FootprintsintheWind.com

Why am I a community disorganizer? Because we need to be ever opening new conversations.

:- Doug.

Open new dialogues
Open new persons
String wires
Be wiry

:- Doug.

We can shrink to a point or we can be the strands arcing between points, transcending distances between people.

:- Doug.

Beware the G-d reducers, those who seek to put G-d in a box they can carry around in their wooden hearts.

:- Doug.

Let’s figure out how to get here from there.

:- Doug.

What about us is holy?
What are we about that is whole-making?
It is our conversation, stories, questions
—the times when we are connecting
opening to others’ touch to our quick—
there grow

:- Doug.

Please tell me a story about a time when your work brought you to life.

:- Doug.

What I am working to convey is beyond an order of magnitude: as space travel is to the hansom cab, so is conversation to talking and listening. Yet it is within our experience, if we delve a little.

:- Doug.

Conversation makes people sacred
Conversation makes sacred people
Conversation brings to the outside the sacred in people

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 767

Power is accompanied by—and needs—an equal quantity of powerlessness, or acquiescence. Seek powerlessness, or its dark sister, fear of powerlessness, first among the powerful. Power and powerlessness are both illusory. Therefore be kind.

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

This is the age of the great synthesis: people coming together. Yet the analysts are fighting the great turning, cutting and hacking whatever and whomever comes their way.

:- Doug.

In order to move the whole we have to tug away from the center. We therefore have to move away from business as usual—not to differentiate ourselves, but to like-making—not to gain attention, but to make what’s good more.

:- Doug.

The arrow of evolution is not irreversible
it is life; it proceeds by fits and starts
recovering old ground, making the same mistakes
and the same advances
stupidities and crimes prosper
as do moments of wisdom and kindness

:- Doug.

My purpose is to infect you with a larger vision.

:- Doug.

Tell me about a conversation that mattered to you.

:- Doug.

You choose A, you choose B
a prophet is one who tells you
you have a choice
and where your choices can lead

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 766

Martin Buber says life asks each of us a question every encounter, and if we are to be a person we must respond. I say our response may be a question: Can you stand such a one as I?

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

Our conversations
create our realities

:- Doug.

G-d is intimate
with all and particular
his universe

:- Doug.

Connecting
we are sacred
we are ever always
connecting, disconnecting
reaching out or pushing away
reaching out with voices, ears
to hear and be heard
to do the whole-making work
to which our hearing calls us
we become more whole
the more we reach out to embrace
connecting we
are sacred

:- Doug.

Yellin’ ain’t sellin’
Nobody

:- Doug.

The people come to be themselves
strong, creative, giving

:- Doug.

People want to be engaged in their companies, communities, lives. They may not recognize it. But they jump at the chance when it is offered. Why? Because it is a chance to give themselves to something larger than life.

:- Doug.