FootprintsintheWind.com

We have been satiated and surfeited to the point of numbness. We are numb to the world and think that what is always will be. Done that, been there, oh well: the things we say which are the coin of our realm. We are bored and overworked. We do not see the beauty of the sunrise, we are too tired to enjoy the sounds across the water of an evening, we did not see the stars overhead last night.

Numb. But is that something to cry over? It is, because we are losing our humanity. We are paving it over, building wallets on top, working not for the joy and action of working but in order to pay for health care insurance.

:- Doug.

We have answers to everything
look them up on the Web
it’s all there!

We have time aplenty—if we can catch up
it runs ahead
it runs out

Although we eat our fill
and beyond
we hunger and thirst

But the answers are empty
in the time is no fullness
in the filling is emptiness

:- Doug.

Poke what’s been deadened.

:- Doug.

How does G*d suffer over us—wring hands over what we do—these days?

:- Doug.

What was the promise spoken over us
As we were born?
Is it still active?
Or even imaginable?
What part of your life
Are you willing to give for it?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1046

Claim your authority for then you write us large, augment our highest humanity.

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

Life as we know it—this is dying, worth grieving. We enter the darkness and cannot know the way through. But we know there is a way through and life (aka G*d) will prevail. Hearing and being heard will prevail. Community and conversation will prevail. The new way will be the way of humanity: touching, feeling, dying, suffering, grieving, weeping, rejoicing, imagining.

:- Doug.

We sit on our sofas and watch the tube (we did not even notice the tube is going away), and care not—we have become numb. It is good to see all the help flowing into areas where there is major media attention on a tragedy, but how many of us grieve for those in Darfur, and the 100s of other tragedies in our neighborhood? Do we get up and plant the community garden? Do we meet our neighbors to improve what is on our own block or the next one over?

:- Doug.

We are in danger of working too much on the economy and getting that we are numb to the life of our brothers, sisters, grandchildren and all our relations.

:- Doug.

What is dying, what is to be grieved?

:- Doug.

A major role of education is attention.

:- Doug.

Before you protest to the powers that be, see if they have the power to make the change you seek: they may lack imagination, or will, or political strength.

:- Doug.

Life is not ending
But the as we know it part is

:- Doug.

We have no natural enemy except
ourselves
and we are actively at work

:- Doug.

Ending!
It is ending!
Is there nothing to do?
No, nothing.

:- Doug.

My mind is too fast for my mind to keep up!

:- Doug.

It is not so much the system we need to work on, as our abdication of our responsibility for us.

:- Doug.

The ordinary and reasonable is to keep on with what we have. The wearied is to remember that we have done that, been there. Out beyond is to try something different, to try to make it better: to bring along our hearts and heads and hands: community.

We are too big, our problems and interactions are too complex, for one brain on a stick. We need all of us, all of each of us. If we don’t get it, we will continue to stumble and may just fall. Our grandchildren will be less, live less.

This is what is urgent.

:- Doug.

Our lives are made up of our days: we will have no better tomorrow if we do not today.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1045

The highest in us
Requires of us
Gathering within
Time for silence
Space for not knowing

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

Can we be, today
intensively aware
reflectively attentive?

:- Doug.

The question is, when you are gathering a meeting, what do you do? Do you seek to inform the uninformed, or do you look for action? Do you seek to rally the troops, or do you open the space for our best reflective attention? Do you work to gather all our diversity and ingenuity and hearing of all our voices, and provide us a nurturing place to grow something new and bright? How do you tell when a meeting is good?

:- Doug.

Survive fire:
become flame

:- Doug.