FootprintsintheWind.com

The dominant culture is dominance
Free! you shout to us, Create! Diverge!
You holes of the whole

You create chambers for under-heard voices to reverberate
You open us for conflict and contraries and
Fearful symmetry and spiraling and movement

You edges of the holes bound our imaginations as
You set us free
Show us a tunnel to one new world at a time

You holes make room for diversity
You fit us for expansion
Your waves touch not just our midst

But erode our fractal borders
Suggest connections with wholes beyond the whole
You holes free us from confines of the whole

:- Doug.

Let us lift our eyes to larger views of the human setting. We have suppressed our imagination—others have not done it to us or for us. It is we ourselves.

But still we have taken the imagination away from the shadows thrown on the wall by hands in front of a light, and from sitting in front of a fire, and replaced them with the far easier pre-digested shadows—with living color—on a small screen, signifying nothing: leaving us no room to create for ourselves. Leaving us no room to create ourselves.

We need the freedom to create, and we have put that away in a box on a shelf so we can forget. We take our truth and our imagination from people in Washington, DC and in newsrooms—and that truth and that imagination in small doses, for fear that the medicine is too strong for us. Perhaps it is.

“Truth! You can’t handle the truth!” may be our own indictment of ourselves. Imagination! You can’t handle your imagination!

And yet, once in a while we have Star Wars or Phantasia or The White Tulip Movement which does change things, does bring the box off the shelf and we…become ourselves and us again.

Help us to throw away the box and forever keep the contents scattering, whirling, spiraling, weaving, living!

:- Doug.

We run to help
when someone’s in need
seldom do we feel so called
to help someone plow
a field without rock or weed
tears compel us more
than laughter
maybe they more quickly
give away our reality

:- Doug.

Yesterday we learned of a young man who was paralyzed from the chest down in a drive-by shooting. He has no money, no insurance, and cannot get state assistance. Picture a small group of 6 to 12 people who call a meeting of a larger group, perhaps as a party and working fund raiser, and there we get ideas for helping this member of our community.

Money is not the solution to this young man’s situation. It is not even the answer to our own human problem of finding a way to help. People are the solution. Only people can give him the hope to live, and the community with whom to share his struggles and within which to contribute what he can. People are whom we need.

:- Doug.