FootprintsintheWind.com

G-d is about fertility, fecundity, love, compassion, inviting, dreams, whole-being, truth, beauty, fathering, mothering, wombing, hugging, tickling, singing, playgrounding, behinding, beneathing, aheading, beginning, birthing, above, beyond, grounding, within, withing.

:- Doug.

In thee I love.

:- Doug.

To my good friends–

How can we see G-d when we’re swimming in it?

:- Doug.

To my good friends–

Some things are true even though not factual: Aesop’s fables; don’t bite off your nose to spite your face. Some things are false though factual: Mark Twain’s cat, who having been burned once will never sit on a cold stove, either.

:- Doug.

Palettes of G-d. We are of G-d. G-d moves through our movement. G-d transforms. Something there is that changes human hearts, that transforms people from lost to striding, from criminal to loving, from ill to healthy, from what was prison to what is free. This is G-d.

:- Doug.

In language of the divine, Christy quotes this passage by Rabbi Marc Gafni:

The core liberation teaching of Kabbalah is that to be a heretic is to believe that God does not need me,

This is something I have been reaching toward for many weeks. I see this in Sufism (or was it Rilke?), and even in Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Saviors of God.

:- Doug.

I need you. I need to listen for your footprints in the wind, look for glimpses of your shadow slipping around the corners of my life, listen for the echoes of your voice, whether in whispers or shouts.

Are you there? Of course. I see a larger you than I used to see. I see an all that is. For me, G-d = all there is. For me, G-d = reality. For me, G-d is to be explored. For me, G-d is exploring. For me, G-d is growing.

If others do not see G-d because they do not like the label, or because of the image others have attached to the word, that is their business. I am not going to try to convince them.

If others do not see a G-d quite as large as what I see, or one who is more grasping than the one I see, that is their business. I will not try to convince them. They may actually be seeing a G-d larger than the one I see, seen from a different point of view.

I will sing my song for myself and those who wish to listen may listen. If the others choose to cover their ears, I will not object, for my voice may actually be off-key or discordant.

I will seek to sing the truth as I know it today. Anything else is not real.

:- Doug.

To experience not-being
as well as being
brings us to the start of
multi-dimensionalizing

:- Doug.

Let us find ways upon ways
to use laughter in the service of
opening life.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 617

What is the difference between
the gesture of a hand held out
inviting help and one
offering help?
More than the differences
we see,
are we all
more alike?

We must turn.
How do we turn?
We must turn to one another.
How do we do that?
Where can it lead?
What is possible?
What is possible?
What is possible!

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

To our good friends–

I have been tempted often to think “Corporations do not care.” Is that true? In a purely logical way it is–corporations are legal fictional persons, and as such have no feelings or abilities to care.

But on the other hand, they are fictions peopled, and people do care.

It could be a large self-fulfilling myth that people in corporations are living out: we are here for the money. Is that really true? If, as we say, money is only a medium of exchange, what are we exchanging our energy and lives for? Is it not for making life better for a group larger than me, indeed for a group than those of us within the corporation?

This gets back to Michael Herman’s take on Einstein’s E=MC²: energy is exchanged for material things and vice versa: we exchange our efforts (energy) and our dreams (also energy) for a paycheck (stored energy) which we then exchange for a house, car, food, clothing (mass). In the corporation we also exchange the efforts and ideas as energy for massive machinery, buildings, desks and chairs (mass).

It goes the other way too: we exchange our machinery and earth moving equipment for influence in the world’s councils of power (energy). Personally we exchange a visit in our opulent house and an offering of our food (mass) for favors and reputation among those we want to think well of us (energy).

So this is news; how do we use it?

* We can become more fluid in how we think: we can see that we really fluidly move back and forth between the physical and the non-physical realms.

* We can listen more openly to others who habitually think in a way different from how we habitually think and speak.

Surely there is more here.

* We can learn to speak in the language of those we often consider different from and therefore less human than us.

* We can ask of ourselves and the things we say, Is it true? Can I know for sure it is true? What if it were not true? What if the opposite were true? Who am I beneath all this if neither is true?

What is mass? Is it true that it is the same as matter? I do not know the scientific answer to that.

If we turn the equation around, we get M-E/C². Mass therefore is smaller than Energy, energy is more powerful than mass. Hmmm…. Our brains and our culture have been telling us for some time that mass–amassed fortunes for instance, amassed power–is more important that the energy of thousands of poor and lowly people.

People in corporations, people in power are not the enemy. Only our myths are. They are living in these myths and caught up in the sticky spider webs of our myths as much as we are. We think we are free; likely we are not, either. We only therefore have a call to be kind with each other, to live in truth, and in truth’s mother, beauty, and in truth’s grandfather, love.

