FootprintsintheWind.com

Pain inflicted blocks gifts
Remorse digs out the deepest path to the gifts
The most whole living comes in
Giving gifts widely among
Gifts that increase the whole’s interconnections

:- Doug.

If pain serves mainly to stop our gifts, then amonging gets them flowing and flowering. Remorse serves a function of releasing stopped gifts. Giving generates; amonging flowers. Both generate: Giving generates obligation—a need to share; amonging generates opportunities. Giving and amonging are inexhaustible—the more we give among the more gifts and amongs generated. What would you most like to give the world?

:- Doug.

When we inflict (give) pain on another, it creates an obligation on us. When we receive a gift such as life, health, skills, it creates an obligation on us to share it. In the case of pain, we have blocked another’s flow and so we are also blocked. Plus gives forward obligations, Minus stops.

:- Doug.

What do I need to live? G*d nexus, friends, food, clothing, shelter, transportation. Do any of these require money?

But my mind plays tricks. It says I want this home (so I “have to” pay this mortgage, I want my own transportation (so I “have to” have my own car), I must maintain my reputation (so I “have to” pay the bills and fulfill the promises I made in a different era). And on.

What is really necessary? Back to the first question, eh?

:- Doug.

Tell us about your eldering work.

:- Doug.

Elder work is about deepening the participation of families with their elders, finding what generates life among them.

:- Doug.

Pluck the amongs. Touching one person is good, touching a few is good, but if we touch the betweens and amongs, then we are affecting what gives life among them, what activates the participation of many.

:- Doug.

Whole making is not a precise term, since we are really whole finding, whole remaking, whole remembering.

:- Doug.

We can play
play within and toward
the greater whole

:- Doug.

Chisel on stone
pain rounds us out
Seed in egg
among sends us out
No lightning, much sweat
together to wrest into existence
Divinity’s new realms

:- Doug.

The music of the guitar is not made by the sounding box nor the tuning pegs, but by the strings between. the rhythm of the drum is not made by sticks nor skins but by their touch—between. Your human voice touches my ears but makes its music in our hearts.

:- Doug.

That’s what conversation is—
Betweens, amongs, betweens, amongs
Generating larger life

:- Doug.

Between: —
Among: O

:- Doug.

Touch the world every between and among you can. Play here. Remind us we are whole.

:- Doug.

Our bigger effects are not on people or things; rather on what happens between and among them. Why was Joe angry with you? Perhaps for a complex of 102 interactions from Joe’s day. Interactions and interrelationships carry power as well as numbers: you touch 200 other people, but you also touch the second and third relations of the relations of them. A touch on one thread quivers all. Look here. Hear here. Make whole.

:- Doug.

Whole making tells us who we are and gets us on the road to generating our essence into the world. We dig into the wounds, we cry out. We hear our cry and in it our essence. Our essence leads us out into the world to make it in the image of the good we have seen living in us.

:- Doug.

There is something here that needs to be heard, said, that won’t yet let me go. It is a matter of whole-making: pain is the whole part; hearing is the making.

:- Doug.

We are
By pain completed
By being heard generated

We are ourselves
By owned pain completing
By hearing generating

:- Doug.

What we want is not a series of to dos that keep our noses to the grindstones, but a picture of how our lives fulfill a higher purpose, complete a larger role in the world. Goals satisfy the first need—save up so much money, buy a certain “level” of house. So they serve to make us voluntarily pay tribute to our corporate masters and keep us chained. Yet are we machines or living beings? Are we born to be servants or do we come from divine stock?

:- Doug.

When I have pained thee
It pains me double
From here we each become whole
Able by our conversation
To hear our way to generation

:- Doug.

There is something that needs to be heard
by the world
There is something that needs to be heard
by me

:- Doug.

Hands come together
Healing their separation
Fingers intertwining, reaching out
Searing pain makes us whole
Hearing plans gives us futures

:- Doug.

The broken part makes us whole
We go out from hear growing us

:- Doug.