FootprintsintheWind.com

There are moments touched
by a larger
(such a small word is God)

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1298

Let us use phrases like too early—so far—not yet. It is compassionate. It says there is more good to come, more good for us to find. Together.

Please pass it on.

© c 2013, 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

Life is in the interruptions.

:- Doug.

Do not seek to attract people
Rather speak to and from the really real
within humanity

:- Doug.

Frozen Christianity is
somewhere around the first century
few new parables
few maturer understandings
When will our preachers
give up our childish ways?

:- Doug.

Not a life of balance
A life of wholeness
With welcome for all the oops!

:- Doug.

Our suffering can show us
the limits of God
Arms small enough to embrace us

:- Doug.

A god whom we set up as
consistent
is thereby unable to respond
A god whom we set up as
omnipotent
is thereby unable to know us weak
The really real is somehow
larger than this

:- Doug.

the center &
the circumference
unlimited
unreachable
touching & touchable
yet we assign names
to this mystery

:- Doug.

Is G*d the boss
who keeps it all running?
Or the all that
keeps loving?
Or something
larger still?

Even if we’ve made up
our own pictures
of divinity
we are still mostly good
to one another
loving one another
incapable of living alone
always trying to make
the world better:
What does that say
about the really real,
the all that
embraces us?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1297

Slow me, slow me! Sometimes I want to quickly move along. Yet the best of life is always here.

Please pass it on.

© c 2013, 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

Can you pray without words?
Silence the word-making
in your brain?
With reality just
be?

:- Doug.

When we live beyond ourselves
our little crises, worries and troubles
& weave our humanity
into others’ lives
we find happiness

:- Doug.

Some people need pablum
others the full fruit, grain,
flower, vegetable & juice.
Why offer only banalities?
Preachers! You have
lost our way!
You think you will
confuse your message
if you make it larger,
really real.
Your puny sheltering
the message needs not.

:- Doug.

When do we ask the child
what they want?
At the death of a guppy
a puppy
or Pappy?

:- Doug.

Dying is a sacred
secret thing

:- Doug.

Humans don’t so much convey
to people
as from them:
Family does not know
what is best
for their loved one;
Still, they have
—beneath their
unbending positions—
something good in their hearts
We as helpers are called
to go to work
to help them
make conversation
to find this love

:- Doug.

Every day, all day
I am swimming in G*d

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1296

Today we have all these chronic diseases. So we die slowly, over weeks and months and years. We are perhaps too early in this phase to realize that dying is a human event we must work with and care about. So far all we have been doing is figuring out how to defer dying. But when it is here, we have not yet worked out a way to be present, to respond. We are just beginning to notice the suffering we are putting upon others and ourselves.

When someone is dying
There’s a land out beyond hope
Where help & despair & hope & love
& all the rest
Can meet
We can do one next right thing
Even if the right thing
Cannot be known

Please pass it on.

© c 2013, 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

Look at the tree:
a seed, some roots, some leaves
then branches sprout
and limbs sprout
and twigs
and leaves
life from life just sprouts
animals including humans too
through ages of ages
life from life just sprouts

:- Doug.

Live your whole life.

:- Doug.

Making our days worthwhile
—isn’t this what life needs to be about
—now & in the crisis?

:- Doug.

I like the quaint and true-to-the-core way Friends speak.

:- Doug.