:- Doug.

Michael Herman today posted something profound on his blog. He often does.

This time he is at the edge of his understanding and mine where it comes to Einstein’s theory of relativity.

What Michael and Einstein are saying is that energy and mass are interchangeable, and Michael extends this to organizations and groups in their dynamics. What I am hearing is that there is an interplay between Dollars and numbers on one hand (people, assets, figures on a balance sheet), and passion, responsibility, creativiity, integrity, and a whole lot of the “harder” side of business and other daily life in our age.

It seems to me there is some truth to it, and it gives right brain people, and confused brain people, some new ways to connect with people who are more left brained.

What do you see?

:- Doug.

You have heard it said that the imperfect are condemned;
I say to you, the imperfect will be celebrated.
You have heard that we should serve the lowly and the needy;
I say to you, the lowly and the needy have much to teach you: we must serve each other.

:- Doug.

What am I asking? I am asking that I treat myself as an adult person, co-equal with others, not blame myself, not let their implications or my inferences of their sayings lead to guilt feelings on my part. I am asking that I inquire of things if they are true and ask myself if I have overstepped. If I have, make amends quickly and wholly. If I have not, be kind to myself first, and others second, knowing that kindness to others is kindness to me, and kindness to me is kindness to others.

I need to meet me. I need to write my own poetry. I need to meet you. I need to treat myself well, for I am the only me I’ll ever have. I need to kill the me I think I am so that the me I am can be born out into the world. I do not need to forgive myself so much as give myself openness to meet and be who I am. Open me to ever wider understanding than this.

:- Doug.

To say we do not believe in God is to say we do not believe in what we take to be our listener’s image or definition of God. It is an argument over definitions of terms which are not explicit, and consequently apt to get lost in relevant and irrelevant emotion.

:- Doug.

In a universe larger than we can imagine replete with more stars and worlds than our computers can number,
In a cosmos with light both particle and wave,
In a world with leaves of thousands of shapes,
and billions of 6-pointed snowflakes no two alike,
How could we ever picture a God
of one gender, circumcised or not,
one color,
one image,
one anything?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 616

There are people who profess themselves to be atheists. Yet there is not so much difference between them and people of religion, as either group might think of the other. For each group is stuck in a picture of G-d which is a picture. Often it is the same for both groups: a beneficent (or angry) old man with a long beard, sitting on a throne, with gifts held in reserve and a thunderbolt in his left hand, ready to punish. If our pictures of life were enlarged, if we were to step back just a bit further so we could see a larger panorama, what might we see? Babies who melt the hearts of stony men. People helping each other when disaster strikes. Hate breaking out into wars from which peace breaks out again because humans cannot long stand to be in armed conflict. If we once take an un-pre-judged look at the world and see its all in all, we can be prepared to move beyond a picture of any god, to opening to the all there is. Then we stop having to convert each other and look all about us to see.

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

To my good friends–

There is a truer meaning of grace:
A baby smiles and you know he means you;
Nothing’s going on in a meeting when an idea pops up and everyone gets excited about a way to serve others;
Buddhist monks meet Jewish priests, fall to talking of practices, and take their leave saying That’s how we experience the sacred, too;
A professed atheist has her heart touched by the picture of hurricane victims and goes to help:
Here is a truer meaning of grace:
– comes to us unbidden.

:- Doug.

Chris Corrigan offers this fascinating way to drive in heavy traffic.

I want to give it a try. How about you?

:- Doug.

What does it mean to you to be a banker or butcher or garbage collector?

:- Doug.

Some people are angry, finding fault with others and things about them, perhaps heaping sarcasm or ridicule all around them. How shall we best respond to these people? What is the way that leads to a world better? Sometimes we are the angry ones.

:- Doug.

I give my heart to G-d who opens me, who asks me to stretch, who seeks to kill my very understanding of myself in order to bring forth what is really in me, who I really am. I give my heart to G-d who wants me as an adult, who wants my work and does not do everything for me. I give my heart to G-d who loves diversity and multiplicity and conversation and dynamics and many ways to love G-d, for this G-d has many ways to love us. I give my heart to G-d who is not the same, but who is ever new. I give my heart to G-d who loves our imperfection for the very graces of imperfection: bumping, creativity, stumbling, possibility, surprise. I give my heart to G-d who does not exclude, rather welcomes all and uses whomever and whatever comes (whether we think it good or ill) as part of the rainbow for good, who sees not dichotomies rather palettes.

:- Doug.