Grow into your ideals
Grow into your ideals
Be a consummate dreamer
Show us what we can dare
:- Doug.
Archive for April, 2011
Do elders need fixing?
Care can be repair
But do elders need fixing
Or caring: sharing the path?
:- Doug.
Is elder care repair?
In elder care, some hear repair the broken
In caring I hear sharing the path
:- Doug.
Catch the fun for ourselves
Running out ahead
G*d eludes
So we might
Catch the fun
For ourselves
:- Doug.
Our moments serve our purpose
Letters and words serve the idea, not the other way around; so too our moments serve our purpose, whether chosen by default or purposely.
:- Doug.
Holding the elusive
We might enjoy leaps of vision
Because they will allow us to think
We have caught hold of G*d’s hem
We do well to remember
‘Tis ephemeral our memory
Nor can our words hold the elusive
:- Doug.
Inside this embrace
In my experience
G*d is not above
But surrounding—
Between and among us—
We are inside this embrace
:- Doug.
To do the work we need to do
To do the work we need to do
There is more power among than between
There is more power between than within
There is more power within than we know
All the known power in the universe
Is potential in opening spaces among
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 1147–What is the best we can want?
Footprints in the Windsm # 1147
What do we want to do? What do we want? Do we really want to only fill our bellies, to drink beer and watch TV? Or do we want to have some good come from our having lived?
What if we asked our children, What do we want? What if we asked our elders, What do we want? For the seven generations, What is the best we can want?
Do we really want to kill somebody? Do we really want to throw somebody out of our presence? What motivates those kinds of thoughts and is it what makes us feel we are acting out of our best and highest ideals? Which would your mother say? “Beat up someone, honey,” or “Play nice with everyone.” What do we want?
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
Care can be seen as something done to an It; Caring is how friends are kind to one another.
Care can be seen as something done to an It; Caring is how friends are kind to one another.
:- Doug.
Breathing and sleep: incomprehensible
Albert Schweitzer composed a lovely prayer while preschool age: “O, heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath; guard them from all evil, and let them sleep in peace.”
It raises for me the question of whether all things which have breath also sleep, and perhaps vice versa. If creatures from other planets did not have anything like respiration nor sleep, it would be a state utterly incomprehensible to us.
So too incomprehensible for us would be a species that not have communion with others of their kind.
These are all things so interwoven with us that we might rightly see them as defining us.
:- Doug.
Dreaming us
G*d is a dream!
Dreaming us
Dreaming whole
Dreaming ever larger
Unknown, unknowable
Inviting us here
To hear
:- Doug.
We all have the power to be kind
We all have the power to be kind. We all have the choice to be kind. It is mystery and wonder why we choose otherwise. Or maybe not: maybe there is a world of hurt and wounds that need healing.
We all have the power to come together in sacred encounters. It is a mystery and wonder why we choose otherwise. Or maybe not: maybe there is a world of fear of pain and wounds that needs making whole.
Sacred encounters. Mystery and wonder. And we have a role.
:- Doug.
government shut down
Still talk of a federal government shut down. How silly. These people in Congress are so set on their own ideologies that they are putting lives at stake. They are out of touch with reality.
:- Doug.
Kindness is the way to live
Kindness is the way to
Live
There is no other
Not chasing Dollars scuttling along
Just out of reach
Not long hours sweating
Toward recognition from others
Not getting accepted by
All the beautiful people
Only simply giving
Kindness to all is the way to
Live
:- Doug.
Is this the best we can do?
Call this world to turn to essence, to one. Is this the best we can do? Is this the best we are?
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 1146–out of letters?
Footprints in the Windsm # 1146
As writers compose books out of letters, we choose in the instants and so compose our lives out of instants. But we do not compose books out of letters, rather out of ideas which must out. So too we compose our lives out of wholenesses which must out. The difficulty is perhaps just here: we suppose we compose our lives out of instants; when in fact we compose out of the idea that our instants don’t matter, that our lives cannot turn the globe.
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
Today’s sacred work is to…
Today’s sacred work is to move people outside their selves into one—the holy, the other.
This suggests we need to have reverence for the other, welcome the stranger, offer gracious hospitality to him or her.
But it also suggests the fearsome work of grieving and criticizing, opening us to reflection and turning.
:- Doug.
