We need to get people conversing
We need to get people conversing
For that is how we progress
But it is something much larger than progress
It is the spread and advancement of life
–in the wild,
engaged.
:- Doug.
Archive for September, 2005
Who is the most wild…?
Who is the most wild,
untamed,
feral one?
G-d is
and G-d addresses
you.
:-Doug.
The light which rises over them all
Some conversation is chit-chat;
some is real to real
–but the light which rises over them all
is Thou.
:- Doug.
Experts
Experts are collecting the wisdom from many situations and people. They then digest, organize, and find the meaning of it. They separate us from the sources and the meaning and the fire.
:- Doug.
No difference, no distinction
We are created each moment
and exploded out in all directions,
flung out to the center from the center
to embrace more and more!
You are the center;
you are the start and the finish
…and the trajectory as well.
Our task is to embrace, to shade, to nurture, to reach out, to invite, to welcome, to open, to attend, to receive, to offer, to accompany, to witness, to call into being,
to embrace, embrace, embrace,
to engrace, engrace, engrace.
Our task is also to be embraced, shaded, nurtured and all the rest.
There is no difference, no distinction.
We are immersed in love
we are to extend love.
:- Doug.
We were not
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.
But there it is
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 closer to death are you?
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
Footprints in the Windsm # 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
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
There between us
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.
When we are lost
When we are lost we increase the number and quality of unexpected insights.
:- Doug.
Thus and otherwise
The world is ever
Thus and otherwise
Always more than we see
G-d is ever
Thus and otherwise
Always more than we see
Let us keep exploring.
Livening
If your soul is deadened, mine is too. What does it profit you to have money in the bank and no life in your soul? If your soul is livened, mine is too. Choose life. For all.
:-Doug.
Footprints in the Wind sm # 602
Footprints in the Windsm # 602
You can never dip your cup into the same person twice.
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
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
Togethering
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.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.
:- Doug.
The necessity of being lost
There are at least two things that make conversation special from everyday chit-chat: first, it is conversation at the level of no shells nor shields, vulnerable, open, presence, essence to essence, truth to truth, exploring, not trying to protect one’s position or persona, so that real work gets done, people and situations and worlds are changed; second, a sense of the possible emerges and grows, things look new.
Another way of saying the first is perhaps the conversations that matter of Juanita Brown and The World Cafe. It is a good phrase and worthy of promotion. It does seed the thought, but does not get to the profundity of it. What is the notion, then? I want to get beyond truth to truth, essence to essence. I have written about lostness and mystery, vulnerability and openness, connection and relation. What are its hallmarks? Searching our depths. Working. Sharing our questionings. Exploring. Not knowing. Open to whatever shows up. Comfortable with being uncomfortable. Emergence. Turning. Metanoia. Indra’s Web. Surprise. Persons flashing in and out of existence. Bursting through past thinking and history to what might be. Examining from as many angles as we can think of. All this around questions that matter, and then that goes almost without saying, for we do not experience lostness, mystery, openness, connection, turning and bursting through in nonsense. We must engage, and so that is what this matter speaks to.
This then is the answer to “news to use:” it is news that matters, something that you do not use, but which meets you. News that meets, that confronts, that holds you in its presence, with its gaze that is from G-d.
Matters then is Meets? Perhaps.
Lostness is central. With it, we can see what is really there, not what we presumed was there, or guessed, or hoped. Especially, with lostness we can meet: each other, and the eternal Thou in which all lines of relation meet.
We will openness and vulnerability; we are graced with surprise and presence and meeting.
:- Doug.
