FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 619

In the face of death
it is right we should be mindful of our own death
and in the face of new life
it is right we should be mindful of our own life
to the end
that we might bring life and death
to all our days.

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

You are the G-d with us: panentheos, Emmanuel. All things work together for good. You are the one in whom we live and move and have our being. You intervene not; rather you are here all along. We do not and cannot know all about you: we revel or at least are satisfied to muddle through, to not know.

:- Doug.

To my good friends–

We need to take responsibility for what we love. We need to work purposely and with commitment toward bringing that into being and prevalence. What is that? For me, it is working for an evolution of our species toward more conversation, more opening, more compassion, more justice. More of the stuff of G-d.

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

It occurred to me as I was reading a historian who wrote that we do not know what people thought 2000 or more years ago, that people 50 years from not might say the same thing about us, despite our many words and writings. What if they learn better ways to communicate, to think in depth, to carry their effect into the future? What might those ways be? Perhaps they are about direct contact: heart to heart. This might put a premium on the visual and kinesthetic: drawing and painting and dance. That might mean that MTV is the precursor of a more skilled critical thinking population. The MTV generation might be learning and teaching us how to think (or whatever we humans need to do) more deeply, more truly.

That raises the question: just what is important? What should we be communicating, especially to and for those who “read” our history?

:- Doug.

Is there a better way to
communicate
to be with G-d?

:- Doug.

Words get in our way, perhaps
especially written words
it is difficult for us to know how
ancient peoples thought
about how far away was the sun, the planets,
G-d
fifty years from now, will people
express in their new ways
the same frustration with being
unable to know how we thought
–we ancients–
because our words kept us from
thinking, being, touching
our selves,
each other,
them?

:- Doug.

Happiness is found not by seeking it for yourself, rather in seeking it for another, and better, for many.

:- Doug.

It’s not what goes into a person but what comes out that leads to wisdom.

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

What does it mean to have no permanent resting place? it means to be ever on the move. It is movement. Energy. Dynamics. It means you are not held to conventional wisdom: often you do not know it; it does not apply to you; you are expected to raise questions–and dreams. It means seeing new things and seeing new. You are beholden to the graciousness of strangers no longer strange. This journey is undertaken communally, together with others who have no permanent resting place. It means risking being changed, living out change. It means living out compassion. Beyond the mental level, it means to give one’s heart–abililty to go on–over to what may happen–for what choice is there? It means to live your story in the midst of others and life. It means to companion–eat bread with–others and especially whatever it is that overarches all of life. It means living invested with this larger, this sacred.

:- Doug.

I want to crack through the shell of this ordinary life.

Is this the thing we all want? To feel we have lived, lived together, touched another, been touched? Is this beneath our feeling of having a destiny, wanting to stand out, to be remembered? Are we dead when we work for wealth? When we work for 30 or 40 years till someone takes care of our body till they have to take care of our body? What would it mean to live in wombish relationship? To meet face to face the wombish of the world? What would we be cracked open?

:- Doug.

This space is now opened to include all our possibilities beyond our dreams.

:- Doug.

Butterflies are kind of like chit chat conversation in their flitting and in their being available. But something good can happen, if we settle down and look for our beauty.

:- Doug.

Ted Ernst has written an interesting post here.

To my good friends–

The fallen nature of humans is not that we have sinned, but that we have lost track of the grace that says there is no sin, that we have replaced it with a requirements and failure mentality that seeks a Heaven and money and rewards for ourselves.

:- Doug.

You seek G-d:
Look about you.

A boy is born, a girl is born:
One is you, one is another;
One comes at you in love,
Another interrupts, demands, complains:
Circumspice.

A bus goes by, spewing fumes;
A terrorist strikes, blood flows, worries abound;
Grass grows through a sidewalk,
Rain and rainbows:
Circumspice.

Newspapers, people talking of economy and stocks,
Money and numbers,
Performance and perfection are demanded of you:
Circumspice.

Clients demanding;
People clamoring;
A hug from your spouse,
Or a tear:
Circumspice.

Are they G-d?
Are you?
Does G-d need them?
Does G-d need you?
Circumspice.

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

Dollars, numbers and metrics–these can be the common and broad way–to a preoccupation with what matters but little and away from a life of relationship, meeting and the real.

:- Doug.

To my good friends–

Are we the elder brother in a far land invited to a journey of return?

:- Doug.

To my good friends–

I have seen the story of the prodigal as a story of a prodigal son and later as of a prodigal father. Today I saw the prodigal brother–one who, for sake of his own steadfast hard work, was risking throwing away from his life forever, shared love and happiness.

:- Doug.

Consider inviting a different way of seeing, a play of the imagination. Would evoking, teasing, involving be effective?

:- Doug.

Do we touch something beyond our persons?

Do we touch G-d.

Do we help each other touch G-d.

:- Doug.

G-d is more reality than being.

:- Doug.

There’s no need to go leaning into the future

Live in mystery.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 618

There is a wind that runs through things
sometimes it permeates and rises
it is the look of wonderment
it is the green of grass, the leap of foal
it is the choral song of birds
inklings that rise up in your head
in all these and more, and more
there is a wind that runs through all.

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