FootprintsintheWind.com

You speak to me in public discoveries
You speak to me in life settings
You speak to me in voices of others in my life
You speak to me in in words and images flowing from my pen
You speak to me in birdsong, star & wind
You speak to me
You hear me

:- Doug.

Say one thing that is possible now that wasn’t before.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1080

When someone comes
& tells you your own story
get down on your knees
get up & cook a meal for that one
listen
for this is
the
voice
& every story is your story

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

Friend, I invite you to step with me into a larger world,

:- Doug.

What is the largest role we can see for our humanity in this world?

:- Doug.

There is a difference between willing our desired outcomes upon the world, and inviting. That difference makes a difference.

We have the faculties to will and to do. We should not abdicate them, for withholding them from others reduces their reach and their lives.

:- Doug.

It is Now for our world!

:- Doug.

The things I can do are larger and smaller. I cannot always tell which is which. Certainly I do not know how far the ripples go when my finger touches the water. The important thing is to touch. Keep on inviting.

:- Doug.

What can I do today to make the world bigger?

:- Doug.

We each have ingenuity we can put to use. More ingenuity than money. More ingenuity than politicians. More ingenuity than corporations. More ingenuity than challenges.

What we lack are 1, seeing that we have this ingenuity and 2, courage to take action. The action is simple: start. Speak, invite, do.

:- Doug.

It is now important that we encourage each other to see ourselves larger. There is more each of us can do. It is not simply recycle what we can, change our light bulbs, and then march on the government to get them to change the bigger things. (We are the government, at least in the West.)

There are things we can do. The very least of them is learn what others are doing. The very best of them is to invent new things to do. Together. In conversation.

We can help each other see new ways to earn a living that are not tied to causing harm to our nesting place—sure, people in the Gulf area have a lot of jobs tied to oil. Let’s figure out a bigger future.

:- Doug.

People point to the peccadilloes of politicians and the stupidities of CEOs and say, See, the human animal has not changed. What they are saying is, It is not worth making efforts to improve the world.

That is sad, because we can do better.

From modern brain science we learn that we have some things which were good at one time and not so good now: this is why we say the more things change the more they stay the same. So these folks are right, but they stop short. Controlling ancestral urges built in to the older parts of our brains is not like pressing a key on a keypad and a better thing pops up in our life.

Yet things do change and are changing and we are discovering new things about ourselves. For one, this very brain science lets us understand ourselves better and grow beyond the older urges. For another, we are learning that the more we are different from each other the more we are the same. For another, we are learning from each other’s history as we come together around the planet and discover each other’s points of view, metaphors, theologies and great stories.

We are able to go beyond.

And beyond we will make new mistakes. And the old ones all over again. And we will do better and larger things. If we work at it.

:- Doug.

This is the part of us that will be most productive for the world: See ourselves bigger: working on the planet, the Whole of humanity.

This is the key. How do we, together and individually, engage the Whole of humanity? This is not scaling up, as in speaking to thousands or millions at once. It is more like a batter, not simply whacking at, but swinging through, the ball.

:- Doug.

What could I do bigger?

:- Doug.

I want to fly into the world! I want to touch larger things, have them touch me!

:- Doug.

I see G*d in varied forms, with soft edges.

:- Doug.

When we finally give up the old images for God—puppet master, old man on a throne, far away clockmaker—when we let go of one monkey bar and the next one in front of us dissolves into the air, to what can we hold? Some half images have come to me; I invite you to share what images speak to you. Like the itinerant preacher telling many parables to say what the Queendom is like, we perhaps need many and malleable near images.

The source of a great river: dew collecting someplace high in the mountains, in lots of places, not just one: God is all over, is gentle and imperceptible, yet crushes and moves granite, responds, accepts, feeds all.

The wind: all around, not seen but felt.

A garden, the whole of it: the sun, the rains, the soil, the seeds, the gardener, the wind, the heat, the warmth of the bed, the working of it together to nurture and grow and live.

A tree: the leaves which green and grow and pull the tree outward and upward to its limit, then die, then resurrect themselves as food and soil for the next generating; the sap of life which flows and fills the whole with life.

Humans: who find new ways to make mistakes and new ways to come together.

A butterfly: unnoticed most of the time, but present as beauty and grace and working, working to make our yards healthy.

Let us notice near-metaphors of the just before dawn variety: soft, gentle, suggestive, with beckoning edges.

:- Doug.

Post and ponder: it’s what I do.

:- Doug.

Wills are a way
of telling our story
of making meaning of our story

:- Doug.