FootprintsintheWind.com

Dey Dos writes “I smile when I go to sleep and I smile when I wake up.” That is soft, gentle, true.

What is soft, gentle, true in your life?

:- Doug.

Like the street dervish, let us give us and all people opportunity to test out our generosity. How much can we shower on others?

:- Doug.

Plants and people should flower: they should produce fruit. Why? So that the stock can grow. So that all can live well. Living well means not solely taking in, but also giving out, not only giving, but also receiving. No being can live long if it only inspires or only expires, but it must do both: respire. Do we understand this in our bones and entrails? On some level we do, even if not consciously.

:- Doug.

Where do I want to go? I want to go to what is rock bottom, what connects tribes so that things flow among them, ultimately I want them to touch spirit, not to touch it, but to do the work. So ultimately it is whole-making. Where I want to go is whole-making.

Whole-making with the tribe, with the whole of creation, with the holy. My legal practice is mainly with the tribe. Always pointing to the permeable boundaries of our tribe.

So if I keep this in mind, I can keep drilling for blood, for the life of the family. What will make your family most whole? What will fulfill this one?

This is, make no mistake, a new direction for people who come in here looking for a dump truck Will or a way to save next month’s pension check from the nursing home.

It is not as the financial planners have it: to have a long-term plan; rather it is to cultivate a tribe that plays their symphonies or invents new planets or simply makes nests well together. It is about whole-making.

What do we do as a tribe together? We encourage each person to do their biggest bestest thing in the world, among and for the tribe.

:- Doug.

Keep looking for ways to dive deeply faster. For some people, simply asking What’s behind or beneath that? will take them there. For others, there might be more circuitous routes.

:- Doug.

Are we many or one?
Or?

:- Doug.

I have met the world
& found its inhabitants friendly

:- Doug.

Do what they love for whom you love: an Estate Planning credo.

:- Doug.

Selling pieces of my life
By the hour, by the half-day
Or am I of my best giving?

:- Doug.

Li-Young Lee has a poem that says a man is made of 4 winds and 7 fires and starts to list the winds, then says maybe it is 7 winds and 10 fires and starts to list the fires, but never finishes. This calls to me because it evokes ideas from the readers without constricting the readers, allows and invites people to sail the winds of imagination…. It is like the ellipses at the end of that sentence, allowing space for something larger to be found.

:- Doug.

I trust.

:- Doug.

A living tapestry of many
colors & textures & temperatures
—touch it!—
is made richer by more
threads & yarns, not by pouring
hardening lacquer & painting
over the colors unlike ours
but it can be unraveled
by pulling one thread
In every generation
a living tapestry are we
& and living voice have we

:- Doug.

I know your hug
But every day
I escape

:- Doug.

Land of flowers & crags & streams
Flowing through the skies
Here & today we live
Land of I do not know
Opens us

:- Doug.

—Other other other—
The master work of G*d
Other generatings
Other freeings
Other welcoming homes
Other is where we are invited
The adventure is beyond where we thought

:- Doug.

Other & More
Invites us to
Other & More

:- Doug.

This gives me courage: all humans die, some voices live on. I can therefore speak out: take a deep breath, call twice at the edge of the village, then leave for another.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1176

We’ve already come this far
Despair not
Just a little ways more &
You’ll see it too
How far we’ve come
Where we are &
The road ahead undulating higher

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

To get buy-in, call people
not wrong but right
not unmoved but loving
not constricted but opening

:- Doug.

If you want to get more & better ideas, you want to get more bounce points. Each person has at least 9 bounce points, or they could not stand. A better idea is one for which someone: 1. has passion and 2. will actively take responsibility to get it into play.

:- Doug.

A mighty kindness is our God
repelling no one, inviting, hosting
a miraculous being rushing
in to help when
we are not sure of today’s beauty

:- Doug.

Does your big picture draw
a circle around mine and
include it or does mine yours?
We can tell by listening
for the stories and pictures of each &
especially the “No you can’t do thats” &
the playfulnesses

:- Doug.

You elders: What wisdom do you have for this time in our history?

:- Doug.