FootprintsintheWind.com

The invitation is broadly given: all are invited, even those you do not know, maybe even do not like them. The invitation is given to you: open your heart.

The freeing is of your soul: you can fly even if your arms are deep in the mud, loving.

The whole-making is for us: together and all. There is ever more whole to make.

:- Doug.

Yes, it is absolutely necessary to think of money. Life has money, but money ought not to have life.

:- Doug.

Minutes ago, the sky was all clouds
now it is mostly blue
The sky is moving
ever moving
as is everything

:- Doug.

At root, there are only two ways to face the world: in fear or in love.

:- Doug.

What are the next steps to creating work that matters?

:- Doug.

If we take care of you, who will take care of us?

:- Doug.

What is new about these times is that people are naming what has heart and meaning for them, and especially they are doing so nearly on purpose. We have reached a ridge where we might fall back to the old sleepiness and old quarrels, or we might jump off into consciously naming and pursuing.

:- Doug.

Disorganizing in some cases will be replacing hierarchy with three-dimensional networking.

:- Doug.

We can help whom and where we are able. We do not need to love the whole world. Still, there is good in lifting our eyes, doing a larger good.

:- Doug.

The first motion of love
is give
there is no second

:- Doug.

We are an angry people, just looking for a politician to feed our anger—or maybe there is something else will kindly fill us whole.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1230

We make this world: we have responsibility. We do not determine its outcome, but we affect its direction. We must choose direction; no, there is no must, there is only responsibility for what we do. Do we help things along or hinder? Is there a middle path? Dead weight is hindrance. There is however dread choice: do we mobilize, do we surpass? This then makes it clear there is no middle path: lying on our couch or doing only what our forbears did is not meeting our responsibility: mobilize! Surpass!

And the greater of these is to mobilize. We cannot be assured that we will surpass, but we can assure that we get going—ourselves.

So meet. Meet ourselves. Turn to and meet those next to you. Meet your divinity. Mobilize! Throw your whole life at life!

Mobilize toward what? Toward the music, the poetry, the light and rhythm in each, in all. (Music, poetry, light, rhythm are all synonyms for, pieces of, divinity. Let us remember!)

Assault! Open worlds! Open hearts, eyes, minds! WEave! Sing, Brother, dance, Sister! Mobilize! Make the world life sing!

See the new, take in the wonder, hear the song, then mobilize it! Throw your life away on this, for it shall be thrown away in all events! Throw our life away!

Please pass it on.

© c 2012, 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 if we remember they are not just commandments but imagine-ments?

:- Doug.

Is our country worth having? The it is worth some dedicated thinking together time.

:- Doug.

Throw it in the ash can! Our school system: pretty much all of it! Finally put my finger on why. Conformity: that’s what the Industrial Revolution needed. So that’s what we teach. Desks in a row. Authority up front. Everybody gets the same facts and information. Poured in. Bolted down. “We” (who know) are doing to “them” (a mass of Its). As if learning were a product of teaching! (Little wonder then that teachers are so ill paid, and administrators abound. Teachers have their own “teachers” who control what they teach, how they are paid.) Let’s replace it with an education system. Let’s lead people out. Let’s encourage them to invent: to create their own world. (We will never go where they must). Let’s encourage students to find their own answers. Especially their own questions. Help them figure out which answers and questions they can trust. Encourage individuals to work together. Let us open space for new worlds. Let us get out of their way. They can go beyond where we have. Let us free. Let us invite. Let us make whole. It is holy work.

:- Doug.

Our work: Difficult conversations as acts of service.

:- Doug.

Good happens
when families
come together

:- Doug.

Peggy Holman writes in Engaging Emergence: “I think of resilience as a plateau upon which the system can play, performing its normal functions in safety. A resilient system has a big plateau, a lot of space over which it can wander, with gentle, elastic walls that will bounce it back, if it comes near a dangerous edge. As a system loses its resilience, its plateau shrinks, and its protective walls become lower and more rigid, until the system is operating on a knife-edge, likely to fall off in one direction or another whenever it makes a move.”

This speaks to our current political space, where each group of politicians is trying to circumscribe the space for the “debate.” Each pulls in the walls tighter, hoping to leave only room for itself and not the other. It is no wonder so many of the candidates seem to be “going over the edge.”

So how do we, mere mortals and not politicians, work to add more space, more resilience to our political climate? Is Stephen Colbert’s Super PAC one way? Could we open space in a community or on Twitter or through Journalism that Matters or some other way to bring resilience? Who cares?

Maybe that is the real question facing us: do we care what happens to our politics, to our country?

The question is, is there enough resilience for us to live, as a people to be alive? “Without vision the people perish,” yet what is our common vision? Do we have anything in common, or must we give in to the despair the politicians are spreading? Where does our politics leave room for spirit?

:- Doug.

Good happens when
we come together

:- Doug.

Consider:
look to
the stars
with you

:- Doug.

We do not connect people, create relationships, for we are already one, connected and related. Yet too often we do not even see each other, only see objects and obstacles, if even we see anyone. What we can do is shift our connections to our relations. Shift toward wholeness and realness. Is this, what we can do we ought do.

:- Doug.

Let’s start with the lens through which you are presently looking at the world. If that is the lens of sin and smallness and unworth let’s look and see if that sees all, if that includes beauty and goodness and what can be done—in a word, divinity. Let us work toward seeing through sacred eyes. Let us see where we are invited, for what we are freed, with whom we are called to make whole.

:- Doug.

Where is Here? When is Now? My world is beyond my skin, beyond my eyes seeing. Eternity invades my when. Where is Here? When is Now? So I can be with someone leagues away, in another hour of eternity. Not a license to leave, rather an invitation to Now-Here. “Martha,” “next week,” come, meet.

:- Doug.