FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1183

The only places work gets created are between and among people. Gather some people and you can create work—even paying jobs. Stay home alone or look in the old places…and you will never find the new thing that was waiting to be created…waiting on you.

Please pass it on.

© c 2011, 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

Where in your world would conversing help? Where is there doubt, floundering, conflict, screaming, avoiding, over-politeness, dismissal? Where is there unmet need, unheard voice?

:- Doug.

Maybe, “our” ideas use us to convey them from age to age, place to place, as a burr uses a fox to carry its seed miles away, as an egg uses a hen to carry it to a new place.

:- Doug.

Just as physics is subject to observer participancy and indeterminacy, and just as consciousness is subject to unconsciousness and vice versa, so we do not have life alone, we do not have ideas alone: all those who touch us participate in our lives and ideas.

:- Doug.

I cannot just now see the big work I am
doing
only its gossamer broad outlines
changing
But today I do see these hungering to be
heard

:- Doug.

Our ideas are never our own
Every time we express, the idea is changed by the words we find
Never do we find the perfect fit words
Every time we express, someone else hears with an accent, sees through their lens on the world
And we all add to what we hear & read & write
So that what goes in is not what gets ground up & what gets ground is not what goes into the casing
Our ideas are never purely ours alone
So our task is movement, stirring, starting, adding & combining
Conversation is central & every place
You are not you, I am not me, alone
Our lives are never merely ours alone

:- Doug.

In Open Space as in life (same thing I suppose)
be a bumble bee, jump into the air and buzz around
hear around
Above all else, whatever you be, hold not back,
be not a humble bee!

:- Doug.

We must now ask, with eyes open, what is the together side—of us, of each of us, of this decision, that opinion, this creativity, that destruction?

How do we open us up to look for bigger questions? Yes, we need to consciously question and develop lists of questions, but that is only a quarter fragment of what we can do. We also need to look to our unconscious, and then engage the larger conscious and unconscious reservoirs of our tribe: those around us, those we can gather, those who care.

So one of our tasks is finding a way to open ourselves to all that could meet us. In humans, in animals, in nature, in the universe: who and what might get us to better, bigger questions, better, more profound next steps?

How do we do that? Perhaps it starts with invitation. The invitation can be question, or story, or call for help. Perhaps we gather one or a few others and in our circle find inspiration.

Why gather? To hear. To hear what each has to bear upon our question, story, need: experience, thoughtfulness, attention, imagination, musings.

Invite, gather, hear: three possible next steps.

That’s my story, my question, my call for help. What do you see, hear? How can we invent more profound questions, together?

:- Doug.

We are pulling ourselves apart; those who are our leaders are tearing us apart, and we keep voting for them! What!

Our lives are being ended. We are given no choice. Cry for our children. Cry for our grandchildren. Cry maybe even for us.

Our hope is in healing, in coming together. It is not a sure thing. It might not work. But this is the only direction in which there is life.

A few of us, those who come together, will taste life.

It is not a mantra: it is life. Healing is the way, the only way.

:- Doug.

A prophet looks at all this—
riots, screaming, separation
&
broom brigades, conversing, whole-making
—gets in our face and asks us
to tell the meaning of our age
to choose

:- Doug.

Last night a news fragment that was frightening: London police are considering a crack down on smart phone use. The riots were self organized (as were the cleanup broom brigades the next morning) via cell phones, Twitter, and the like. It points up that freedom of the press and of speech and the right to bear arms have the same roots: the right to be taken seriously, the right to communicate one’s existence and pain and dreams. There is a human right to communicate, more precisely, a human right to seek fulfillment of the human need to be heard.

:- Doug.

Hear go:
Take in what we can hear
Go out to do what we can

:- Doug.

Hear + Act = Hope

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1182

If we go there
If we take into
Our insides—that rape
This starving of children
I am the man
You are the woman
I ate too much
I bought junk only
To throw it “away”
I averted my eyes
From war’s widow’s eyes
I built a wall
To keep out peoples
Here before my own
I have not yet
Lived out my dreams
But I could have
This we have done
This rebounds back to
Us—then we find
The pain will heal
The remorse make us
Whole

Please pass it on.

© c 2011, 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

One tool of heroic communities was a new form of “community: meet!” Combine Open Space with small circles where each is asked to tell us your story, dreams and trouble—and heard till that one feels heard. The purpose is to build hope and action together.

:- Doug.

The hero’s journey is where one person brings back the boon for the community. We are now seeing that the path leads on from there, and that we are headed in the direction of becoming a true we.

There are forces which seek to pull us apart, help us to the side of the road where we too can throw stones and roll in obstacles. But these forces are to be given their due: arrest and containment of their hate, so that the community can move ahead. There will always (that is, for as far forward as I can see) be this side of us that is not met and desires not to be met. There will always be competition, separation, and vilification. These need not hold us back if we see them for what they are: the forces of destruction, the forces we need at times, but the forces that, if left to their own devices, will annihilate life.

So perhaps we enter the heroic community’s journey. Hero’s derivation means things like superhuman strength, physical courage, demi-god, defender, protector, watcher-over, great bravery, chief actor in a story. I like this last: what nuance it lends is that the heroic community is the chief actor in its own story.

So what is a prototypical heroic community’s journey? It is one faced with a need to move, which causes it to hear all voices: those of the external world putting this demand upon us; those internal to the community inviting us to make various responses; those of all of us seeking to bring wisdom and wholeness. Once we have heard the voices, we determine immediate next steps. From these twins (hearing and action) we gain hope. We take our steps and then step aside and hear again. A cycle is initiated: hear, respond, hear…. A respiration: in and out, back and forth. We are spiraling to new views, new wholeness, never complete, ever completing. Or so I envision today.

:- Doug.

Hearing brings hope.

:- Doug.

We may be nearing the end of the hero’s journey, the beginning of ours.

:- Doug.

Of what are we made? What’s between the atoms, the electrons, protons and neutrons, gluons and all the rest? Space. Vast amounts of pregnant space. Open space is what we’re made of. It will do us good to open more. It will do us good to share. Let’s open space!

:- Doug.

That we are progressing is true. Where we will arrive is far from certain. There is no arrival point given us to see. Ours is only to choose directions for the next step.

:- Doug.

What if we took it seriously?
Soul & its growth—beyond personal to world’s?
Seek you first…
How is it with your soul?
How is it with the world’s soul?

:- Doug.

I twinkle, I dance, I hug
Learned it from you

:- Doug.

I need to take more time to just be. To be present, to hear, to look at the clouds, to feel the breeze.

:- Doug.