FootprintsintheWind.com

Is the eternal ephemeral?
G*d unchanging because G*d responds?
Is it a rhythm of sight and sun
That unveils, veils again?

:- Doug.

Is G*d larger than Christendom?

:- Doug.

What kind of growth do we need? Growth of consuming our planet, eating our children’s food and clothing and shelter and leaving them with scarcity—this kind of growth we do not need. Growth of well-being for everybody, growth of imagination, growth of writing and conversation, growth of collaboration, growth of soul and spirit and being—this is the growth we need.

:- Doug.

It is important we have all hands and all minds and hearts engaged in what we undertake in the next decades. That includes the business people and government bureaucrats and fundamentalists—our “enemies” as well as our friends. We can afford to exclude no one.

We must also seek to engage hearts and minds as well as logic: we need invention and ingenuity and engagement.

The only thing we have to fear is…what fear does to us—draws us into a little ball and away from each other, away from what we might do together.

The only thing we have to fear is…what the fear-mongers promote: drawing away from action and strengthening the status quo from which these fear-mongers profit.

:- Doug.

Listen to the voices of G*d—
the din of the frogs singing in the summer nightfall
the hush-hush of wings as a flock rises up
the touch of wind upon your cheek
Hear, O hear the holy
one
and your voice too,
essential

:- Doug.

Poetry serves to pull us together, to find the common silver tone that sings to each: Come and be part of us.

Poetry is the younger sister of Love, weaving the many colored strands of each and all essences, gently skipping and pulling us to Come, play with Love!

:- Doug.

Nikos Kazantzakis writes “Separately, we die one by one, but all together we are immortal.” (Report to Greco, p 105) Together! We are also then creative, we release this aspect of divinity, as well as oneness, wholeness, love. Separately we struggle and pull against each other; all together we pull with one purpose—to nurture us all.

:- Doug.

Poetry it is
Song
That frees strong men and women

:- Doug.

Poetry for me means something larger, a look at purpose and meaning and how everything works together, everything is together and how we do not have to strain ourselves to live the lives to which we are called.

:- Doug.

We can approach our task as an educational project starting from the information, data and facts moving toward engaging people. Or we can start with heart- and mind-engaged people and spread wisdom virally as active people work together. Or we can start from many directions at once, for some people prefer one way or another.

:- Doug.

Can the transfer of info occur virally through the process of engaging the people who can activate our wisdom?

:- Doug.

The people who are active sometimes get stuck not knowing how to bridge to, and grow connections with, each other; they do not have the technology for working together. This is where those of us who know how to start the conversations, who have the technology, can help. We can help each other most here.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 930

Newness requires
Over-againstness
Tension
& conflict

When we first thought
We had all the answers
Was when we
Lost our souls
—Our souls are of the same
Creative stuff as divinity

We must converse
As if here we live or die
For surely we do
And we live as
Soon as we die

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

Do we need to educate fully first? Does everybody need to become an expert in all areas of ecology? Is it too big for us to know everything, and does the effort to reach it all at once scatter our larger efforts? Or do we already all know the primary facts—the earth and our grandchildren are in trouble and we can do something?

:- Doug.

We have met the divine and the divine is us. Divinity is we.

:- Doug.

A team: a set of beasts considered by their masters to be of low intelligence and even lower willpower, chosen for ability to comprehend reins and a whip, assembled with others not of their choice, to perform work none understands and would not freely choose, compensated in food for the day when they could have simply grazed without strenuous work.

:- Doug.

Tell me about a time you had a deeply spiritual experience, an experience of G*d.

:- Doug.

Give us the work of poetry for each others’ hearts.

:- Doug.

What are the five most wonderful moments of your life, living in you still? Was the essence of any of them money? Entertainment? Or rather something that engaged the real of you wholly, fully?

:- Doug.

So my work for the world is about the real—trees and houses and roads and bridges and rain and snow and mud and muddy snow and muscles and tired and illness and anger and madness and all the rest and all the weariness and clouds and storms and sanctuary. And Wills and Trusts and tax returns. And it is about seeing the really real beyond and especially within and among these things: for we are about the sacred earth, the sacred world. Life and death and nursing homes are the sacred, the profane, and the betweens where we live. Betweens the sacred and profane of course, and also betweens the persons and beings and creatures among whom we find ourselves woven.

So the poem searches us and calls out from us our heart and our spirit and our our-ness.

The poem has us see into the sunrise the hope and Blake’s innumerable company of the heavenly host singing Holy, Holy and not just an orange disk that makes us squint and look away.

Poet’s eyes have us see a newborn as life continuing and innocence and wonder and hope.

Poet’s eyes have us seeing our Wills and Trusts as instruments of true weal and prosperity whatever our finances and extras, seeing our way to giving real value to those who come after.

Poet’s eyes have us to see that when we are settling someone’s affairs we are loving them, loving and nurturing those persons and works they loved, carrying them forward, and challenging ourselves to see with poet’s eyes.

:- Doug.

What one less thing can we give in our Wills?
What job unfinished?
What letter undelivered?
What memory untethered?
What thing we never owned and
never could be owned?
What manner of living?
What manner of dying?
What life turned loose, let go, freed?
Who are we when we let go of Who were we?
What can we leave unsaid?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 929

Is there beauty, is there truth, is there goodness in your work?

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

So if we begin to see Wills as love in action,
what color and what brush do we use to
apply our love?
How large or small the strokes?
How strong and bounding are our lines,
how wide do we open our horizons?
What is the very best we can
accomplish with this Will?
What value have we to leave the world—
our accumulations of chairs and tables,
of money and lands?
What we have done with our lives?
What we have made possible for others
to do with theirs?
What we have learned that might advantage them?
Our way of looking at and
interacting with the world?
Our view of the world as friendly or otherwise?
Our laughter and tears?
Our kisses and sanctuary?

:- Doug.