FootprintsintheWind.com

You can water a force to horse
cannot but you drink him make

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 735

We have an immense array of questions, opportunities, issues, passions, responsibilities: it will take more than one person for us to respond for good. One person deciding for all will not work. Even two or a small task force or executive committee does not have enough resources. The more people–the more good hearts and heads–the better will be our chance to even have a future.

Please pass it on.

© c 2007, 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

It happens in an instant yet it takes hours to get there
Contemplation, meeting, laughter

:- Doug.

Truth is discovered
Truth is created
Truth develops

Truth discovers
Truth creates
Truth develops

:- Doug.

Reflect with me on the trees: A couple of years ago one of a pair of trees died. The pair holds up a swing. Last year the dead trunk became weak, wobbly: a small boy may be able to push it over this summer. It is life in a thing which gives it strength and substance.

:- Doug.

Resources applied are always more valuable than resources banked or otherwise wasted. We may be just ordinary people, but together we can do things experts cannot do apart.

:- Doug.

This I have seen: of you, one is Jesus.

:- Doug.

Curiosity kills the fear.

:- Doug.

More eyes, more heads,
more hearts, more hands:
why wouldn’t we want
to gather people together?

:- Doug.

We can be in contemplation the day long.

:- Doug.

Lord, I am here at your pleasure.

:- Doug.

Encourage storying. We need new stories, to see our possibilities with fresh live eyes. What is the story of our future? What do we see, together?

:- Doug.

Dialogue is action because dialogue is at the root of action: We need first the idea to move, then the courage to move, then move. Dialogue directly gives the first two, and adds hands to the third.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 734

The debate so far over the President’s plan to increase the number of troops in Iraq has been less than fruitful. People are digging in. We are dearly missing reflection.

One thing that has escaped attention is the President’s ego. And our national ego.

His talk and that of his cabinet has been generously sprinkled with words like “winning” and “success.” Notice that these words are undefined. Notice that one cabinet official said winning could not be defined.

There is the logical problem: if we don’t know what we’re after, how will we know when we get there? Perhaps someone is served if we don’t know, and keeps going after the job is done? But there is also the practical problem: whether we stir the pot or walk away or do something else, we will have materially contributed to what happens next. We are part of this world, and cannot escape our responsibility.

So our eyes are on the wrong ball: we want to win and succeed, when we should be looking at how we all live in this world together.

Our clue is in that “or do something else:” are there third alternatives? Debate rarely brings people together. Consequently debate rarely takes us into the future wisely. Are there only two options—increase the troops or remove the troops? Beat these people into submission or run from the fight?

There are third alternatives. The very problems should suggest we need to expand our thinking: if we put more rifles on the streets, does that eliminate, reduce or increase the weapons on the streets? If we withdraw, do the war-lords take over? Is there something behind the insurgencies more than an appetite for blood? Could the grandmothers exert an influence? Do people see violence as a solution because that is how we came in? Is it possible that people anywhere at any time can see peace as necessary for their way of life? If anyone can, can we not teach the ways of peace?

What if we sent in teams of people wise in the ways of council, inviting people out of their homes and enclaves to sit together? What if we kept soldiers available to protect these councils? As the councils and the ways of peace became stronger, the need for soldiers would decline.

We are a people inventive, creative, and kind. What if we turned that face to the world?

What if we listened?

What if we found some third alternatives? Together?

Please pass it on.

© c 2007, 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

Talk well together.

That is one vision. Another might be:
See well together.
Touch. Hear. Smell. Dance. Move. Music. Rhythm. Taste. Story.

:- Doug.

Dialogue is discovering
third alternatives

:- Doug.

Dialogue is people together
going into the woods
discovering places
they had not imagined

:- Doug.

Much of our economics splits costs from enjoyment. We enjoy our cars today, leaving the costs to others. What costs? Poison in the air, global warming, death and injury. Who are the others? Taxpayers, our mourning families, our grandchildren. What are the alternatives? Move costs closer to joys by designing in more safety, cleanliness, care for our home place.

:- Doug.

People don’t get involved because they care so much as because they want to be a part.

:- Doug.

I’m a-mong.

:- Doug.

More people
tracking
more possibilities
dialogue is creativity
only more
creativity grows strong
in the among

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

What is this emergence? What is going on? It is not pure reaction, caroms. Caroms leave the people the same. Nor is it the workings of catalysts, for the agent is changed too.

We must then examine the possibility that it is the work of fields. There are fields of energy around each person, not as the new agers would have it, but simply the area of influence of a person’s physical swing, emotional throw, imaginative appeal. There is some potential there, some possibility within that field. When the fields meet, they play, they commiserate, they do all things human. And is it possible that the field comes first, the person is the emanation of the field, rather than the other way round? This is difficult to conceive, yet possible, for how could a chicken be contained in an egg?

Consider a man and a woman coming together. She brings an egg, he sperm. Neither bring the child (or for that matter the no child) into the room, but one could come out. Note this: the child is not just the combination of traits of each of them, but each one is someone who is different from the parents. Ask any parents of two or more: each child is different—significantly—from his or her siblings. There are so many possibilities; chance plays a role. Planck’s constant. Something more comes into the room that neither one brought in. We can predict that there may be a baby, but we can never predict who. And what will she do? We can only stand and wait curiously.

So there is something that happens in life. Do we need to name it? If we name it, we think we control it. We have a handle for it, and that makes us comfortable. But perhaps when we take hold, it now has a handle on us. Does it matter which? Is the pooch walking you?

There is something that happens in life, so we ought to accept it. Perhaps we can make ready for it: not just to welcome, but to invite.

What is this emergence? Have we found out anything? We have found out that it is there and that we might be in it. We are not victims but actors, not actors only but writers. There are seven billion of us actively writing and acting in this play at this moment. We have protagonist and antagonist roles. We are in emergence and inviters and creators.

:- Doug.

Do you have all the answers?
So perhaps you could build your world
on the proposition that you do not—
Then is more possible?

:- Doug.