FootprintsintheWind.com

The profound work of conversation is a contact with strangeness, leading to a change of awareness, participation and, in the final stage, essence.

:- Doug.

What if enjoyment were our work in life?

:- Doug.

God the relation
with us, the between
say not over there,
outside, an object:
rather like when a
freshening breeze
touches our face

:- Doug.

‘Tis the gap creates
between poetic and rational
between more living and more conscious
between divinity and humanity
between lightning and thunder
here seeing there doing:
seeding—gestating—birthing
silence, space doing nothing
the gap opening creates

:- Doug.

No use have I for sacred mountains
More sacred are the people
And the happenings every day

:- Doug.

Warm the morning and fog it brings
The snow that days ago fell
Is today into the air rising again

:- Doug.

Moving = changing = loving. It cannot be said that God is changeless.

:- Doug.

Is this not what I mean by spiritual? The wind blows that we might turn (metanoia). A felt change in our core.

:- Doug.

This happens in Open Space: We experience a felt change in consciousness or even in core. We gather to others for a new work. The work of Open Space is new work, new persons.

:- Doug.

If we can change hearts (core, coeur), then we change love, we change the world, make it more human for all.

:- Doug.

Sympathetic participation in a process
Felt change of consciousness
Unthinking as well as thinking
Juxtaposition, simile and metaphor
Suggesting:
These my muses be
For beyond—and poetry

:- Doug.

Strange is my friend
Incomprehensible is not
When I my poetry utter

:- Doug.

The work of conversation is a felt change of consciousness.

:- Doug.

Don’t stand out from us
stand among us
be
with

:- Doug.

Engage, consciously engage, the all of the all of us, and the together of us: here is how we progress, here is how we love.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1385

Help me speak from my dementia
Since I have trouble thinking
But I feel, I see, I exist
I want to love you
And be respected
Because I am, still
I remember, I remember
The songs, the dances,
The babies
I don’t have the words so much
Any more
But my life
and yours
Are more

Please pass it on.

© c 2014, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/342-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

:- Doug.

One person dispensing what she has to one hundred people who have something as well is missing out. Better, let us make as our watch word, How can we, together, make life better? Let us go on an exploration. All, even the least “knowing” have something to offer, else there would be no meaning in our “out of the mouths of babes….”

:- Doug.

The work of the world is not in one person alone. It must be completed between persons. Each of the persons contributes—brings forth—as does the being that arises between them. This being is no more ephemeral and no less real than the lap that shows up when you sit.

:- Doug.

The work of the world is conversation. To the extent you are in front of a group of people you are obstructing their work. There is a certain hubris in the notion that one person’s new ideas—products of intellectual activity—are so valuable to have a hundred people sit and listen! Are ideas more valuable than getting work done? Is intellectual labor more noble than relational or creative or physical? These are not separable.

:- Doug.

The beast that is
strangling the life
out of you
is named Control—
and you, you think
you are holding it
by the leash
between you

:- Doug.

You are right to fear Open Space: you have correctly intuited its power. It might destroy the world you have so carefully constructed out of your control. What will you do without control? It is possible you will live?

:- Doug.

Going around in circles
The wheel progresses

:- Doug.

Do metaphors change
The object, the meaning
Or us?

:- Doug.