FootprintsintheWind.com

Even when the world’s
all still
something’s moving,
pulsing, maybe whispering
our special names

:- Doug.

Makers & Finders: Inventors we! Say less, say less….

:- Doug.

Just a gathering in the fabric of the whole. This means that a touch on the fabric elsewhere is felt anywhere, and I might feel it too. It does not matter what mistakes I might make in feeling or hearing or touching, for the whole fabric will even it out, and I like all have all within, both good and bad, excellent and stupid, and still it matters for ever that I do what I can to move it to wholeness for that is its nature, that is my nature, that is our nature.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1276

First, live well together; only then, see how the money parts can serve your living.

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

Do you want to
hear your name
called?
Then you must
make & find
your way to
stand in the face of
—to hear—
the one & ones
through whom
the call
unfolds

:- Doug.

Just a knot
am I,
a gathering,
in the fabric
of the whole
(even the word
universe
is meaningless)
So when I awoke
this morning
at the time
I’d told myself
I wondered
was the awakening
from within
or without?
I see this is a
nonsense question

:- Doug.

Whole-making, spiraling, finding each other, being here, conversing, larger, loving: all words spiraling around the one, the holy center. This is my task; this is our task.

:- Doug.

This is the daily work, the work within projects, the lifting of eyes! And so today is a message for us—and for me: look for the larger, the diviner, ever lift your eyes.

:- Doug.

Deflect drab
Wear bright
Give colors to life!

:- Doug.

Lift your eyes
Lift your eyes
See the hem
of the larger
This my mantra-prayer
to you
Something larger
Your conversing’s birthing

:- Doug.

There are a thousand right ways to converse, a thousand right ways to love!

:- Doug.

Let us be inventing new ways to love.

:- Doug.

I don’t need to have the words. My work can and ought to be about conceptions.

:- Doug.

Is love about growing closer? Is conversation? Love does pull us together, but it also frees us to move out. As does conversation. Then is conversation love? Could be.

Move out to what? To activate all we are. To be as whole as we can be. Ultimately that means to love others, to draw near to others. To create a product? This is to help others. To tell stories and jokes, to sing songs? This is to love others, to make them happy. Those who are seeking to fill their wallets or their egos have only bent love in on themselves, misshapen.

:- Doug.

Fourteen years ago I wrote, “Growth in closeness is a key.” Conversation is about growing ever closer. This is love. Since the person we are to love is infinite we ever grow.

:- Doug.

This is our challenge: to find the infinities and then sharpen them into tools to do. Make something happen in this world of things and senses and mores. There is no recipe, only a standing ready and a setting off, a meeting and a doing, in a word: loving.

:- Doug.

I do not have everybody figured out. When I ask my grandson and granddaughter what they each like in school, I am searching for the infinities within them, infinities that are graspable by my mind. And I need to remember to look in everybody—my wife, my sons, my collaborators, my clients, new and old.

:- Doug.

Reminding people of the infinities within each and all, reminding me of them, is helpful, helpful because it opens me to the larger within others.

:- Doug.

Two people who have within them an infinity of spirit and humanity and possibility with them meet. And each raises each to the power of infinity.

:- Doug.

Buber challenges us by saying there is no recipe for meeting: it is always fresh; all we can do is be ready. I see each time will be different because each is a fresh between/spirit. It is also a challenge because you cannot control your You, only meet him or her or God. You will likely have a new challenge for us each time, and we meet as two infinities.

:- Doug.

We can seize this whole readying element—love. We can point out the wearying. We can ask What really matters? What do you want, deep down? What world do we want for our grandchildren—contention or collaboration?

:- Doug.

What is the true element of the human spirit? Perhaps we are tiring of continual bickering, and difference-seeking, and selling to get. But wearying merely prepares the way, readies, weakens the hold of these ghosts. What the element is is love: the pull towards humanity. Human attraction, human gravity.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1275

People need this conversation about living well our last chapter. They need to realize that as Jerry Walthall said, some of us want to die on the boat dock watching the sun and drinking a beer with our dog. I’d add: not in a hospital ICU with beep-beep-beep.

But the family, the family, gotta love ’em: they want to hang on to the last thread. “Do something” says our society. “Do something” say our bones. “More existence is more life.” “One more breath, one more year, maybe something can be found.”

Where is the value in dying well, in living well up to our last breath?

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