FootprintsintheWind.com

O Lord where are you?
Where am I?
It does not matter
For we are moving
Toward each other
Within each other

:- Doug.

We have a system which tends to run on its own. The system might be our life or our business, where we keep doing the same things repeatedly: Monday we go back to work, do certain tasks till the end of the work day then go home. Repeat four more days, then take a two-day break. If left alone, like a clock the system winds down. Yet we can think of new things to do to change it—talk to new people and try a new task or way to do a task. A little change makes a big change we feel. We get excited by possibilities and what is actually different. This hope of change gives body to change.

:- Doug.

We imprison our grandchildren in a world of 6-foot cells when we spread hate in our marching and screaming and refusing to meet.

:- Doug.

We ever come back to eat what we have become in our prior days—if hate, foul hate—if love, savory love.

:- Doug.

Reach out and let someone touch you.

:- Doug.

When does It have more life than Whole-making? When Whole-making becomes a head game. We need then to be reminded to embody.

:- Doug.

It’s simple. Choose life. At every step choose life. Is more life in It or Thou? Thou or Us? Us or Sacred? Sacred or Whole making? Whole making or It? At every step. Choose life.

:- Doug.

The still point beneath all turning: like the still point of neither inhaling nor exhaling, it is here where we most profoundly meet, here, the place of the glance, of being seen, of hearing and realizing we are of one flesh.

:- Doug.

As our conversing, so the world. We talk about wars or we talk about helping one another: whatever our conversing grows. Do we want beatings to continue, or babies to grow and play?

:- Doug.

Conversing is not words
Conversing is meeting
another sentient being
Conversing is the still point beneath
the still point of all turning.

:- Doug.

Conversing is serving.

:- Doug.

Worship means service. The root for the words from which we take our notion of worship means to serve God. We serve God by praising, but we also serve by hearing. “They also serve who only sit and wait.” So it is truly service, truly worship, to sit in silence in Meeting.

:- Doug.

As the conversation, so the world. Invite bigger talk.

:- Doug.

Invite conversations that change things.

:- Doug.

We need conversation of a richer quality: interweaving, creating, good, true, beautiful, simple, complex.

:- Doug.

There seems to be no instruction manual for the earth, so we are left to our own devices. Mostly we have left others to their devices.

:- Doug.

The kind of conversation we seek is of a different quality—we reach into each other, into essences beyond each other.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1059

You don’t need to get anyplace.

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

We think of depth as down, beneath our feet or in the center of our heart. But remember that we also talk of height, width and depth, and here we see depth of field as the photographers do. What might that say to us? What might depth also be?

Depth might be less inside ourselves and under our feet and more in other persons and particularly between and among.

:- Doug.

If we turn our vision around and looked where we don’t normally look, if we look forward and back and up and down and into our own eyes, what might we see?

:- Doug.

I have been thinking of generations, how as we get older we have the opportunity to see further than ever before in our lives. We can, if we look, see for seven generations: We might be able to remember our great grandmother; and we might be fortunate enough to hold or even play with our great grandchildren. Seven generations that is! What can you see in those seven generations? What is possible for those seven generations after us?

What is possible for those generations? Might they reach the times that the prophet called us to, when we would not have to tell each other “Remember the Lord” but would carry divinity in our hearts? Could we help them reach for those times?

Might they reach the end of the planet or of human civilization? Might there be wars that destroy us? Might there be diseases they cure, new diseases they die from? Might they turn from the tyranny of Dollars and What’s in it for me in time to play with their children and grandchildren? What are we doing, now and in our Wills to turn the course one way or the other?

:- Doug.

The still point of the turning world: you are, I am.

:- Doug.

A Community Disorganizer is a world re-orienter.

:- Doug.