FootprintsintheWind.com

If we are to become conscious of our representations we can choose metaphors less and similes more. Then we at least become true to our insights and less final. Not so much God is, rather God is like…to me.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1376

A journey we make together
Dad is dying
The dialysis is not doing any good
Dad is fighting dying but getting tired
Mom and daughter try to ask “the question”
Maybe we can get the doctor
To start the conversation with Dad
And son John is so
Torn to pieces he can’t visit Dad
and son Mark says “Oh, Dad,
You’ll beat this and be stronger than ever”
Somehow this is
A journey we make together

Please pass it on.

© c 2013, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/341-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

If God is not to be an image we need to love one another, stranger, foe, friend, family. In this way we draw close to God.

:- Doug.

There is a movement these days toward pushing God far above and far away with a transcending praise. This is often also a pride-full We’re on the home team.

I wonder if these pastors and preachers in the praise churches are conscious of the ego and pride into which they are inviting people?

Still, there is the pull to intimate immanence, even in those churches. Let God into your life, get to know Jesus they preach and I suspect believe.

So, to move beyond this. How do I see God as transcendent? Buber was true to his Hebrew roots by conceiving God who is over against, in whose face we stand, and this God stands in ours: this comes from the no images commandment. Since I have been working on no images, I find that I less often pray as such but I do speak with you as friend. Yet that too is image. You are all about, in everything. The Hebrew I think may have seen God as unspeakable (tetragrammaton), yet surely other and apart (Moses covering his face after meeting face to face; the robe alone filling the temple).

:- Doug.

What do I want to hear, see, feel when I’m dying?

:- Doug.

Push-you pull-me is the relationship we have with God. We want to worship a God who is far and above us (push-you), but no matter how much praise and adoration we push ourselves to bestow, we have a deep-set need to come close with God (pull-me). The Priestly and the Elohist are with us still, and still at odds. But do they have to be?

:- Doug.

To participate is to impart as well as to take a division or portion.

:- Doug.

Conversation is a sharing of a deeper part of our selves. If we share and another will not receive us, we experience loss, even rejection of our very being. This is why we have such need to be heard.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1375

The problem is not that the work is meaningless but that the worker is: the worker has not worked on the meaning. The worker is left without a meaning to grab onto.

Please pass it on.

© c 2013, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/341-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

It is hard for me to stay away from the oceanic, the philosophical, the participation!

:- Doug.

Opening space is a comfortable thing for the group members as much as for me as facilitator. For one, each has an opportunity meet the deep need to be heard—and about something important to her or him.

:- Doug.

What age do I want to attain? Why? Moments ago I thought “a younger age” and realized the reason was to go while I still had my vigor of mind. Then I asked again why—why that was important: couldn’t I also show others a way to explore the territories that come to me thoughtfully, whole-heartedly, with love?

:- Doug.

Last night I looked out and saw a car drive past, chasing a pool of light down the road.

:- Doug.

Open space is invitation to shared work.

:- Doug.

In this life we participate in each other. The way we participate is conversation.

:- Doug.

We are the heirs of the scientific revolution. In that we are also its prisoners. We are set free on a campus with high walls and closed gates.

:- Doug.

What longevity dividend are you going to offer as a return for your 20 more years?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1374

We meet, and then we share. Or perhaps sharing is what meeting is. What and whom do we share? Ourselves, or aspects of our selves. As well we discover and even create aspects of ourselves. These aspects become for the moment our selves whole, and yet are not all of us. We are large, we encompass universes. What and whom do we share—other than this very question?

Please pass it on.

© c 2013, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/341-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

This is a gathering of great need, muscle, imagination, energy, money, relating, time, experience, wisdom, desire, altruism: resources all.

:- Doug.

Do you want to be present for your own death?

:- Doug.

How much burden should one person bear? That is the question asked by meeting and conversation and opening space.

:- Doug.

What are the obligations to our society of those who are aging well?

:- Doug.

Focus, focus, who’s got the focus
of our conversations?
This is key, this is key
to our work, our meeting
our loving

:- Doug.