FootprintsintheWind.com

It takes intelligence to play, more to laugh, still more to cry.

:- Doug.

My job is to tease out the rainbow light in each I meet and invite him and her to play with us.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1027

He was at the counter waiting for his order, making a game out of chasing his 4 year old granddaughter back and forth, making faces with her. And it sent me to a place of wonder….

When people are new, little, we play with them—tickling, hiding and seeking, inventing fun things to do. Strange we do not think to do so when they are new but adult-sized. We think the little ones bright and wanting to engage with us, and our attention attractive to them….

Please pass it on.

© c 2010, 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

This war on people who are ill with drugs is getting us no where.

:- Doug.

This is about inviting people back to whole.

:- Doug.

When you are made of something
it is inside you
and larger than you
this wholeness

:- Doug.

Prophets need to get out of their house because no one will hear them from inside.

:- Doug.

G*d is at times made more visible, more pregnant, when we are less explicit. Hint. Tell stories. Give G*d room to play.

The bridge is the story, conversation, your pain heard, telling your dream, meeting.

:- Doug.

Perform on earth for the people
to see, see?
to face the I which faces us
to make beauty
to make life
For your vision loose its power
do on earth for the people to enter

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1026

& I, I took the path, thought
I, less traveled by as if
that made all the difference
but difference I learned is
not the truth, does
not exist
what exists is our
connection to the whole
each of us has this connection
& it is the part of us
most deeply real
the part we most want to
feel, live, & set free
the part that has our
peculiar weakness which is our
strength—our peculiarity
is the common road
we all long to travel by

Please pass it on.

© c 2010, 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

Life flows
only flows
& this invites
everything else

:- Doug.

Community is primary, tend here. Community is primary, open here. Community is the primary mode of G*d: G*d is love and to love we need flow, someone to love: that means community. Community then is the very essence of G*d, the very essence of the all there is. This spells meeting and conversing and moving, ever moving.

:- Doug.

Community came before persons
From the egg & the sperm
From mother & father cooing
From teacher & police officer & coaches
Turn and face us

:- Doug.

To a 12-year old girl
sitting on a stool:
How did you get here
aged beyond your years?
….
Hacking off my Tutsi legs
the right one took many blows
I screamed and screamed
one of you twelve
stuffed my panties in my mouth
duct tape over my mouth and nose
barely could I breathe
….
my arms
you threw in the weeds
I could not reach them
….
You ripped my flesh
but little thing it was
you also ripped my soul
& where it heals
it heals hard
where it was soft
& where it stays raw
it lets out my anger
so my grieving is never
touched by time
stays new each moment
and I am ever yelling
“Evil! Evil! Evil!
You were my neighbors
Is there no one to stand by me
stand and not speak
for I no longer have
fingers to cling to you
but only eyes
Evil! Evil! Evil!
Stand by me!”

:- Doug.

We grieve the loss of a life. We need to grieve the loss of our own: daily all so daily as we elect not to meet life in the streets about us.

:- Doug.

We are not alone and God is expressed in this world in part in others, and not just in the others, but in the betweens. God has to do with the touch of one heart and mind and hand on another, and even more in the reaching to touch.

:- Doug.

The strange thing is that we think it takes brains to run a big company. Even most the people who run them have fallen in that trap.

:- Doug.

Heads Hearts Hands Here

:- Doug.

Cultural traps: that’s where we are too when it comes to the death a couple days ago of the police officer and his canine partner. We have so much told ourselves that we have to get the person, that we have to chase him, that we induce higher and more dangerous speeds. If we want to catch a cat, we do not run after him, for he will only run away. Instead, we entice the cat with food, we outsmart him. Why can we not let the speeder go and block the road ahead, safely? Why can we not have an unmanned drone aircraft overhead safely piloted by a person in front of a console miles away? Why can we not find a technology that would disable a vehicle’s engine at a distance? Why do we need high speed chases? Our own thinking is to blame in these officers’ deaths shared at least to some extent with the person they were chasing.

:- Doug.

Ω 1Our task is not to create new centers, to build up larger out of smaller. Just the opposite: to intensify what is already there. The person in front of you—lost, confused, over-busy, worried, controlling, doing evil or good, victimized: in whatever state we find him or her—asks of us to intensify, intensify the life of which he or she is part and bringing into the world. When we work here, the world grows by at least the amount of the touch of our hand. It grows in the direction of unifying, gathering, meeting: it grows not in separation but in love. It intensifies what was already there and what will endure. Little pieces will always be little pieces, but the whole grows more whole.

:- Doug.

Is evil personal as G*d is? Has evil a me aspect? Yes it is something I can picture myself doing; indeed it is a capability of all humans. Has it a we aspect? Here is more question: Do we act in concert with it, or does it more possess us? Has evil an aim, does it mean me? No, it does not. Evil means you, the victim, even as it burns me with its fire. Evil therefore is not something which has personality and is not properly personified; it is something a person does, not the person’s essence. Evil is not a force with a mission. Evil is more a bent, a twisting of conduct and mind—hand and head and often heart. We should then punish the deed, lift up the person.

:- Doug.

I bow to the G*d arising up in you.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1025

Rely on people to do the good that is in them. Call attention to that good. Remind them of their hearts. Tell stories of their prodigious powers. Connect them with other hearts and hands. Repeat their stories. Use their names with others. “The queendom of G*d is within you.” “You are the salt of the earth.”

Please pass it on.

© c 2010, 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