FootprintsintheWind.com

G*d created this world
—messy!
Get on with it.

:- Doug.

G*d is the reality that means you.

:- Doug.

Anger, anger everywhere
“That idiot driver!”
“Religious fanatics!”
Politicians calling names
Is this how we want to live?

:- Doug.

You have filled me and drained me at once. This too is conversation.

:- Doug.

I saw a sign: “Jesus is for whatever is wrong in your life.” Why is Jesus exclusively for what is wrong in our lives? Why do we focus so on what is wrong?

:- Doug.

Hearing is not half of conversation
Hearing is all of conversation

:- Doug.

In the beginning was the flow
In the beginning was the conversation
We hear

:- Doug.

Dialogue is listening
To other
To self
To weaving

:- Doug.

Dialogue is not something two separates do at the same time in the same room and somehow clang into each other in the process: it is something that involves sacrifice and loss of boundaries and loss of certainty.

Come more deeply to know that when people are conversing they may even cease to exist as separates, at least in space-time, as the new being-meeting comes into existence.

This is a new thing as well: our being-meeting. It is not thing so much as dynamic. It is flow and intercourse with no separate existence, and dissolves the “individuals” into itself. It is like a catalyst, but does not cause reaction so much as loss of division without loss of differentiation and distinction. The persons are facing each other, sparking off each other, rubbing against each other, opposing each other, flowing into each other. They become more different as they combine. It is more mingling than blending, more mixture than solution. Each becomes more distinct, but each changes. Maybe they change toward each other, maybe away.

:- Doug.

Our interconnections are growing larger filaments, with fingers, entangling with many more each day that than the day before. We need to engage many brains to deal with today’s inter-filamenting. A one person answer is part, two dimensional in a colored, eleven-dimensional world.

The filaments: there are hairs and branches on the filaments, and filaments on the filaments and branches. They grow longer minute by minute and entangle and keep growing out, reaching out, reaching out, touching, bumping, turning, twisting, locking and moving on. This is us, this is us, and we can no longer separate without losing our selves. Our selves are others, parts with others, pieces in here, pieces in there: where is here? where is there? Complex, plaited, interwoven, so that no one brain, infinite as it is, can contain it all, see its patterns. We need more than one brain. We need especially the people, not just the leaders. What brazenness you have to declare you have no important work to do! Every one. Every. One. There are no little people. There are no more equal, more important. Every. One.

:- Doug.

Dialogue is not about something you do with other persons. It is not even how you are with others. It is not about relationships. It is finding a new essence that is of each of you, a person-meeting which does not exist any place or time. You each are objects apart from your be-ing, yet thoroughly one with it and each other. Your differences are necessary, throwing in facets to catch the lights.

:- Doug.

I wonder
What wonders me
Is how little
Important work
We think we can do
What wonders me
Is that I don’t need money
For retirement
But simply
Important work
Wondering

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 695

Try this thought experiment: think of a human looking at a cube: the human can only see about 3 sides at a time, yet there are three more outsides, and at least as many insides. The same can be said of the earth itself, human beings who present themselves to us, and the all there is. We do not see the whole, and therefore need each other to get the larger picture. He or she who thinks he or she has the whole picture is wrong. He or she who opens to others is enriched by a greater world, ever opening.

Please pass it on.

© c 2006, 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

Converse as if this were your last conversation: tell a story, ask a question, share your cor, connect, connect, connect, interweave your selves, live!

:- Doug.

Meeting is for here and now, this world. It means, it results in, action in this place. Not some future world. We are building this one, by our very meeting. We are birthing not just each other, but this world. We have a responsibility to this world, to all the people in it, to make it good, to meet and to birth it well. Birth the world well.

:- Doug.

Meeting means you
Meeting means both of you
Meeting means your world, now

:- Doug.

The physical world is itself miracle.

How do I put this in words? The real world itself seems to be ephemeral, spiritual; how then did anything become physical, solid to the touch? Where did touch come from? How do a couple of little cells join and form a human? What is physical? Clearly there is more space than solid, more air, more “nothing.” So modern physics tells us. Just little particles running around in that nothing, maybe running so fast they seem “solid.” So it is amazing, and more than that, improbable that we would have a physical world. A miracle.

:- Doug.

Your music is in you to come out.

:- Doug.

Lots to do
Stuff for you

:- Doug.

A freshening breeze through my window
White spots tap tap tap on the pond’s surface
So quickly I cannot count them only marvel
I breathe in deeply
A freshening breeze through my window

And the leaves dance and the leaves dance
With the tips of the branches

Two turtles, heads erect, lie on the pond’s edge
What are they doing?

A freshening breeze through my window
I turn to see
The swing is swinging with this breeze
What question is asked of me?

:- Doug.

Every person can become an artist.

:- Doug.

Write some every day from your heart
Speak some every day from your heart
Poiein some every day from your heart

:- Doug.

If we share our raw heart
Describe in unrehearsed words our pain
If another hears us
In his or her core
We see more clearly then
—is our heart a necessary part of clear sight?—
Imagination is stirred
And with it its twin, Hope

:- Doug.