FootprintsintheWind.com

Offer
Offer the deeper waters
Offer your hand

:- Doug.

Trees—trees live a long time
Longer than us
Some longer than our species
Flowers—flowers were around before us
Insects before them—consider the
Delicate butterfly
Their rhythms, their beats
Hear—hear their music
The beats slower, the stillnesses longer
The day and the weather matter little

:- Doug.

Good conversation has a beginning, a muddle, and a next.

:- Doug.

Going beyond the root of a question, conversation opens us to the unexpected third option. New thinking, new people, new milieus: we can see further than a room full of mes.

:- Doug.

Much of our talking together focuses on closure and completion: let’s reach a decision so we can move on. But to what? Would you place focus on closure and completion raising a child? Would you think of death and graves and life goes on? Or of a lifetime of open possibilities?

:- Doug.

We are each the stake
and humanity itself at risk
each time we roll the dice to converse

:- Doug.

Be at home
all that’s required of you
is to go while insecure

:- Doug.

Start afresh each morning
This work of conversing requires
It will not come to me
I must go out and meet
At least open my gate

:- Doug.

Sharing a table
Opens us to sharing
Your most real and mine
Food for body
For souls, healing

:- Doug.

Go for the whole, the heart, their sacred essence. Hear, see, engage each one’s higher capacities. Not as doing to, as meeting, unsure with unsure.

:- Doug.

Answering, closing: our deadening desire to control
Questioning, opening: curiosity’s dissonance

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1420

different opinions
different skins
different religions
different wounds
in one circle

Please pass it on.

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Throws questions in my
Face, opens doors to strangers,
Casts my life to ground

:- Doug.

The miracle I bring—conversation
You bring some too

:- Doug.

Love one another?
No, we must go deeper—
Hear one another
See one another
One—we are
Another—like you—
Parcel with this one

:- Doug.

Listen for fellow possibilities.

:- Doug.

If we want conversation to produce
We must start with
Hearing

:- Doug.

Understanding: maybe the word is more: accepting, respecting, disinterested, commonality: humanity. Gathering, parcel, hearing.

:- Doug.

Conversation produces
What it produces is
Understanding opening out
Intimacy in the very heart
Of contrariety
“I see the beauty of your beloved homeland
But I would not live there”

:- Doug.

Withhold information
Withhold the key
Feed our curiosity
To uncover
This mystery

:- Doug.

Develop the dark side
Embrace character’s shadows
These nuances add richness
To the reveal

:- Doug.

Keep breathing
Keep breathing together
Conspiracy
—Can you see?—
Opens to us our We

Open your nostrils
Open your soul
Keep breathing together

:- Doug.

We are all we’ve got!
And just whom we need!

:- Doug.