FootprintsintheWind.com

Whom can I meet today?

:- Doug.

Is conversation important to your family? What conversation would be especially important?

:- Doug.

We engage the world as It or Thou or Us or with Poetry or Whole-making; the realm of conversation begins in the later fields of Thou and becomes strongest in Whole-making.

:- Doug.

Every conversation is whole-making.

:- Doug.

I may be that sycamore one of the two tallest trees you can see from your window the other, my brother tulip tree the first year you were here you almost cut me down you with your new chain saw until you saw my leaves appear later than all the other trees my leaves as large as my brother tulip’s in the land of the Wabash in the land of the sagamore in your window frame I stand and my roots drink the same water as yours

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1196

Our society is in crisis and here we are pulling apart—as if there were only one direction to go from here. The fact is our society is large enough to hold many people, many ideas, many directions. We need to find a way—make a way—to weave.

Please pass it on.

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We’re not completely whole
until in us there is something
broken
Might the same be true in
our families,
our society?

:- Doug.

Exactly at the very heart of brokenness
is wholeness

:- Doug.

Dead! Just like that!
Your heart is ripped in two
this wound never heals
somehow from your dwindling blood
comes a larger completeness of you
compassion for others in varied pains
from brokenness, wholeness

:- Doug.

Poetry is making
Making of core
Making of core of the world
Making of something larger
At the heart of all
Making of a beat
Making of happenings & meanings a rhyming
Making worlds
& new realities

:- Doug.

If you’re about non-violence, where are you on the question of CPR?

:- Doug.

Chief Seattle is said to have said that the love of his people actually became the sky, the grass, the surroundings. What if love has become the people, the fish, the birds over our heads? We love money and we’re surrounded by money—or the mention of it, or the wringing of hands over the lack of it. We do not see the people, the sky, the grass, our surroundings. What does that say of our love?

:- Doug.

Life is not about being good, meeting some collection of moral rules for what good folks do, but solely about caring for one another.

:- Doug.

Inviting are you, freeing are you, calling home are you: your can-play-dom be opened wide, your dream be dreamed among us. Give us for today food of life and light; give us debt-free tomorrows; and give us whole-making encounters for one another.

:- Doug.

I am fed, but do I feed?
I am in the community
and of the community,
but do I engage with?
Deeply?

:- Doug.

It’s an emergency: A nursing home administrator calls. The husband of a resident is demanding to take his wife home. The problem is that she needs 24-hour supervision because of her dementia. The problem is that the husband is soon to be disabled by major surgery, and is perhaps beside himself.

Here is an opportunity for a business (the nursing home)to do a good thing: The wife’s health is put at risk if she goes home to her husband. They can choose to ignore the new POA she signed when she had no idea what she was signing. They can choose the high road, the human road: to protect her.

It is a gut-wrenching decision for the nursing home: why get into the middle of a family feud? I do not know how they will go.

It does not have to be confrontation: What if the nursing home had someone invite him to talk about what he most deeply wants? His wife always cared for him in past illnesses and now he is facing disability: surely she will come home and tend his wounds. Only she cannot. Maybe his needs could be met in some other way. Conversation is almost always a good option.

:- Doug.

Only the tree toughened by the winter’s ravages is ready for the spring’s lightning, the wind’s tearing.

:- Doug.

Poetry is not words so much as sound and rhythm and utterance from essence, deep speaking to its own kind.

:- Doug.

Where does God play?
The playground, how large?
The monkey bars, how much fun?

:- Doug.

No one should be hurt. Non-violence is non-hurting. Or at least working toward non-hurting. And at greatest working toward nurturing.

:- Doug.

Together we are more than we are.

:- Doug.

Wonder is part of our way.

:- Doug.

Story is how we stitch people together.

:- Doug.