FootprintsintheWind.com

We were not put in
this world to
gaze up and out of it but
to get some work done
in it.

We were not put with
these people to
gaze up and away from them but
to engage
them.

:- Doug.

G-d is
real being
speaking to
me.

:-Doug.

The essential thing is that we engage.To engage is to love.

:-Doug.

I must confess to you that I am at a loss to describe to you this meeting. We come to it and meet in a way that shares more of us than we ever planned to share, and it makes us whole; it reveals our beauty–individually and as a community. It causes us to go out and do something we thought larger than us, beyond our reach, but there it is, being done. And when we come away, we come away changed profoundly and surely, and yet we are unable to put in words in what way nor prescribe a way for others to get there.

:- Doug.

How old and
closer to death
are you
that your eyes are dull
and you no longer see
the eyes you can brighten
the skin you can touch
the newness you
can bring to hearts?
Speaking with you is like
speaking with bricks.
Come, bring life to
another; you will
get it for yourself.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 603

I speak in poetic, metaphoric language, and maybe you are not there where you can hear it: but hear this: life is not a straight line, our G-d is not a straight line, but bubbles up, emerges where we least expect and at the most opportune times. G-d needs us as much as we need him: we for our existence; he for our facets, our nuances, our very crookedness. It is not a matter of acting upon one another, but of being with each other, acting in each other, creating an unknown us from known elements. Reality is not separating but togethering.

Please pass it on.

© c 2005, 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

Martin Buber says on page 120 of I and Thou that the way is a spiral, that each turn brings us more binding to fate and more opening to Thou. Every turn is closer to perversion and to the Kingdom “there between us.” The Thou is not an intermittent flashing, but the rising of a soft and gentle moonlight that covers and lightens all.

I like that “there between us.” That perhaps is the foundational expression of the Tao of Conversation. For it is in the between that we live, and that between is Spirit. Spirit is probably much more than this in between but we cannot see it nor touch it in this lifetime, for we are addressed. In this addressing we are. It is so bright and so loudly silent that we can see nothing else. It is the water in which we swim, the air in which we breathe, the ground on which we walk out our lives, the aeon in which we are born and die. This there between us is how we are addressed. That is the space of conversation, the time of it, indeed beyond time and space, for we are simply there as I AM THERE is there, between us, facing us, addressing us as Thou to Thou. Life means you; life means us. It is clear if you have understanding.

It is not a matter of finding the words, for words can get in the way, but of finding the person and the between. Sometimes we cannot get on the path between, sometimes the person or we ourselves puts up or put up shields, masks, walls. Do we crash through or turn away? There is a choice on each side, and sometimes love says Crash.

This then is love: to engage: to seek the path and the person.

:- Doug.