FootprintsintheWind.com

The ball is spinning
the borders are permeable
“for sure” is not
life-death-space-time
is mist-if-fying
one question
asked of us

:- Doug.

Which of these topics in front of us is most pregnant?

:- Doug.

“It’s too hard” is not a valid reason to not try and see. We may get part way there, which could surprise those people!

:- Doug.

Construct a mind map together. What subject? Community? A joint philosophy, say each writes one true statement about life, spirituality, the body-mind problem/interface? What we together believe is true and startling to put into words? What we should do together?

:- Doug.

It has all been a process of getting out of ourselves.

:- Doug.

Gathering implies, and calls for, a new definition of reality.

:- Doug.

Gerotranscendence may come upon us, but then we can choose, we can do.

:- Doug.

Have you ever felt like the river, woods, circle, hole, light?

:- Doug.

In gathering, we are found in a space made sacred by eyeing purposes a notch higher.

:- Doug.

In gathering each is essential.

:- Doug.

We find and wrestle to accept responsibility to act out of our spiritual discoveries.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2456

The USA is a dream. It is a dream of the Golden Gate Bridge, Manhattan, the Grand Canyon, the Badlands, the Kentucky caves, Lincoln’s homeland, songs of blessing and thanksgiving, it is the land of Thanksgiving, songs of your land and my land, a dream of a good people. It is not primarily the land of opportunity or of the strongest army or navy. It is the melting pot. It is not always right but it knows to make amends when it is not. It is for you if you are tired or poor or just an average Joe or Jane.

Please pass it on.

© c 2025, 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

Gathering is an act of choice to exercise responsibility for this concentric set of circles.

:- Doug.

In gathering we may consciously surrender a piece of our autonomy (“self-law;” living by one’s own laws) to the gathering itself.

:- Doug.

Ours is a print-literate culture. Writing is so pervasive—signs, headlines, emails, texts, and much else assails each of us by the minute. But we miss that we also are an oral culture. After all, “Don’t talk to strangers” came to us not in books. Then there are all those songs. You hum and you sing, and these tell you how to live—and you follow.

So we ought to make conscious some things we live by, but seldom set to writing. Not to give writing a claim to them, but to give us claim to our heritage that is often not acknowledged. These are part of the luggage elders carry for all of us. What oral text of our culture do you carry?

:- Doug.

We humans have an absolute need almost daily to go unconscious as witness our nightish sleep.

:- Doug.

It’s not how good you are. It’s that you are good even a little.

:- Doug.

We are prisoners, incarcerated by our eyes in pictures of our selves. We have envisioned ourselves as lawyers, interior decorators, laborers, welders, ride share drivers. Have we seen ourselves as world makers, even as worlds? Have we seen ourselves as our microbiome sees us, inscrutable, large, moving to unknown beats? Have we seen ourselves capable with a word or a laugh to topple kings and queens? No, we see ourselves powerless. (But we are powerless as Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s God.) Out beyond our prison bars, past the grey drapes, panoramas!

:- Doug.

What is our core identity, that of the two of us, gathered?

:- Doug.

What if we contemplate together? Here is gathered contemplation.

:- Doug.

Itching I am: I realize it may be because of the community of microscopic living beings crawling and gnawing on my skin. I am community. But why do I suppose (as I apparently do) in only one direction with me the culmination? Turn and maybe I am the little critter!

:- Doug.

Shift to bedtime story. Join with me and my grandchildren here around me, in their living room as I concoct a bed-time story.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2455

Doubt is essential
To be human
Weakness opens

Please pass it on.

© c 2025, 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