chance to create something new in the world. This something new is life.

:- Doug.