FootprintsintheWind.com

It’s your question. That makes the difference.

:- Doug.

It’s time to give love a chance.

:- Doug.

We have not tapped out what the grass roots up can do; we are just starting. We are the leaders for the next wave and they for the next.

:- Doug.

Perhaps we are seeing things others don’t. Yet, we can hope, is the operative word.

:- Doug.

I am not listening to an expert, I am listening to the something more speaking through both of us.

:- Doug.

Our God is weak as a baby, poor as a cattle stall, powerless as a condemned criminal, with us as a carpenter, with us as an itinerant preacher come to stay for months and we only a poor widow with not enough flour for one mouth, with us as a wandering lost person in the desert, with us like a wrestler in the night. What kind of a God is that??

:- Doug.

The environmental/sustainability movement locally seems to be stuck: each in his or her own orbit, not really reaching out, no synergies engaged nor sought, staring at outside movements with a golly-gee expression on our faces, and a viewpoint that it is all too overwhelming for one group. It is. It is complex. We need more mind.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 903

Help Wanted: running the world. Must be ordinary, know how things are, willing to make mistakes. Apply within yourself and apply yourself with your neighbors and friends and get busy. Expect fierce opposition. Compensation, success and safe return in doubt.

Please pass it on.

© c 2009, 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

A business: possible? Me?
A lot of money it will take
But I can do this

Money is not the problem
Ideas and energy and caring
Are key

If we had money, money
We’d not work to create ideas
And if we only chased the buck
Then we end with no business
No money

So does this one have heart?
Does he and she—do we—
Really care
About the people
The good we do for people
More than the money?
More even than
I can do this?

Much as I want to
I resolve to not tell you what you
Want to hear—
Ways to squeeze another person
That your chasing a buck is good
That someday you might become
A philanthropist, doing good:

Instead, I resolve to invite you
To do your good now
While you are as young as you are
While you have good ideas
While you can invent
While you are strong
And full of energy—

Share your best
Spread it about
Think not of yourself
Think of how you can
Help
Us
All

Think what good you can do
With the good you are

:- Doug.

If we insist upon the plan
We’re missing a boat
Not the boat but one
The one leaving now
While we are planning each excursion
Connecting opportunities are lost

:- Doug.

I could scatter seed about
& have a garden—
Or I could cultivate in rows
Make it easier to feed and weed
What’s important is my intention
Organization is intention’s servant

:- Doug.

I speak and write about bumping, but what calls and holds people together is this nectar of longing, the caring deeply. People drink of this, from this they have the power of gods (love), the immortality of creativity, it is what keeps calling them together. It is the love that underlies conflict. Within this longing is the bumping, for the bumping does not much good if it just is billiards. It is the impetus, the force, the momentum behind the movement. Not a driving force, but a gathering force.

Strange attractors, gathering force, nectar of longing, nexus of caring: inviting power.

:- Doug.

American desire for action (impatience) + nexus of caring + respect for those who see a short time window + growing general recognition of the need —> the stage is set for starting change on a strong level.

:- Doug.

Who is most passionate about climate change?

:- Doug.

Friend, tend my longings
Invite me to tend them too
Attend to them
Give them play
Laughter, story, question
Longings are our frontier
The broad open plains
Where we can run and
Play our greatest selves
Together

:- Doug.

What are the limits of my longing? The world might put on limits, but that is not the kind of limits I mean: How far can this carry us? If we want a world that works for all, if we want an environment that supports, nourishes and encourages people in the seventh generation, what can our longings do? Yes, we need rationality, and we need a pinch of budgeting. But too often we have let these cater to our fears and timidity, and in the end we do nothing.

The limits of my longing are sky, dream, imagination, beyond imagination, imagination to the power of imagination meeting. What is impossible is a matter of limiting our imagination, but our longing is what powers our imagination and we can therefore go beyond the impossible. What was now proved was once only imagined says Blake, and we can say What is imagined was once only longed for.

So a better word in American English would be frontiers: What are the growing, emerging, emanating edges of my longing?

What are these frontiers (here there be dragons!) if we gather people in grandest diversity of longings?

:- Doug.

There is power in gathering. There is power in the individual that can be tapped with a question.

:- Doug.

For what do you have passion for which you are willing to take the responsibility of gathering people? What issue would you post? Where do we need to get together? Why are we not making more progress? In what areas could we be making more progress? Whom can we invite? What are the opportunities?

Why is this important? Who opposes you? Who would disagree, particularly within the environmental movement? Why the urgency? How urgent? What is most urgent? In short, what are the limits of your longing? Where would you go if your longing were allowed to carry you, to flow?

Where is the heat? Where the energy? About what are you fervent?

:- Doug.

Politics is the way we get things done. Let’s invent a new way to get things done.

:- Doug.

A faith in God
That we will do our best
Our best is bigger
Than we’ve tried—always
Our best starts when we invite
And accept

:- Doug.

There is a power in invitation
The power of heart
And Imagination
Of what wants out—of us
Gathering

:- Doug.

Gather, gather! Gather our power: our people. Get to work. We can make a change, make a difference, help things get better. Is the world perfect, whole, working well for all?

:- Doug.

Your God is too small? You are too small!

:- Doug.