We have given our children life;
everything else is lesser.
We can feed and water that life,
or put cages around it in an attempt to shape it.
But we are not the ones to harvest it.
The harvest belongs to life itself.
:- Doug.
A Will is an act of love
For no one is required to write
It says I will not leave you in a mess
I love you so I provide
This I accomplish—or attempt
This I have learned that
you might benefit
I love you so
I leave you a piece of myself
I challenge you to
do this with your life
do this for our world
I love you so I leave you
Unfinished tasks, cleaned up messes,
Wisdom, worldviews, challenges
Plans, goals, restrictions,
Pleas, incentives, wishes,
Dreams, prayers
These are of the faces of love
:- Doug.
If we seek to make the world whole
and all the people in it
we find that each person has a hole
that’s fit for some other to fill
when all the holes are filled
then all the holes are emptied
and opened
and all that’s filled
is our world whole
:- Doug.
We make the world together
There are so many drop-outs
What sparkling could
Our world-jewel give off
If we each invited
Others to drop in?
:- Doug.
Poetry means expressing the person, and the person is always in community, always a community. Poetry means the something more, the something larger. Poetry includes a rolling up of sleeves and setting to work. It means beauty, truth, goodness. It is about making…making beauty, truth, goodness.
Poetry is hearing the music, seeing the dance, making the movements, of a shared world—larger, more beautiful, more truth-full, more good.
So the work of this lawyer is to make poets out of the people I meet—makers of beauty, truth, goodness—those who add value to our shared world.
Rhymes not needed, verse not needed: only seeing, feeling, being. Hearts, hands, heads, fingers, lungs, mud, fire, wind, water.
:- Doug.
Bring your clients to poetry—
not rhyming, not making words, rather
to singing, to dancing living,
to winging above larger worlds
poetry is process, ever opening
the poets
the poets searching, ever searching
finding and winging higher
the poets, the poetry
completed, fulfilled, opened
fullest only when released
to converse
together, finding
and making
poetry of our living
:- Doug.
Our work is to live this life. It is only this life among these people who can touch us and whom we can touch. Touching we care for each other; all live.
:- Doug.
Mudfires! This is our work: to set afire, to set fires that set other fires, among the clay beings that walk on two legs. To see that fire comes upon the earth, and that it kindles beauty and truth and goodness till they burn away and resurrect as new and more and unimagined! We are clods subject to inertia—we resist change and yet we live for change, for growth, for new. We are both mud and fire. Yet the mud has been predominating. Time to ignite fire! Time to turn rock to lava! Time to come together and create light…heat…fire!
:- Doug.
Women (and men too) are concerned with security and having everything figured out. Better to have not a directive but guides, signs in the skies not walls on the grounds. Better to have guides and parables and sayings as aids to choices, because we cannot know what the future will present us and we cannot build fences around the light.
:- Doug.
In our Will
from whom dare we ask blessing
to whom give our unfinished task
what unfinished task
would be our blessing?
:- Doug.
We are not trying to say
something no one has ever before said
nor yet do
but to live as no one ever before lived
but still!
we do just this
without special effort
or with it
just so we are
we matter
:- Doug.
When I read the saints of the Christian church from centuries before, I am put off by the self-flagellation that seems usual among people who felt that making themselves little somehow made G*d greater. As if G*d needed the help!
Yet they can be read a little more kindly and openly: Be wary of following only your own single desires; test them for universal love, beauty, truth, goodness. Simply feeding your desire for beer or food or sex is not the end; there is more to life. See that you keep your eyes there, for in this way we lift all, we love all, and love is the fulfilling of life.
:- Doug.
If you are in the USA, and are a senior living alone, here is a program of the Letter Carriers for a friend (your letter carrier) to keep an eye out for unusual accumulations of your mail–it is relatively safe, it seems to me. Worth checking out:
Carrier Alert Program
Call to Jewish – Palestinian dialogue
If you are not familiar with the work of Len and Libby Traubman, and their living room dialogues, please take this opportunity to visit their site, and sign up for their email newsletter.
To subscribe, send an email to mailto:[email protected]
There is much good going on in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East, and if there is anybody who knows what good is happening, Len and Libby do.
Footprints in the Windsm # 928
The poetry of your life—
where does it reside?
in sons and daughters
wives and husbands
places we’ve lived
jobs we’ve given up
work which grew us
tasks we were called to
perhaps against our wills
scraps of life
we always meant to put in books
scraps of life only now understood
yesterdays and tomorrows
what about todays?
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
Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com
G*d is—
babies tip-toeing
children fidgeting
adults bantering
silence not so silent
calmness moving
animals accepting
sun setting
winds caressing
all growing
ever changing
meeting
furnace blowing
horns honking
birds winging
deer snorting
sound beneath sounds
scratches on paper
blood pumping
scrap of paper on floor
cancer
hair loss
cough
colors
eyes
noses
ears
hands
feet
gamboling colts
fans starting
watches beeping
people itching
loud sudden noises
whispers
gathering
morning sun
ice cream cones
laughing
singing
tickling
crying
floors
ceilings
chairs
fabrics
mother’s breast
G*d is
:- Doug.
Van Jones starts chapter 1 of his The Green Collar Economy with a description of how police harassed a group of people who were displaced by Katrina—making the people march miles, shooting over their heads, driving them off with helicopters, taking their meager food from them. They were trying to get to safety, trying to feed and shelter their babies, and the cops were elevating the protection of property and highways and some old ideas of order over the needs of human life. How idiotic! How fearful! Perhaps some arrogance.
How do people get through to people?
Is our society so mired in the order and competition mind-quicksand, that we can no longer find our hearts nor our neighbors?
:- Doug.
Not only is tax return time a good time to look back, it is time to look forward. What do we want the new year to be? Where do we want to touch the world, have it touch us?
:- Doug.
It is the anniversary.
Let’s use this time
think about the year past—
Mom died, O!
the farm was sold
some farming was continued first
some interactions among the family
some grieving
some grieving continues to this day
some interactions with neighbors,
bankers, real estate people, lawyers
some kindnesses received
some kindnesses done
lots of phone calls
some story telling
some eating
some tears
some laughter
:- Doug.
Powered by WordPress
| RSS 2.0
| Comments RSS 2.0
| Based on Quentin
© Copyright 2024, Learning Works, Incorporated 