FootprintsintheWind.com

Read no more this evening: it might get in the way of your thinking progressing.

:- Doug.

People come alive!

:- Doug.

Where is the life in this? Is what is happening increasing or decreasing life?

:- Doug.

I don’t generally work from goals. I work from principles. Bigger things.

:- Doug.

When was the last time you saw people come alive? This is what matters.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 969

Touch: a mini embrace

Please pass it on.

© c 2009, 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

Humanity is either rising or falling—there is no balancing in place. There is no standing all day on one toe. There is an up that continues up, and it is called humanity. But it is not sure unless you accept the invitation, unless you start inviting.

:- Doug.

We cannot live all our lives in intensity, but we can stretch ourselves more, and we can have more life.

:- Doug.

Which has more life—a question or a story? A joke or an explanation? A sneeze or blowing your nose? A crying jag or reciting a memorized passage? A power point presentation or a mother scolding her child after a scare? Rank them from most to least living.

:- Doug.

It is harder for some people than others to accept that whatever emerges is the onliest thing, the one that meets us. Whatever happens is whatever happens.

:- Doug.

How slow can you go?

:- Doug.

Life emerges from the proximity, intensity and leaning in from other life in the space-wholeness.

:- Doug.

Helping and intention are two separate things. You can do one without the other. Together is not necessarily better.

:- Doug.

We are in a society that seeks publicity, being known. What if we seek other?

:- Doug.

When we are gathered for a meeting, that is a whole. When another few join us, our whole got larger. When we are in a gathered meeting, that is another quality of whole.

:- Doug.

When our world grows, we grow. When we grow our world, we grow.

:- Doug.

What if we’re not connected to but affected by the whole? If we no longer need to picture a wire between us…what possibilities does that open to us?

:- Doug.

I may not be able to change the world much
But I can change life
Whatever living I add
Adds to, multiplies, transforms life:
There is but one life

:- Doug.

There are different ways to be near each other: to harm; to help; to ignore; to ask what they need; to offer what we think they need; to tell them what they need; to witness; to touch; to stand by. But since we are near, inevitably our life is adding to theirs, theirs to ours, so we best choose our way.

:- Doug.

In human space we see people “come alive” when they are working together. This seems so simple, like child’s play. But it is not. It is profound, and nearly invisible. To get people to work together, get people together working. Working on what they love.

The group becomes cohesive, coherent: a single organism, bigger than the sum of its parts, with new qualities. A clock is more than a collection of springs and gears. Yet what happens in humans, and maybe all of space, is of another quality beyond this: it is not a product of organizing done by an outside agent (in the case of the clock, a brain); each individual is made larger, has more living aspects, and each of these intensifies the other organisms it is part of and touches.

:- Doug.

If a body, which has some gravity, is between the earth and the moon, where it tends to go depends upon its proximity to the two bodies. If it is closer to the moon, the moon’s gravity attracts it there. Its gravity does not change the moon’s gravity field, except perhaps in an additive way, by adding its weight to the moon’s. But in the case of two fields of life, centers, both glow more brightly when they are near each other and helping one another.

:- Doug.

A poetic lawyer
Asks you
Where’s the poetry
In your life?

:- Doug.

I want to
Progress
To read the next chapter
But this last is
So lively
Within me
Firing off new ideas
New mes
That reading new chapters
Would impede my progress

:- Doug.