FootprintsintheWind.com

Goals see the world as without motion—except our own acting upon “it.” This blinds us to things as they are. It is backwards, diminishing the involvement of humans.

:- Doug.

Open Space has no pre-cooked agendas—nor pre-chewed results.

:- Doug.

We are here to generate 10,000 living centers among us.

—It is both process and purpose, day-to-day and toward a new day

:- Doug.

People meeting are more than space technicians: they are making worlds outside of the space they are in. Beyond this time: they are artists crafting beauty (and truth and goodness) out of wondrously available materials and conglomerations.

:- Doug.

The practice of person-to-person dynamics is a process. We never arrive. Where we are today is a result of where we were and what we did yesterday, and where we will be tomorrow will likewise be different.

:- Doug.

Listen!
Better, hear!
There!
Between the notes of the birds
between calls and answers
among the sounds of
all calls and answers:
There!
Underneath all these
underneath the
silence supporting all these:
There!
Palpable is what
we had thought Mystery:
There!

:- Doug.

Longfellow, particularly in Standish and in The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, was creating a new country with his poetry. Whitman, a contemporary, was doing the same. So too it feels like we are creating a new country of the heart, a new species, a new movement of humanity. We must discover how we always have fit together. We must make ways to converse. Working together conversing engendering life. It is new life.

:- Doug.

Life itself is our business: engendering life.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 974

Broken…or broken open?

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

Come with the
early morning sun
& play among the dew’s
flashes
quickly, lest they be discovered
only to their lover showing their sparkle

:- Doug.

Let us have life-engendering meetings.

:- Doug.

I am learning to hear as well as listen. Peggy Holman suggests we cannot hear without listening. I am not so sure. It seems we can be open and receptive without any intention (is intention part of listening?) to listen to another—we can happen upon a conversation or hear something that brings us up short. Perhaps that means the listening can happen after the hearing.

:- Doug.

In law, I don’t want to do for people, but do with them, free them to take charge of their lives and each other.

:- Doug.

Passion—giving full play to one’s compassion. Letting go of the largely unnecessary limits. Doing for others, using one’s highest and best. This I seek—and want.

This perhaps is the root and stem of beauty. So grandparents show their grandchildren flowers and bugs and things of wonder. Arousing passions.

This perhaps is the root and stem of wakefulness and enlightenment.

:- Doug.

We do not merely have each other to embrace, but to shake! We need passion.

:- Doug.

What is the meaning of clocks and calendars for us on this blue planet? We see seasons repeat and look for seasons in our lives. We see days repeat and count them. We see freshness regularly and think of new starts. We see ends coming and hurry. Ends and seasons, freshness and repetition, second chances and life renewing: have these circles and cycles touched our hearts and beings?

:- Doug.

What are you gonna think of next?

:- Doug.

Who should lead our country? You?

:- Doug.

We need not fear running out of money—the angst I have seen over and over again—How can I do what I love and still pay the bills? So we chase after the second part thinking it is the ground for the first and forget to love. In truth, love is primary: life flows from here.

This news addresses this angst: We can love—we are all we have to hold onto (money is empty without us—consider if you were the last person on earth and found an open bank vault), and in truth we are the ones we have been waiting for.

:- Doug.

Once we see our role in mutual enacting, we are free to try things: to follow our heart and our heartache, to take responsibility for what we love. This is Alice’s first adventure in Wonderland: she goes into the rabbit hole and—the fall is so long and endless she relaxes and gets bored with it: she falls past cupboards & takes out a jar of orange marmalade, then puts it back on a passing shelf.

If we are “falling” or “suspended” in groundless space, then we can try new things we care about.

We find that all that does matter is what we care about. So compassion becomes the order of the day. The news to use: we are free to embrace.

:- Doug.

Electrons spinning through space
All empty save for a quark or a gluon or two
No solid place for our feet
Nothing to hold on to

Global warming, nations overthrown all around
Wars & rumors of religions & the earth heaves up
No solid place for our feet
Nothing to hold on to

When there’s nothing to hold on to
We must hold on to one another

:- Doug.

If there is nothing to hold on to, we must hold on to each other.

:- Doug.

What if G*d were not separate from us?

:- Doug.