FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 604

Osama bin Laden is alive and well and living in Los Angeles. He works in a government munitions plant and shares a condo with Elvis.

Please pass it on.

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To my good friends–

This morning a glimpse that my work is a conversation. It is intercourse between my client and I and other parties involved. It is my living and working in flow and Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow is in fact conversation. It is entering into a place between, a broad river less than a narrow ridge, yet the persons are brought in and brought forth, and it is a grace. It is love at work, dynamics, relationship, meeting, being met, being consumed, sacrifice, dying and being brought forth–and in all this I am describing conversation. So I can be in conversation without words, or even when I am malleating words. It is not just the intention with which I approach the work, but entering in, being vulnerable, being met by the other. This is like Buber’s teacher, intending both sides, entering into each side, engaging both sides.

Do we allow ourselves to be engaged? It is a mutual thing to be sure, for both have to break through the shell of fear surrounding our vulnerability to being met. If they do manage this, or are cracked open from outside and something of them leaks out into the space in between, then conversation is possible, and this is a grace. Yet it still has to happen, this meeting, and that too is a grace. We can open the space for it, prepare the opening, invite the guests–and no one shows up. We need to remember that we can meet in chemistry that is dissonant–explodes, as well as that which is consonant–flows together or foams and spills over. Either one is a grace, and in each we are forced to grow, to take in nutrients, to give up some of our very identity in order that we might become new. We may welcome the new or be drowned by it, and still it is a grace. All about are beings seeking conversation, this too is a grace. If we seek, we can invite. If conversation is necessary, then we can invite, encourage, announce, open, welcome, seek, and then wait for the grace.

The next question might just be How: How do we move from standing in each other’s orbit to engagement? How do we reach out? Let me count the ways…? Likely the ways are endless. How do we meet you? True: endless. What is important is the reaching forth of the hand.

:- Doug.

This turning is not easy. It takes work and sweat and thought and spirit. There is no How, only Do.

:- Doug.

We must float. We must allow G-d. We must allow life. Flow will happen if we allow, or if we do not, but easier, further, if we do. We must float and paddle with the flow.

:- Doug.

Your sky is deep blue, inviting me to explore. I turn.

:- Doug.

Let me tell you the stories
of my life and truth
in your hearing you will grow
me
and you.
Speak your heart to me
so we may together grow,
be

:- Doug.

Some of my writings have been
for others; in them I have
been grown: the giver receives
a new soul and sometimes a new
spirit from giving up his old,
yet usually unawares

:- Doug.

Conversation does not require words
many a conversation consists in work
done for another
we get lost in the flow
of giving and receiving:
read this again for
there are many gifts few words

:- Doug.

Knock, knock!
“Who’s there?”
“Are you born again?”
“Yes, a couple of times today so far.
And you?”

:- Doug.

You do not live until you take into your
gut that these people are
real, not just
like you, but they are necessary to
complete you, and you are necessary to
complete them; and yet this is not sufficient,
for you will always be completing.

:- Doug.

There is a stage of faith beyond becoming one: faith is lived out. James’s works are not opposed to Paul’s justification by faith alone, but rather are the next step. Here faith comes alive. Faith has us. We must serve.

:- Doug.

Let us become a conversation
so our selves will become
yes, we will each be birthed
and yet this entity called
us will be birthed
to in turn give birth to each
we get there by turning toward one another
still that falls short
there is a hand that reaches for ours
in the dark just before dawn
in that meeting we can become a conversation
and become by a conversation.

:- Doug.

We don’t have, we become, conversations. This may be the answer to grace and ivitation: we don’t and can’t own conversations: we can only be in them, become in them.

:- Doug.