FootprintsintheWind.com

Even the fish in the sky,
the birds in the sea,
have heard rumors of
air and water.

:- Doug.

G?d is a winking in the grass
and a theophany
How are we to meet?

:- Doug.

To my good friends–

Last night these words came to me: It’s not out there; it’s here. Seek not what you already have. Instead, meet.

I hear in them echoes of Jesus’ gospel: this is the stuff of G?d. I want to explore these more deeply. People seek for the future; they seek even apocalypse. Yet Jesus was standing on firm ground and wanted others to touch it too. This is the ground of history, of creation, of the beginning, of the stream of G?d running from the birthing to the birthing. It was already present, among us. Even closer than a parallel universe. Within the horizon he saw the now and here and over the horizon was more of G-d: more abundance, celebration, diversity. We have what we need. We have an imminent G*d. So don’t seek for “it,” meet. Head on, openly.

When we think we have things figured out, when we think we have G?d figured out, we do not have: we only have our figuring. When we meet, when we let things and others and G?d be a puzzle to us, then we have them. When we let us be a puzzle to them, even to G-d, then we are had. We live in the mystery and the open, expanding, wonder of each other.

When we leave things unsaid, when we shed the shells to allow ourselves to be a mystery to us, when we drop our pretenses and our wishes for the future, then we are had, then we are held, then we are. Real: that is what is necessary: to be real. When we live in the future or in the past we are unreal: we do not exist. When we turn our eyes and our hearts to who and what meets us, then we exist, they exist, the One exist, and real life begins. Life abundant, no thought for the morrow, of those times only the One knows, the first last and the last first: all these and much more wrapped in these. What else is there?

G?d is not out there but here. G-d seeks you as a father after a lost child: turn your face and meet, truly meet. Do you think you know your father or mother? Do you think you know yourself? You cannot know, for there is no fathom line that drops deep enough. Meet and meet again.

The problem of the hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis: the sun and the rains come upon each equally. Is G?d absent, not holding them back? There may be good to come of it, yet that is not the reason for the tragedy. They are however opportunities for us to meet, in all pain to meet. To meet our lives and life, to tear the crust off the top and find the flesh of life. To understand this mystery deeper, we are not given. We can meet.

What of evolution? Is it hubris to think we can influence it, can help choose its direction? Is it living in the future? It may be living in beginnings and birthings that are still going on, of leavings home for homecomings. Of embraces left to be met again. Of turnings to what is real. Of embraces including more. Embraces within embraces. Wider horizons. Birthings!

:- Doug.

Do I want to be known? Why would it be important? Why would it be better to just be…and consequently do what’s needed here?

:- Doug

We are to engage freely, openly, fully. No preconceptions. No holding back. No safety lines. Face to face. Truth to truth. As adults. Not as de-entrailed children. Be real. G-d wants independent beings, ones who can stand on their own 2 or 4 feet.

:- Doug.

Who has moved a continent with his tongue? Columbus. Who has moved a civilization with his tongue? Jesus. Who has moved a people with her tongue? Joan D’Arc.

:- Doug.

We live our lives in talk, fish unaware of the water. When we choose to converse, we see we change conversation and conversation changes us. We are exhilarated.

:- Doug.

What’s the difference between talk and conversation?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 610

Ask questions, tell stories, seek dialogue, touch G-d.

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

A young man was called by business into the big city and was working late. His heart kept going to his wife and 2 small children at home, wishing he were there rather than here cranking out work. A couple of hours later he felt a good tired as he turned off the lights and headed out into the night. He went down into the subway station to go to his hotel. He noticed a lot of graffiti, and several lights were out. The shadows seemed to loom. There was nobody here at this late hour, nobody he could see.

From behind, unheard, he felt a crashing on his head and all grew dark. He awoke, half choking on a warm liquid. He tried to get up but slumped back in unbelievable pain. He could not make his mouth work. He could feel his clothes were torn, he ached in every place he had a place. It took all his effort to breathe.

From under his swollen eyelid he could see one well-dressed woman come down the steps, hesitate as she walked toward him, then turn the other way. What seemed hours later, a man with a briefcase did the same.

Finally, a tall, strangely-dressed man came up to him. He seemed familiar, but the young man was too tired to try to get his brain to work. This tall man seemed to have genuine concern on his face. Then recognition hit him: this was Osama bin Laden! He tried to pull away, tried to shout “Leave me be!” but he had no strength to resist the kindness.

Osama tore some pieces from his own clothes, got some water and washed the young man’s wounds. He took some salve out of his backpack and applied it to the wounds. He gently picked him up and carried him back up the steps to a cab, gave directions that somehow did not enter into the young man’s brain, and took him to a house where there were many people dressed like Osama. People scurried about to tend to the young man. Osama left, giving orders to a young Arab-looking woman to care well for the young man, to nurse him to health.

:- Doug.

What we need to do is find a way for anybody to start conversations and find the joy in it.

:- Doug.

Alan Stewart and I have been having a wonderful conversation. He sent me this link to an interview with Theodore Zeldin, a professor at Cambridge, a professor of happiness, no less!

Here is some of what I wrote to Alan about this interview:

From the interview:

“we have got to rethink advertising too. Because the question we are asking is, is it true what people are saying to us? And we are asking that people should be honest with each other.”

and

“In the past we wanted to survive, we were talking about happiness as a form of contentment, we were talking about prosperity and now we want much more. To be rich is not enough. We want what money cannot buy.”

and

“Now people are interested in the quality of your life, not in how much money you earn. And it’s more important how you spend your money than how much you earn or what you earn.”

