FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2104

Talk with your children. Talk with your grandchildren. Invite them to hear one another. We may have only this one chance where there is an entire generation of grandmas and grandpas to invite those who come next.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2103

Tell a story so we wouldn’t be so scared in the dark.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2102

One sure stroke
hammer to bell
a clear note
lasting
my ears tease out
tones beyond number
today I choose to follow
this one
and its mysteries
getting clearer
never clear
for what would be
the fun?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2101

Host a poetry party—finish each other’s verse—with something that makes it more wonderful.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2100

The very leaning in of this work is to produce surprises.

Staring
into deep waters
accustoming
eyes to shadow light
there!
a fish flashes
turns and is
gone
was it ever
there?
dogsplash!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2099

Kind Deed
I grant to you the power and authority to do today for someone of your choosing, by surprise, a kind deed. Expires January 6, 2022.
:- Doug.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2098

Begin wider
the circle
nudge out

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2097

I am about rainbows, butterflies, and hot chocolate.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2096

We think we are particles
We are also waves
Waves of people flowing down highways
Flowing, surging, ebbing through life
Waves of humanity through history
Flowing to new places, new times
Waves of family flowing together
Meeting, meeting, meeting
Young mother and babe
Old one helping young learn
Going out here, out there
Coming back, finding friends
Finding we are who we are together
Together again
Waves have us together
Drops in the seas
Seas full of power
Seas full of life
Waves full of power
Waves full of stillness
Waves full of life
Alone is true
Together is more whole
We thought we were particles
We found we are also waves

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2095

My credo (which for me means “I give my heart to”) is in questions: What questions will most intensify life? What story can we write? Who needs our touch? What most deeply matters? Who helps? Who wants to become more whole? Who are we when we peel away all the layers? How do we touch the one? To what will we give our hearts?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2094

You, ancient of days
hold something of worth
for those who will come behind you
for those who labor beside you

You, ancient of years
don’t know what you hold
I don’t know what you hold

You, ancient of nows
must find what you hold
of worth
of worth to us
of worth to all of us living
Of worth to all of us who will live

You, ancient of thens
must invent what you hold
must invent your worth
must invent the worth of all of us living
and who will live
and who ever lived
human or beast or plant or fungal

You, ancient of theres
you know long ago to invent
meant
to find
as well as create

You, ancient of heres
invent what you hold
invent worth
invent life

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2093

At my funeral, I do not want, or think I do not want, pictures of me from graduation, wedding, birthday parties. How could we ever get a picture of me at my client conferences, or fishing with my father in law, or fighting with my wife, or especially at critical junctures of my life: when I got fired; when I had my dream the night Mom and Dad died; when I got sent to watch Johnny Carson instead of being in the delivery room when my first son was born; when I made critical decisions about my life course in the high school gym and in the lobby of a hotel in Portland, OR some fifty years later. Perhaps I should have my years of journals for people to dig into. What would show your life and quandaries and themes?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2092

Be altared by what you hear.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2091

Is it invariably so that major new thinking tracks appear all at once and with force and maybe fully formed, or might they sneak up on us like a field of fireflies as the colors of the day take their leave and we discover again the wonders of the dusk’s sky?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2090

Conversation invites reaching out
Though your hand may get
Slapped or bitten

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2089

Curious is related to cure which is about care, concern, and trouble. Yes we trouble ourselves to become curious and our very curiosity troubles us with new things found. Its own roots are also in meanings of subtle, sophisticated, eager, requiring art. Do you still want to be curious?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2088

We are here to nibble on the ear lobe of the beast. The beast is a question: Can our grandchildren mean anything to us? What can we do about humanity? This is the question we whisper into one another’s ear.

What makes this work urgent? Now we have a generation which can appreciate the long ranges and the rhythms across ages, and think about doing better. It may be only one generation has this opportunity—we are the extra generation. So do we have a responsibility?

What makes this work intriguing? It offers our species a way to its fulfilling purpose. We might have a lasting influence for good. This work is impossible to complete. This work demands of us more than we can give.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2087

What beautiful thing are you this minute most afraid to say?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2086

The course of my life, I am thinking today, will be a study in conversations: wonderful to terror-filled, and all between. What makes a conversation that makes your life? If we discover this, we can lean into conversing across the centuries, and across our dinner tables.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2085

Plants in the garden—you, I, all of us. We do not stand out, we see how the others please. Together, then, the garden pulses, weeps. This is different from what in our hard-charging days we thought we were about. Our duty is to help others notice the precious life that happens in our vicinity.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2084

Start conversations in the parts in the worst condition, not the best. Here you can bring the most life.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2083

Listening to Krista Tippett’s On Being podcast on the way, especially back, something touched me, deeply, reminded me. Re-minded. Re-hearted. About the life and death conversations I have hosted. What have you just read, heard? Felt? How have you been touched? This is my Why—to touch this deepest spot-moment in the human, the place where we meet. Here we can meet across centuries, millennia. This person she is interviewing, Bryan Doerries, produces Greek plays, tragedies. And this points to a deeper impossible work: Presenting life and life choices (do you just live-exist, or do you live-alive?); presenting death and death choices (we will die, but to what first?). That’s a stark choice. With depth. A Why with a bite. This is a happy search: for the selfless, timeless place-moment where lives meet and entangle.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2082

Tell me about your father.

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