FootprintsintheWind.com

What can you invite in others
that they can do and you cannot?

:- Doug.

Making a human music
out of the cacophony of the ages

:- Doug.

Dare to dance with a muse
She may whisper
Into your mouth

:- Doug.

The baton rising
brings coherence
to tuning of instruments
two senses engage
sense is engendered

:- Doug.

How are you greatest talents related to your biggest awkwardness?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2063

Why do I want to get grandparents talking across generations? Recently I answered really authentically: mutual influencing. Why mutual? Because we have something to learn from them and they from us; and beyond that to carom and engender. Why influencing? Because we can get better as a species.

Why get better? No, it is not an ego thing. Sure I’d like people later to know my name, but what good does it do me? Now? None at all.

I want to give because I have a responsibility to help my co-residents of this planet, this universe. It is my fair rent for the space I am occupying. We are here for one another. Only this.

Maybe later generations will not agree with me. That is OK. They will grow as they will grow. Whatever happens is the only thing that did. I want to give them as many choices as possible.

Mutual influencing, mutual imagining, mutual opening. These are my why.

Please pass it on.

© c 2021, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

My art is poetic conversation. Poetic as a way to get beyond the easy and the shallow. Conversation as a way of stirring up new possibilities.

:- Doug.

What might we gain if we could converse with old souls of the future?

:- Doug.

The dialogue of civilizations.

:- Doug.

There are many human organizations, but not enough fulfill human roles.

:- Doug.

The big impossible.

:- Doug.

The work of ages.

:- Doug.

We’re remixing humanity.

:- Doug.

Here is fruit of my life: an apple, a pear, a banana. Inside the food, and central, the seed. Imperfectly round, the skin touches vaster outsides. I grow and then ripen and die. So much to touch, to bring inside. So much with which to exchange.

:- Doug.

Over my life so far I appear to have been gathering fuel and calibrating my trajectory. Now is launch.

:- Doug.

The unexamined metaphor is not worth living.

:- Doug.

Words are imprecise conveyors of meaning. Why else write a whole book to express one idea?

:- Doug.

Time moves crossways
Or we do
When

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2062

I am asking a bigger question. Can we get better at being human? With the help of strangers at a distance?

Please pass it on.

© c 2021, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

One part of the character not portrayed would say. . . .

:- Doug.

How can we raise our dared possibilities?

:- Doug.

There are light blue skies all about, and not much movement at the moment. The oak leaves next to me are deep green with many shadows and some sitting in the sunlight. Most are waiting their turn.

:- Doug.

Metaphor has unexpected value to us: to our spirituality. I saw that Clean Language questions, What kind of {path} is that? What else is there about {being rather than doing}?, can deepen our understanding of own spirituality. We can ask ourselves.

That leads us to how we think about grandchildren: who are we in our relationship to ourselves as well as to the eleventh generation? Who are we in relation to our immediate grandchildren, and what even can we discover about our spouses?

:- Doug.