FootprintsintheWind.com

After a committee meeting this morning, a realization: If Martha had been putting this project together alone, even if she had the time to do it all, it would not have been as good as it is because it would just be one person’s ideas, they would be untried against others’ experiences, wisdom, feelings, intuitions and spirits. We need each other. We think better—and indeed maybe only—together.

:- Doug.

Sometimes we worry
& the word of another
gives us new perspective

Sometimes we’re stuck
& helping another unstick
loosens our bands

Sometimes the facts from the teacher
need a bridge to us
or a hand to pull us across

Sometimes sharing
our real life’s pain
gives us hope

Times we make something good happen
we naturally ask people who care to help
because we think better together

:- Doug.

The work is in going out to meet this world.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1135

I aim to make myself softer ever softer.

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

In twinkling of eyes
In kindliness of handshake
In garden ground beneath summer feet
In leaning forward toward each other
To hear
In warmth and heat of interchange
More than in far off sky
It’s here I meet G*d

:- Doug.

Observer must participate
For good or ill
Or get twisted
& die by drops

:- Doug.

Just came across this and it has me wondering and it is has me uplifted:

What if we fail? So what if we fail? | Integral Yeshe.

What I really liked was this:

“I no longer know why I’m doing what I’m doing. I really do believe that my efforts are doomed to failure. I won’t succeed in changing even my small part of the world. I truly believe that our civilisation will not change its unsustainable ways before it falls over the cliff. I only know that I am still called to act, to care, to strive, to stand up for what I cannot resist the call to stand up for – and above all, to participate.

“…. I feel much stronger, more grounded and resilient, now that I have accepted the inevitability of what I most fear. I no longer feel I have anything left to defend or protect….

“All I need to do is follow the call, when it comes, from my deepest core which is also my umbilical connection to the Whole….

“…my mantra for this year is “what if it’s easy?” And it usually turns out to be exactly that.”

Yes!

:- Doug.

Heart is in just being here
Being present
Flowing out
Receiving in

:- Doug.

Tires do plash
The snowy rain
Now trail away
To silence
& sacred
Now

:- Doug.

Circling in
by ear
to hear
a heart

:- Doug.

It’s no miracle
What humans can do
We’re divinely born

:- Doug.

Make your Estate Planning as simple as possible—but no simpler.

:- Doug.

To fail to engage is to commit suicide by moments, by inches.

:- Doug.

How does one live life, alone,
Without another to share?
How does one await death?
And yet, awaiting death
Is not the object of our years,
But living the moments,
Giving the moments.
One must find,
Or let one’s self be found by,
Or invent our way to
Love, live, engage.

:- Doug.

Be rich as you are human
One hermit upon a mountain spake
& yet one truth is found
Another way around:
Be as human as you are

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1134

When I’m 64
was a land
only rumored of
Then

But it’s
pretty
lively
Now

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

What is life?
Love & Meeting
These twain only
These twain one

:- Doug.

The world is larger than the law
Than medicine and finance all
These speak not or too seldom of—
The widower’s lostness and having no one to call home
Eight year olds chasing away from casket
White chickens and red wheel barrows
The engendering of our kind
Hugs and tears and awkward words
Flower beds that won’t get tended this year

:- Doug.

I teach with questions.

:- Doug.

What is healing in the nursing home? What is whole-making for an elder?

:- Doug.

How big your circle?
We sit in circle
Hearing each other
Being heard
How big?
These chairs?
These friends?
This neighborhood?
This hemisphere?
This planet?
…?

:- Doug.

Circling, hear
Spiral in
To heart

:- Doug.

Take time
Make conversation
Make wholeness

:- Doug.