FootprintsintheWind.com

Community Disorganizing is gathering a small group around live questions to find we already have the resources to take action.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 860

The men too are victims
Lost
To hope
Estranged
Unseeing
How will we
See their story?

A man is destined
To go out to the world
To bring back a boon
But if he be lost?
If his battle be prolonged?
Shall we join?
Shall we go to find him again?

Please pass it on.

© c 2008, 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

The tracks of the old history
Are shattered
A new land
—All directions
All possibilities—
Is opened

:- Doug.

Been there, done that signals a need for grief
Despair signals a need for hope, possibility, new story
Hope only has ready ground where
The heart has broken open

:- Doug.

I have been afraid to say it big enough.

:- Doug.

Many are the voices of G-d
Varied are the homes
Many are the voices of G-d
Calling us to home
Calling us to whole

:- Doug.

In us, G-d

:- Doug.

G-d speaks
In many voices
Small & shrill
Silent still
Raspy pained
Triumphal—pieces
Conflicting confused
Listen

:- Doug.

How does 9-11 relate to new community? First, it shows the dangers of population compression. A fire chaplain struck down by one of the very people for whom he was praying speaks of the results of a failure to hear and help others. People running or wandering through a world of ash tells us what our world will be when some of us only see others as other.

Second, 9-11 shows us what can happen when a people comes together—we can feel real community. We can have heart, and we can ponder. Even if we abort these efforts. What could happen if we give full play—and work—to reflection and compassion? What is our best work, our true work?

:- Doug.

We are engaging the community of G*d in the communitying of G*d.

:- Doug.

G*d speaks against dominance; therefore G*d is not a dominator.

:- Doug.

We are renewed, but not by G*d’s puppet mastery, rather G*d’s energizing.

:- Doug.

Think the largest circle possible
Included are plants animals humans
Rocks dirt earth stars black holes
Pain suffering hate love despair numbness
Angels devils energy quarks ideas imagination
Larger still larger still
That circle is G*d

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 859

The promise and the hope of conversation: this is the place where work is needed. This idea of community as conversation is as strange as the idea of living without masters to feed us must have been to the Israelites in Egypt. This idea of we are in charge is the same idea, in fact. The setting only is different: we are chained to mortgages and jobs; they were chained to brick furnaces and tasks. We are given ineffectual work to do with materials impossible: debt as money, pulling more living out of natural resources while poisoning our air and water and food; they were given no straw for their bricks.

Please pass it on.

© c 2008, 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

My coeur work is community. This says My coeur work is making a better world, now. I invite people to create small groups to Converse and Work toward a better world, now. Converse in this setting means to design and create and more. This better world is discontinuous with the present one, the one of numb, the one of been there done that, the one of despair. This better world is of the Big New, of Promise.

:- Doug.

Much as New sells, we are scared of it. If you bring me a New improved product that will help my life in a little way—say remove a few more specks of dandruff—I will rush to buy it. But if your New will change my life in a major way (for the better or for ill, it makes no difference), I will run the other way! I do not even want to think about what it will do. Leave me alone. It does not matter why I fear it—the energy I will have to invest, the risk it will turn out badly, unpredictability—fear involves neither reason nor why. Only hope moves us toward the Big New. Hope also has neither reason nor why—uninvited, Hope overtakes us.

:- Doug.

We gather around the question How can we make the world better now? We hold the 6 conversations, but always from the standpoint of a larger world, an inclusive world perspective. Whom else can we invite? Who has bigger questions? How can we connect varying interests in conversation?

:- Doug.

My coeur work is community. The products of this are a better world and community. To community community. To engage the community of G*d. This is divine work.

:- Doug.

Why is this urgent to me? Because it is about a life fully lived, and any moment not fully lived will be difficult to redeem.

:- Doug.

G*d’s promises are to be with among between us.

:- Doug.

Engage the Community of G*d.

:- Doug.

If we want a better world, we have to be willing to give up this.

:- Doug.

There is something holy afoot, and it is us: together, among us, between us. The sparking, the turning, the coursing: this is where G*d lives, moves, and has being.

:- Doug.