FootprintsintheWind.com

Why is it in the spring we notice the first robin, but in the fall do not notice the last one to leave?

:- Doug.

We spend so much time stuffing things into ourselvesand so little finding out what is already in there.

:- Doug.

We are responsible to what we do not control: we are responsible to life: we are responsible to our own life.

:- Doug.

To my good friends–

Let us take a day a month and honestly criticize ourselves. It would be a wonderful cleaning.

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

How much medical care is optional?

This seems a radical question, but not when you think it through. In some cases, plastic surgery such as a face lift, is clearly cosmetic only, and not medically necessary to sustain life, or even a quality life.

Today, there are people who have to choose between medicines and heating their home or starving.

So then, where are the lines to be drawn? Who is to draw them? As medical costs go up, we need to address these questions. Even more so, we need to figure out how to address them.

:- Doug.

To my good friends–

What’s just on the edge of happening or not happening? Who needs to be encouraged? What needs people to jump in and get going? These are the questions we need to be asking.

Whom do we ask? Ask the people we know and would normally ask What’s new? What are you hearing? You have your ear to the ground: what’s coming? What needs to come? Where are the little injustices? What elements and attitudes would you like to bring to the workplace and the world in which you live? Do people need more humanity in some way? More compassion? More smiles? What would you like to see changed?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 625

It is not that we have such knowledge in us that can replace a professor; rather we have such depth and height in us that is suppressed when information is dispensed from outside. Each person must participate in his or her own opening. Information and knowledge are of one realm, wisdom and Spirit of another. We as teachers must take care we do not become a hindrance.

Sometimes we do need to learn things and gather knowledge. But other times, we need to find what is in us: what we are made of; whom we yet might be; how we may serve; whom we are connected with. That we do not get from a teacher but from exploring our selves closer to the connecting point.

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

What things want to happen in your communities?

:- Doug.

Seek not teachers,
nor yet to teach,
seek allies, con-spir-ators.

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

Our job is making the world better.

:- Doug.

When we ask How? we are often masking a more fundamental question: What’s important?

:- Doug.

Is everything that can be known about G-d known?

:- Doug.

What do we not know about conversation?

That is a juicy question, rich, full, whole.

What do we want to know? What do we not want to know?

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

We need to work on the development of conversation–where can we take it, where can it take us? We live in conversation, conversation speaks us into existence and into a flow, conversation speaks us into waves and particles.

So the task is not to get people into conversation, but to improve the quality of our conversation. Quality is its depth, intimacy and hope. In a sense it is the same question–let us promote an improvement, let us find the edges of conversation.

:- Doug.

It is our job as radicals to bend the world to our hearts and minds. Never has the world come ready shaped to make the work of good easy.

:- Doug.

Make your life conversing.

:- Doug.

We decide what this world will become. We decide who we become. Our life after 20 is our own choice.

:- Doug.

Seek to meet people who are conversing.

:- Doug.

Seek not to be timely
rather timeless

:- Doug.

Conversation is about the Mystery–and conscious evolution of our species–about getting going–about doing the thing that makes us the beloved, the one G-d was waiting for.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 624

I like the age I am. I like my grey hair. I like knowing that the world does not depend upon me. The world will keep turning without me. I like knowing that the world does depend upon me. The world will turn better with my shoulder to the wheel. I like not knowing. I like the wonder and the mystery of what confronts me at the age I am.

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–

One thing that intrigued me this morning is the notion of What do we not know? Where are we vulnerable? What intrigues us?

Well, what?

For me, mystery: what I do not know, what brings a sense of wonder and surprise. Things that nip at my consciousness, that say, Here I am, here you are, isn’t it gooood! What might there be? What is possible? For us? Let us engage the world! Let us try something new. Let us give birth and work to make it real!

For me, people: people are surprising. People are bigger than we suspected. We are bigger than we suspected. We are loving, we are creative, we are held back only by our own imaginations. We are likewise freed by our imaginations: much more is possible.

For me, G-d: G-d is all about us and within us. G-d needs us. We are expected of G-d. We are the ones G-d has been waiting for. We are expected to be adults and to do something. We have been given a marvelous universe in which to play: rainbows and twinkling stars and black earth and colors of people and jumping of foals and flying of birds and bubbling of fish and squishing of sponges! Anything we could want exists or can exist.

And yet for me, mystery: there is more I do not know about G-d than I know. There is much I do not know about my wife, my children, my grandchildren, the people I meet during the day, the way of the fox and squirrel and groundhog and deer and crane. There is much to wonder at and about. I do not know what will work to continue working with people to discontinue working with people to start good things to make love and compassion and justice the way we live. I do not know and that might be good, that might be the answer: for then I must work at it, try something, see what works this time and give hope to other times. But I do not know that is the answer. There may be another, a better one. I do not know, and I revel in do not knowing: it opens me to what is and to what might be. Do not knowing allows me to experiment. Do not knowing shows me the intermediate impossible and the intermediate possible. Do not knowing opens me to the third possibility. Do not knowing is not the answer. Do not choose do not knowing as your answer to meeting the world for the object is to not know. Beyond that, the answer is to know and then go beyond knowing, and more so: do not get stuck in this cycling of waves. This is difficult, for there are many places to get caught in traps. Even getting caught in traps might be good. Do not knowing.

:- Doug.

We haunt the halls where we understand the language. It is possible to lose the language, to grow beyond the language, to know it as gibberish. I no longer haunt the halls of business because for me, its language lacks enduring meaning.

:- Doug.