One of the things I keep asking myself is how to get the word out about conversation? This guy may just have a way in his way of speaking: he is talking as if what he was selling was already the predominantway of thinking in the Western world. (It probably is–people just haven’t focused on it yet.) This kind of friendly, jocular way might be one way….

“And the world is filled with amazing people.”

Yes! The stuff of reality, that! A bit of divinity here and there!

“And I find enormous satisfaction in discovering other people.”

Another way of getting conversation going! Find out what’s interesting and surprising about anyone.

His idea of curiosity is a new emphasis to me. I want to explore it more. How about you? How do you understand curiosity? Is it not the stuff of G?d in our world?

So how about his dinners for 40 idea? Would that help get conversations started? I think of his questions and of the ones suggested by Thomas Merton: What do you live for? What gets in your way of living that life?

:- Doug.

My friend, Jan Hughey, sent me this poem, which I thought you might like….

CAUSE, CHOICE, CURE

We make choices in our lives so we’re responsible;
for some things that are thrust on us, we are not liable.
Let’s look at some diseases—the kind we always face;
some may see them differently and think them a disgrace.

Consider the afflicted one who bears the malady;
there are no guarantees in life—I’m sure you can agree.
Before your judgment lowers, consider the three “C’s”:
What was done to CAUSE it, and then in what degrees?

Would this have been their CHOICE
if it were heaped upon a pile?
Many an affliction robs a person of a smile;
There are ills for which a CAUSE or CURE are yet unknown,
If you’ve not walked a mile that way,
you can’t know cause to groan.

Love and understanding
are both needed in each life,
if you’re a strong and robust one don’t add to others’ strife;
It wasn’t CAUSED nor CHOSEN, that is plain to see,
And if no CURE is for it—COMPASSION is a “C.”

C Janet Elliott Hughey

Cause Choice Cure Compassion

Jan has had Type 1 diabetes for 55 years and writes about it. She is also going through a tough time just now: her 43 year old son has been diagnosed with cancer. This poem is from her newest book, Tolerating the Sweet Life, http://maxpages.com/TSLandCLIP.

:- Doug.

The field of G-d is like this lawyer, that widow, those teenagers, because…the field of G-d is made up of these.

:- Doug.

To my good friends–

Robert W. Funk, in his book, Honest to Jesus, reports that scholars consider the theme of Jesus’ ministry to be the Kingdom of God. This term kingdom is a hard one for a current mind to get its arms around. We might think of kingdoms as archaic, or fiefdoms like the warlords of Afganistan, or benevolent irrelevancies like the Queen of England, or rich people with absolute power inside their boiundaries, but of little importance outside, like the Arab oil potentates. Living in a modern democracy it is hard to see these concepts as living.

What concepts could we use today?

One that comes to mind for me is field, used as physicists might use the term. An area of influence.

Or world: G-d’s world, universe, cosmos.

Realm gives a kind of other-worldly picture, and also reminds us of kingdom. For those reasons, I do not like it well.

Range, sphere, milieu? Home, terrain, land? Influence?

:- Doug.

I am a student at the diversity.

:- Doug.

When I say something ambiguous, I want to hear all the colliding diversities.

:- Doug.

Can you be peripatetic and still own a home?

:- Doug.

G()d, you have quickened my breath.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 609

G*d is larger than any library, any scripture, any writing.
A scripture can only be a sheep dog, nipping around the heels
of something so large it cannot see the outlines
but only catch a whiff now and again.

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

Peripatetic: walking around. The word actually seems to refer to Aristotle’s method of teaching, walking around the Lyceum, students literally following. It was perhaps Jesus’s way, too. Is it one that is valuable for itself, something a teacher or prophet today should consider?

One thing I see is that there is more to see, more to run into, more than concrete block walls and blackboards can present. Those are designed for concentration, especially upon ideas, concepts, mental constructs and frameworks. Walking around engages the eyes, the body, the ears, the nose, the skin. Walking around engages living things, inanimate things, people and ideas. Ideas flow from the engaged.

Ideas flow from the engaged.

Ideas flow from the engaged.

Engaging teaches us how to engage, here and now. Engaging teaches us about a wider world, and to always be looking for a wider outlook, a larger world.

What would be the manner of peripatetic teaching? “In the first place” made it easy for Aristotle to remember his lesson outline, attaching point A to this tree, point B to that flower on the covered walkway. It is an old memory crutch. The teacher, Rumi-like, can see what is going on in the bazaar and search that for its learning and lessons. The teacher, Jesus-like, can hear in the story of a fisherman or a widow the voice of the Father. The teacher, Gautama-like, can find a Bodhi tree to sit under. The teacher can interact with those he or she meets, assist those in need, guide others, confront some.

We live a peripatetic life style, driving all over, but still meeting people in shops (bazaars), at sporting and rock-n-roll events (lycea), in the hallways (dusty footpaths). We can still, if we look, see wild and growing things–the weeds in the sidewalks and the trees along the way and the birds and squirrels and deer who look at us, some out of the night. We can touch something larger in the starry skies and even in the grey skies. We can engage in the coffee breaks and self-organized small groups (how radical these can be!). We can have a world rich in persons and life.

We can be engaged.

Life flows from the engaged.

That is what peripatetic teaching is about. I like the rhythm of the word. Especially I like that it suggests meeting.

Life flows from engaging.

:- Doug.

A man went out into the world to meet,
wholly,
listening, hearing, touching, storytelling:
stone him for he is a threat to you.

:- Doug.

What is the shell and what the meat of this person we call Jesus?

:- Doug.