The world is more complex
The world is more complex than is readily visible to us—and more adaptive.
:- Doug.
Archive for October, 2010
Cars in America
Cars in America may be about getting from here to there, or about showing one’s wealth, but primarily they seem to be about freedom and particularly autonomy—going where I want to go when I want to go.
:- Doug.
People don’t act for pay
People don’t do what they do because they are paid; they do what they love, what they have an ability to do, what they find easiest (which is a stand-in for what they do best and love).
:- Doug.
Everything is at stake
Everything is at stake, is it not, in every instant? What we choose, what responsibility we accept, what we love: these are how we respond to the stakes, these are the wagers we place, and then we throw ourselves in. Everything is at stake, in every instant. Our children, our lives, our oxygen, our water, our food, our lives. We cannot help but throwing them in—they are already in. But do we choose how they are in?
:- Doug.
What is transforming?
What is transforming? How do we recognize it? When? Only after, or can we see it while it is going on, and perhaps direct it? The answer might be that we cannot recognize it, at least not fully, while it is going on. But we can recognize that it is always going on, and perhaps jump in the stream and swim, swim in the direction we deem best for the whole.
:- Doug.
Unless you win, I lose
How do we reconcile ourselves
To a world, to a self
Never completed?
Nor do we simply forward the task
What then will stir our blood?
Where is the urgency?
We must see sovereignty anew
Not over others nor nature
But with
Participants all!
Partners all! Winners all!
Unless you win, I lose
:- Doug.
Steep in one another
We have a need to soak, absorb, steep in, one another. This is the way forward.
:- Doug.
some contribute as dead weight
Every person has a role—whether done consciously or not. Some contribute by being dead weight, others by acting against the whole, some by being the momentum, and some by helping choose the direction. Perhaps none is more important the others, but I’d prefer to be in the latter group.
:- Doug.
Harvest someone else’s efforts
We surpass ourselves, in little and big ways. Of course we want to do the larger ways, but days give us more smaller ways. Yet inherently our conversations and our actions can exceed our grasp, and we cannot know how far. Begin! Plant seeds! Do not tire: do the work. Yours to harvest someone else’s efforts, let your own go.
:- Doug.
littleness will not do
In our moments
we have time enough only
to serve the vastness
littleness will not do
:- Doug.
to the vastness
Life calls us to
give our lives away to the vastness
to our centers in others
shrivels the one who is centered on self
growth only in seeing, in making
my centers in you and you and us
:- Doug.
The wind the wind
All is movement
all is growing
we can open a through-way or
we can constrict
whatever we do
the wind the wind
goes on goes on
:- Doug.
Manufactured chickens
We have manufactured chickens to manufacture eggs for us. If we were to become extinct, what would happen to the chickens and eggs? Which came first, the chicken and the egg, or human engineers?
:- Doug.
We can make better than we do
We can make better than we do. Indeed this is the impulse that carries our kind forward. Daily. Intimately.
:- Doug.
Is it possible…?
Is it possible that what is done by a handful of humans can lift us all to a new concern? To a new richness of living? By what process? Osmosis? Salting or seeding? Preparation of the soil? Demonstration? Something akin to “hundredth monkey?” Somehow, coming together lifts us.
:- Doug.
Worlds move through me
Worlds move through me
galaxies and constellations!
coursing around me
& I am privileged to
start some wind a-blowing!
:- Doug.
First tickle then point
Once a body’s moving
direction’s easily influenced
First tickle
then point
:- Doug.
