Archive for February, 2007

Footprints in the Wind sm # 744

Footprints in the Windsm # 744

People have capacities to think and to dream. If we throw away even one, how impoverished we are! If we put to work even one more, how rich we grow!


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Published in: FootprintsintheWind/sm | on February 28th, 2007 | No Comments »

Guilt be banned

We should not ask Jesus to save us from our sins. We are going to sin no matter what, and to ask that we be without sin is wishful thinking with no basis in reality. Instead what we are after is to be saved from our guilt. We need to move on, to do what we can and not get stuck in either our own bad feeling about our selves or treating others as if they are their sins. Guilt be banned.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 28th, 2007 | No Comments »

Goals = rigidity

Goals risk putting value on the wrong item, or in the wrong amounts. Goals produce rigidity.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 28th, 2007 | No Comments »

Improve?

What could we improve?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 25th, 2007 | No Comments »

Politics as usual

The trouble with politics as usual (and therefore much of our common conception of debate and public intercourse) is that it derives in dualistic thinking: us vs them. Machiavelli is alive and well; so is competition. When we move beyond, then more is possible. This is the role of conversation: to move us beyond seeing others as other.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 25th, 2007 | No Comments »

We need both

We need both to find the beauty and the best “How”–both right and left brains—to truly meet.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 25th, 2007 | No Comments »

To whom do we yield?

When we yield, to whom do we yield? Not so much to the other but to the in between, the one who arises in the center. This is the fear of conversation: that we yield, we are not in control, someone else might change us without our input. But our input is always there, potential or actual as we choose.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 24th, 2007 | No Comments »

G*d is yielding

If G*d is dynamic, then G*d is yielding to us as we yield to G*d. Hence the dry skin on the dewy field, saving the city if only 100 or 10 or 1 are found, the nevertheless prayer.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 24th, 2007 | No Comments »

The I-It I-You spiral

Perhaps we do not live on an I-It to I-Thou continuum, rather a circle or a spiral, and we travel through these ways of standing with the world hour by hour, sometimes in the It side, other times in the You world, and many times in between.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 24th, 2007 | No Comments »

What could it mean?

What could it mean that conversation is dynamic?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 24th, 2007 | No Comments »

Footprints in the Wind sm # 743

Footprints in the Windsm # 743

Let’s see if we can get stuck. In stuckness we find something new.


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© c 2007, 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

Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com

Published in: FootprintsintheWind/sm | on February 24th, 2007 | No Comments »

Becoming larger

We think we are delimited by other persons around us: my rights end where your nose begins. In actuality we are extended by those around us when we meet. We become larger as we allow others in.

At least as much as we shrink. It might depend upon the character of the meeting: if we meet with negative intent (this might be I-It), then we shrink; if with I-You, then we have the capacity to expand. And if we meet with G*d we surely expand.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 23rd, 2007 | No Comments »

The best

The best conversations can be just being with.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 22nd, 2007 | No Comments »

Footprints in the Wind sm # 742

Footprints in the Windsm # 742

Life seeks to interhere. When life meets life it does not take in like a machine. Rather, it meets, it eats, it encompasses, it seeks to unite with. Children in schools are not funnels to receive what the teacher pours over them; rather, they seek to learn, to take in and make their own, to use and become a part of the new, to absorb and comprehend and internalize and assimilate what they have heard. It is an organic process, not mechanical. Life wants to weave itself to all it sees, touches, hears. This intertwining, this one-making is in fact what theologians and philosophers call love.


Please pass it on.

© c 2007, 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

Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com

Published in: FootprintsintheWind/sm | on February 21st, 2007 | No Comments »

What conversations could happen?

Ask not only What conversations need to happen, but What conversations could happen? What conversations would be good to happen? Conversation could break out here.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 21st, 2007 | No Comments »

Seeds

Question seeds; story seeds: plant.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 19th, 2007 | No Comments »

Thinking solo, thinking in groups

Reading in Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I came across a long conversation he has with people he is staying with, after a dinner party. I find myself wondering when I have ever had such a conversation where we go really deep into a subject. Perhaps in college once or twice (but I did not feel part of the conversations, usually) and once or twice with Michael Herman in the evenings of some open space events. It occurred to me that most conversations do not go as deep as even the writing I am doing on these pages, let alone the depth of a Buber book or Pirsig. Pirsig raises the question in his soliloquy of getting to the roots of logic, rather than its branches, to create whole new ways of thinking. It occurred to me then that conversation is that root: we can evolve new ways of thinking, to say nothing of new kinds of people. So going a step further, I saw that we have need of both kinds of thinking: solo and together. The together kind grafts the ideas together that they might bear fruit; the solo kind allows us to go deeper and have some real meat and nourishment to the ideas; then we go together again to help us bridge the gaps and cross the chasms and obstacles on the way. It is a kind of respiration, perhaps. Thinking solo we can go deep and wide; small groups can help us go wider (but often not as deeply) and also focus the ideas to the realm of working together—what is possible, practical, exciting; large groups can help us transfer the excitement and see bigger pictures.

Is this all there is to be said of the matter? For one thing, we need not then worry so much that conversation does not go deep. It will go more deeply, it will connect more, if we open ourselves to that possibility, if we speak what is on our hearts and minds. We need to see it for what it offers and work within that: connecting people and ideas; bridging gaps and obstacles; viral activity.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 18th, 2007 | No Comments »

An emergenary tool

There is a purpose to conversation and that is evolution. What is evolution about? To get to the third side. To grow. To become better. To become more inclusive. To see what we can do and whom we can be.

I do not see how to break it down any more finely than that. It could be put more eloquently.

This really is what it is about for me, it seems this morning: to see what good we can do, to see whom we can be. Conversation is the evolutionary, emerginary tool. It is perhaps the only tool we have, this meeting. We live in an emerging world.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 18th, 2007 | No Comments »

When you and I converse….

When you and I converse….

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 18th, 2007 | No Comments »

The more we get people together…

The more we get people together, the more we see, the more we do. We meet, we see, we do, we evolve.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 18th, 2007 | No Comments »

Loose connectings, looking laterally…

Loose connectings, looking laterally, fuzzy logic, common endeavor: what do we have? We have creating, changing, emerging, transforming, evolving: conscious evolution.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 17th, 2007 | No Comments »

Reducing the time and increasing the solutions

The number of possible solutions—loosenings—that any group can produce is infinite. The number an individual can produce is less, but still infinite, given ample time. The group reduces the time and expands the number of solutions. The group increases the likelihood that action will arise from the solutions produced.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 17th, 2007 | No Comments »

Working with a friend

Approach others not as if fighting against the system and its perpetrators, but as working with a friend to find the way.

Enlist the others in the evolution.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 17th, 2007 | No Comments »
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