FootprintsintheWind.com

Belong
Where do you?
Whom?
Now?

:- Doug.

You belong in this world. With us, what will you do?

:- Doug.

Home is from where we set forth
on our rounds
& to where we return
at set of sun
Home is where we live
our heart
All day wherever we are
we sense home’s direction
Wherever we come to ourselves
let us make our home
let us belong

:- Doug.

When you are sitting passively, receiving information, one day is plenty. On the other hand, when you are actively throwing yourself in, 2 ½ days is just barely enough.

:- Doug.

Go down the easy path a bit. Enter the path more and more. Walk it. Easily.

:- Doug.

What can I do? See and hear. Act on what I see and hear. To love is to act.

Hear what the person is saying, invite conversing. Invite living. What is living within that? How does life want to break out here? What is the best you can picture?

:- Doug.

What invitation will bring out the life-making?

:- Doug.

On my client, I lavish attention.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 995

If we concentrate on what people with Alzheimer’s are missing, on how their “condition” is affecting both of us, we stir up things for them, cause consternation, guilt, inferiority feelings and feelings of things not going rightly. But if we start from love, then we can go smoothly. Paddle in the direction the river is going.

Please pass it on.

© c 2010, 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

Much of what we experience in our culture is dead or deadening. That’s why we need to disorganize—gently, life-givingly.

:- Doug.

What does life call for?

:- Doug.

I start the day with quiet time, and gradually move from there into my rounds.

:- Doug.

The practice of law is, for me, more art than science; the adding of credentials past a certain point serves to reduce the art—the loving and caring and life-making. That’s why for me the lawyer must be a poet or other artist.

:- Doug.

Small symmetries, large asymmetry, life!

:- Doug.

For this budget (of time and talent and passion), how much life can we add to this part of life you care about?

:- Doug.

Tickle and pinch life—till it’s lively!

:- Doug.

Hear what wants to come forth; intensify.

:- Doug.

Let us carefully pursue and pursue the question: What invitation will bring out the most intense centers in the field?

:- Doug.

We are asking for sacrifice: sacrifice of time and talents to improve the whole. What’s in it for them? Nothing but life. Only life. Life for their community. Life for their children and grandchildren. Life for the whole. Maybe some will rub off on them. But that depends on them, and how much they sacrifice of their life.

It is not free. It is costly. It is not givers gain, for the givers who seek gain miss it.

:- Doug.

To give life: this is our job, our task. We give the life we have to fields surrounding us and those we love. We share, donate, cut off and throw into the pot, a piece of our life. Our individual life. And it comes back to us as life of the whole.

:- Doug.

The architect (the archi chief, tect builder) has a role: to pay attention, to listen and look for what there is latent, to hear and see what is latent, and to work very diligently to make sure it is brought forth. The work done is the work of the architect and the field of centers. Emphasis on and.

This is our role as architects of invitation.

:- Doug.

what simply matters

about opening space

about who and what and why

evoking a ten year journey

graspable threads

sail flaps in the night breeze

there will I go

make land

take a chair

its back’s rounded spokes

fit my hands

as I sit backwards on it

red flaking paint

over what was aquamarine

firm grace

and wearinesses

weights for our limbs

but we did well today

and we shall feel at home

weariness and all

what simply matters

:- Doug.

That of G*d
within is intimate
knowing
known
meeting

:- Doug.