Find specific people and invite them together.
Find specific people and invite them together.
:- Doug.
Archive for January, 2011
Giving our first fruits
By reading, writing and meditating first thing I am giving my first fruits to the highest and best we can touch in our world.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 1117–Heart stuff, not wallet stuff
Footprints in the Windsm # 1117
We want something that pulls us forward and up. Heart stuff, not wallet stuff.
Please pass it on.
© c 2011, 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.
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Invite conversations to see what we can make better.
Invite conversations to see what we can make better.
:- Doug.
spread no word; spread action
It’s not about spreading the word but the action of conversation. This is more complex. We’ve got to invite people together.
:- Doug.
Wind invites two clouds/…
Wind invites two clouds
Each permeates the other
Which? But together?
:- Doug.
The city was never within our control
A city is a place growing out of humanity, an organic entity ever finding its own shape. Part of that shape is its government, but that is a late birth. People gather, then they think they should consciously shape their gathering.
We want to control and shape, for why else do we have thumbs? We want to put our mark upon the world, to keep it from getting out of our control.
But it was never within our control.
What we can do is invite, and if we invite what they want invited, then we have a party. The city comes first. The gathering comes first: we want to touch and be touched, for we are not whole until we are with. We think together. We are, together.
This together is sometimes called love. Whatever it is, it attracts us to one another. We are attracted to a human face. This together is perhaps of the essence of the holy.
Together is moving, thronging, milling. Together is creating. Sometimes it creates irritation and anger, sometimes excitement and imagination. Always creating.
:- Doug.
First the city, then the government
First the city, then the government. “A city is the natural expression of our humanity.” Here is a place for us to do holy work.
:- Doug.
Presence in meeting
What am I getting out of meeting? What am I putting in? My presence. Hearing.
:- Doug.
Heaven might just be a conversation with God.
Heaven might just be a conversation with God.
:- Doug.
I’ll give you the keys; you can drive
I’m on a spiritual, conversational adventure: What can we make better? Want to join me? I’ll give you the keys: you can drive.
:- Doug.
Reminding us we are in charge
Conversation done well reminds ordinary people we are in charge.
:- Doug.
Juxtaposition of TV ads
A juxtaposition of commercials on TV last night: a pharmaceutical company and a law firm: selling you a new drug and someone to sue the seller when it injures or kills you! Poetic justice.
:- Doug.
just don’t believe that about God.
I believe God; I just don’t believe that about God.
I don’t believe God is an old man with a beard sitting on a throne directing traffic.
I don’t believe God is our sugar daddy, granting our wishes.
I do believe that I have met You face to face, that You have called my name.
I do believe that you are with us, grieve with us, suffer with us.
I do believe you suffer.
I do believe that you are distributed and pop up everywhere and every when.
I do believe that you meet us. More than we realize: in all our days, all our hours, all moments: momentarily.
I do believe that you ask that we take responsibility for our world.
I don’t believe that God fixes all broken things to our order, but I do believe that you make things work all towards good in the whole.
I do believe that you are more in the whole than concentrated in one place.
I do believe that there is meaning in our existence, and that we have a say in that meaning, and that meaning is a conversation between you and us.
I do believe that you are love and conversation.
I do believe that you respond, and that you are moving and acting much more than static object.
I do believe there is much of you that is unknown to me and to us, and yet, and yet, there is an essence a touching of us that is all we have to know. We cannot know ourselves; how then to know another; and why would we ever want to, since here is our adventure: discovering you and us and together; making you and us and together?
Friend, thee we explore, we we make.
:- Doug.
The essences
What are the essences of conversation done well? Subject matter that engages the future, that moves us toward humanity. How does that differ from chit chat? Chit chat says “I want to stay engaged with you. I like you. Our relationship matters.” Conversations that count go further and reach out beyond the interpersonal to the extra-personal. They are community wide in intended effects.
They intend therefore to engage more than one other person. They are we-centered, where We is 3 or more.
They engage each person’s imagination.
They are about now and future.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 1116–Soon ten years later
Footprints in the Windsm # 1116
Come back with me to September 11, 2001:
What were you doing when you heard? Who told you? How many times over those days did you watch the towers collapse, one after the other? The plane go into the second tower? Did you think about the people jumping? The priest praying for people struck down as he prayed? The people walking as ghosts covered in grey ash?
How many times did you ask each other what was happening? Do you remember the stillness of the skies? Do you remember feeling closer to your countrymen? Did you put out a flag? Were you more tender to New Yorkers than ever before?
How did it end? Someone got on TV and said the way to show we are not bowed is to—what? Go shopping.
That killed the spirit of those days.
What happened was this. We were not primarily in a place of sadness, or shock, or grief. We were in a place of oneness: We were one people sharing sadness, shock and grief. I remember how people all over the world reached out to us—condolences expressed to an American couple in a restaurant in France, people in Canada putting up air passengers in private homes, emails—O! the emails!
And what did the call to the malls do? It called us back to separation, to individuality, to fragmentation! It hurt!
We might have gone through the stages of grief. We might have examined ourselves to see if we had contributed. We might have taken the hands extended to us. We might have sought understanding and to understand. We might have claimed our humanity. Now we can mourn…ourselves.
What does this have to do with conversation? Everything! September 11 is in our past—and our future. But it does not have to be our now—we can choose.
Population compression makes it inevitable that we will meet our antagonist more each year. But we can choose how we meet—in violence or in intercourse.
War, disease, oppression are in our future—unless we choose—to work the difficult work together—never assured of the outcome.
Please pass it on.
© c 2011, 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
Is conversation the way of the world?
Is conversation the way of the world? Yes. And No. It is the way the world moves when it moves and is the way the world does not move when it does not budge. Sounds like momentum: A person engaged engages those around; a person unengaged tends to grow moldy.
:- Doug.
Our possible humanity
Let us ponder our possible humanity. How human can we be? How humane?
:- Doug.
