FootprintsintheWind.com

Are we here for
earning a living
making a life
or giving living?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 922

G*d is service, sacrifice for all. G*d is giving her earth for all to grow upon, walk upon, fly within, swim within, her universes to soar within. G*d gives up all and therefore is all. Flowers poke up, babies are born and frolic, poems and symphonies! All from sacrificing. G*d is example. The more we give the more we live.

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

Goals are the cheap and lazy cousins of purpose.

Goals are an easy version, a surface level working, on purposes. Purposes however are larger and longer, without end point, immortal. Purposes are something to live, purposes give life.

:- Doug.

We can fly
in the open sky
but in the closed
can we do what
leads to living?

:- Doug.

My practice is a conversation.

:- Doug.

The poetry
means all
possible meanings

:- Doug.

Here is the dance
to learn
each other
to invent

:- Doug.

We have the ability to co-lift each other up, and with us, the world.

:- Doug.

For thousands of years we humans have been working to sustain life—of ourselves and those we love. Now we have developed to the place where we can more widely nurture life, even new life, if we so choose. We ought to choose.

:- Doug.

Every mother and father is a story of responsibility either accepted or rejected or created. Those are the only three responses. And the highest of these is giving one’s self wholly, unreservedly, sacrificially, for in this we live higher.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 921

Like water, people
seek their level
Unlike water
we’re slower
taking eons
Unlike water
seeking lower pools
we seek worlds higher—
worlds of We may not make it
worlds of sinew and mud—
worlds higher

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

What is our responsibility to the world and the generations? Do we have one? Only if we create it ourselves. Does it hurt us if we do not create this responsibility, make this sacrifice? Only in our spirits.

:- Doug.

We engage with the world community and with our descendants. What do we engage to do? To sit in front of our TVs and drink beer? Or is true gusto to give, to pledge, to offer, to invite?

:- Doug.

We have responsibility to
not for
our grandchildren
our community
our world

:- Doug.

What can people in the Middle-West do to plant seeds of peace for the Middle-East?

:- Doug.

There is no separation
of us from G*d—
how could that be?
When one purposes to separate
from G*d &
cast him- or herself
into outer darkness
it is that one doing the casting
and the darkness is the
perceived separation from G*d
but the darkness and separation
is only in his or her perception
Separation cannot be
there is only one

:- Doug.

Exactly opposite
Not G*d in that molecule
Nor that molecule is G*d
Rather G*d is that molecule
Exactly more whole

:- Doug.

I do not know whether my meditation is your meditation, my contemplation is your contemplation: it seems to work for me, lift me, inspire me, refresh me, gives me poetry and life.

:- Doug.

Compassion, compassion! Collaborate, collaborate!

:- Doug.

Life is one. There is only one life. This is somehow what we try to capture with the word “God,” yet there is more: more within the beyond things we call G*d; more within the beyond-thing we call life; more, beyond more, simply more. Life lives us. We live life. We grab life. Life grasps us. Life is all there is. The sparkly stars, the hopping toads, the sitting rocks, the waving trees, the feeling beings: all of life, and all of living. Life is no thing. Life is not static; life ever moves. Life is in the living. Living is conversation with living.

:- Doug.

What happens
in an exchange of life?
Communication
but nothing communicated
but everything
life expands exponentially
impossibility’s possibility
fingertips on eyelids
hand in hand
mind learns of heart
heart learns of life
life learns of
earth touching bare feet
red of bird and white of snow
touching eye
ideal—real—commerce
of living
carrying us
carrying all
partners
in compassion

:- Doug.

What is the absolute best of which humans are capable?

:- Doug.

Inspiring,
the higher, the beyond
are profanity
to pedestrian minds
but even their hearts
can sigh

:- Doug.