FootprintsintheWind.com

We each and all have a contra naturam, contrary nature, bedeviling our creativity, giving it push back to take to roots and heartwood. This part breaks out worst in human cruelty, criminality, and mayhem. It can be suppressed and ignored; it can also be the flint striking our heart, setting our good fires loose in the earth.

:- Doug.

We are living an ancient story. I have been living an ancient story. I brought my hopes to the adult world and experienced failings, wounds. I experienced burial under the concerns of raising a family and making a living. Now I am seeing not just a larger picture but my original life force. Failings, dyings, reawakenings.

:- Doug.

There is no way to do this work: rather look the persons in front of us in the souls. Find the poke holes and places ripe for ripping. Ask questions. Tell stories.

We all go through failings, deaths and reawakenings. The kinds of questions and stories we can raise are the ones that look for thin places where soul and spirit are near the surface: tender ego bits; hints of hubris; masks; shynesses; secrets; slips.

:- Doug.

I have long had this notion that the essential part of me is piled over: I have a deep desire to let myself out. I cry out with but muffled voice. I have thought, but not much consciously, that someone else did this to me. Remember the story of the house fire and the babe in the buggy, piled over with bed clothes? Yet now I am beginning to see also I am doing this to myself: putting on masks to earn a living, to fit in with people at church and workplaces, at school, in law. Some people are giving me inklings they feel the same. The way out from under? To pay attention to the muffled voice; to throw off the foreign stuff. To recognize we all have mufflers. We all contribute to the piles on each other. We can help our original voices be heard.

:- Doug.

We do not engage. We fear life. We fear losing our life, but we fear life more.

:- Doug.