FootprintsintheWind.com

An important step to take is to start seeing ourselves and our activities as with permeable skins, wavering, uncertain, changing boundaries.

For example, consider my friend with the “old church:” perhaps they see church as a Sunday activity filled with ritual and sermons, and Christianity as worship and beliefs, and themselves as Christians as distinct from other people. If instead they saw church as leaking into Monday and Saturday…, and the work of the church as being a flowing into the world…, and themselves as Christians as people doing the work they are able to do around themselves…, their view of their situation would become more flower-like.

So could ours if we took the same view. The world is not just flowing and changing, but it is interacting a little here, not at all there, and a lot with the people in New Orleans or Pakistan. They are causing reactions with persons here to a larger or smaller extent. All is intercourse, flooding or misting or missing others, and all are affecting others near and far. Fuzzy edges… be the wind….

The meaning of this becomes clear in the church setting: find someone to help, however you can help. You may have to ask others to help you. You may even have to ask the ones you think you are helping to help you. There is a clue here, for the ones you think you are helping may be your help. As you get busy, answers appear: sometimes they hit us in the face, sometimes they slip around the corner and we have to be alert to the disappearing shadow. Maybe they decide to help old folks; maybe they decide to start a foster grandparents program. People start coming around to help, activity increases, others hold hope and pray, and soon people are gathered, and things are done. Fuzzy edges, uncertain boundaries, permeable skins.

:- Doug.