FootprintsintheWind.com

Life is the wicked problem. Not the person living it.

:- Doug.

There is value in this inquiry, but is it only this? It is not about being prophets to one another, even while it is.

:- Doug.

Bring your reader into the writing of the book: This is a difficult subject, not so much to explain what I mean, as to find a way through, and to even figure out what might be on the other side of the waters. How much gravitas (and when)? How much levity? Surprise? Is there a proportion we can work out, or find out, or is it a matter of intuition or happenstance? Something akin to a culinary ratio? Is it me, or are we a bit too heavy and academic here and in need of humor or at least something concrete?

:- Doug.

Call them as they are—students—not disadvantaged.

:- Doug.

What spirits live through you? What attitudes? What do you want to shine? What does your friend want to shine out of the two of you?

:- Doug.

What are humanity’s highest aspirations alive not just today, but in this person in front of you in this very setting?

:- Doug.

This way to see conversing is becoming the mainstream. The new generation (today) is the most diverse of any. These people want to include widely because that is their world. The love principle tells them this is the right and just way to meet the world.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2250

Consider
when you close your eyes
what the babies may think to be true
the page in front of you and all the words
disappear
in equal measure
when the person in front of you blinks
you disappear
and the whole world with you
and this goes on all day long
pop goes the weasel!

Please pass it on.

© c 2023, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Culture is a spirit.

:- Doug.

Hold me with your eyes. Lee Glickstein has for years been inviting people to hold him in their eyes. He says to them, too, “I’m holding you in my eyes…would you stay with me as you speak?” He reports this makes immediate sense to them. There probably is little difference in meaning to use “with” rather than “in”—except for me it feels softer and safer. It is an invitation I make to you, and I offer you as an invitation you can make to others. Lee uses it to help people feel comfortable and welcomed speaking to an audience. We can use it one on one to find our closeness with one another.

:- Doug.

I will keep writing so I may
Uncover & stitch together what
The writing’s about

:- Doug.

Your friend is speaking. What did you almost hear? When do you decide to listen, maybe even to hear? After deciding, how do you go about actually hearing? Responding?

:- Doug.

For those who hate to think, they’ll hate this book with a fiery hatred.

:- Doug.

Are there kinds of questions, some of which take us to more fruitful places than others? For instance, what is it with Shakespeare’s questions, that they have riled us for 400 years? Can we, too, shake one another to this foundational charge?

:- Doug.

How do we know when a conversation is over? OST holds that “When it’s over, it’s over,” leaving it up to each group of us to determine when it’s over. Surely we can search out ways and better ways to tell when it is over, leaving room for new ways to be discovered.

:- Doug.

Who are we, this conversing species?

:- Doug.

Why are we given to conversation? Why are we given to each other in conversation? What do we give in, and what do we seek from, conversation? What good can we do for each other—and the generations—by conversing, today?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2249

A conversation is a sabbath in our lives.

Please pass it on.

© c 2023, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Maybe we perform a service for each other like prophets?

:- Doug.

Would I could ask Bernie about games and meditation. Lives are like that: an overlapping and many dimensioned pulsating Venn diagram, sometimes on, sometimes apart, sometimes almost occupying the same space fully. We enter each other’s orbit, bending it as we do, we are wobbled as we wobble the other.

:- Doug.

What’s working and what’s not in this writing? So why?

:- Doug.

Who do you think we are, in this conversation?

:- Doug.

What is conversation enough?
What the small doses
But you and I together
In a little circle of light
Every week or two?

:- Doug.