This works
Working works
:- Doug.

In circle, it is not just that new ideas are generated, but commitment. And it is not to a project but, I am beginning to think, from a people. It emerges, it arises, from this congregating, roiling, steaming, working. You cannot get that by sitting at your desk alone; and you can only get a hint of it from a speaker or a panel making a presentation, particularly where they need slides to give power to their point.
People sitting together cooking stir up ideas and resolve. They hear stories, learn of pain and truth and opposition—and they get busy. Making a world needs at least those two things: a direction and a stomach-felt throwing of one’s self into the fray.
But this is a gift of the circle. Calling people together is a function of circle—working, turning. There is thus a mental element—the ideas, and an emotional one—commitment. Both are necessary to make anything happen.
There is more, too: collectivity, things arising from the group; right brain thinking for ideas, imagination, relationships, movement, body thinking; body and physical.
People today do not trust the emotions. We have tried to beat these out of us, and instill instead a respect only for the rational, logical, brain-oriented. But if we see someone without emotion, who has perhaps had a stroke and speaks in a monotone, we know something is not right, not whole.
Whole is what we need. Whole peoples at work. Whole people as essential parts of the whole peoples.
So is the commitment to these people in this circle?
I think it may be the seed of the commitment, but the larger resolve is to and for the tribe, humanity, all life.
:- Doug.
People don’t commit to a project; they commit because of each other.
Is the commitment to the others, or from them? That is harder to tell, for it truly stems from the midst of us, and it circles out to the whole of humanity, the whole of life.
:- Doug.
This is a piece of the work
These words on paper
Or in the ether
These Footprints in the Wind
Perhaps they will one day
Kick someone in their button for getting busy
Or call another to sanctuary and newness
Of ingenuity, love and collaboration
Or maybe just float in the air
Lubricating the spinning of the world
:- Doug.
How do I always have something to explore, to learn, and ever seem to be making new and major discoveries that will carry me forward?
Maybe they will. Maybe nothing is wasted and the things I discover now will inform later discoveries.
Then again, I find sometimes that I have just made a discovery that I had made months or years or even days before. It is like I have forgotten them; they do not even seem familiar the second (or more?) time around. Yet here is the evidence: the same discovery in my notes weeks or months or years before.
Spirals might help explain it: each time around I see it from a slightly different angle. Yet I seem to orbit the same neighborhood.
The continual explorations is a sign of life. This raises my hope.
Of course there is more to life and the universe than any one person can ever hold in their noggin. That is less the point than the desire to meet—one’s self, others, divinity. Here is where the expedition starts, and where it leads off.
People with goals are sad. Eventually they will get there and find less than they hoped. People with purposes are ever moving, ever surprised, ever discovering.
Goals have a purpose(!); they have a place: for the little projects, the short term, ad hoc committees and task forces: stage a ball; put out the fire; install the new appliance. Start and finish.
Goals are a cemetery. A place of death and disintegration.
We need and crave life. For this we need something larger, something without ends. We need an arrow. We need purposes. Here is life: mystery, direction, possibility.
So my continual breakings through—findings, revealings, insights, exploits, glimpses, uncoverings—these are the stuff of life, the breath and movement that show I am still birthing: birthing myself, others, life, love, divinity. Vive la discovery!
:- Doug.
Daily I ask after the mystery
As I age almost daily the mysteries are revealed
So that I begin to wonder
(Ahh! Look at that!)
‘Tis the bigger mystery
Am I mystery
Or does the mystery
Grow labyrinthine entwinings
The more its grey cloth is ripped?
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 944
There is a place in conversing where you and they cease all separateness and become one moving. This is where we turn the world.
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
Just took a walk in the woods. The tree frogs got used to my presence and started in again to call to each other. There is another sound—like ducklings quacking to each other, but then water comes along and turns their quacks into gargles. What a cacophony! I love the green, the browns, the life! I love the opportunity to just walk in the woods, to go to life and drink in! This is a reason I do this work.
:- Doug.
What are the social and economic opportunities now wrapped up in climate change?
:- Doug.
Being heard stems from speaking heart’s truth wholly. Not always will we be heard as we had hoped, but hearts hear.
:- Doug.
This is the John Woolman lesson: to speak personally of how something affects one’s self, without telling others what they should think or do, but merely saying, This is my experience, this is the message of my living.
The message of my living is wrapped up in: hearing and being heard from the heart, speaking from the heart, living from the heart.
This is pretty profound for me—not sure for others—but it helps me see how I live.
:- Doug.
Sitting in a circle
Soaking up the G*d
Presence from all
The people round
& then I realize—
They also from me
:- Doug.
We have to use our ingenuity
for it to work
as well our love
We may say tyrants and bosses and cultures
hold us back
What keys do we hold?
:- Doug.
Among us
Quickness is valued
Barely noticing Slowness
Who loves us
:- Doug.
Listening or hearing? Listening is something we do to another; hearing we do with them. Listening is concentrating on ourselves and our doing; hearing is letting others and their experiences soak into us. Listening is about us; hearing is about the others, and more than that, it is about the connections between the others and us.
:- Doug.
You might ask why we need community disorganizers and I will ask you Can today’s problems be solved in the old ways? If not, our thinking and our ways must turn.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 943
I like purposes. One can live with purposes. Goals are ends, deaths. Purposes bring life, purposes swim and dance, purposes enable us to go unknowing. Purposes are eyes-open to obstacles and oppositions and give us the heart to continue nevertheless. Purposes can meet the changing landscape—woods and rivers, plains and mountains, uphill and down, beauty and ruggedness, people with different skins, ideas and lookout points upon the world. Purposes are Mother Teresa in Calcutta, Jesus on a cross, Gautama finding enlightenment in suffering.
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
Who has the problem?
Who has a piece of the response?
Is the answer simple?
Who will disagree about the response?
Are there only two possible futures?
How far apart are cause and effect?
Is there only one direction people can want to go?
Is there only one thing people are interested in?
What do we want?
From these we can get clues for the best way: do we decree the answer and institute compliance; or do we get people together to hear and create?
:- Doug.
Not always
Do we speak our peace
To stand up to another’s face
Sometimes so we might all hear
Many stories
& become able
To dream a new
:- Doug.
All humans are part of the
Unfolding
Some by being the weight unfolded
Some the unfolders
:- Doug.