FootprintsintheWind.com

We are the love of God. “For the love of God” we say, and we say aright, for everything we do in this world can be done for and as this love, this movement, this healing.

:- Doug.

I have less trouble with verb talk about God, than noun talk: I can speak of what God does, but know practically nothing of “who” or “what” God is, and in fact I doubt that God is either a “who” or a “what.” Is God a “you?” Not even sure if Buber said so much; he did speak of meeting God, that all real living is meeting.

:- Doug.

God is not person and not less than person but is person-ing. God persons you and me, and be-s all beings. God “bears all things….”

:- Doug.

We most often use language of nouns for God: king, father, mother, lover, friend. These however for me are packages of the verbal moving. I am beginning (again) to see G*d as moving, not even motion, not a thing, not a being. Hard to express, since I am almost forced to say “a” “thing-ing” or being. This brings up to me the sieging forces who were dispelled with a rumor and a fear among them in an OT story: this is how God-ding works: moving through and among.

:- Doug.

It is said humans are imago dei. In our acting we have the capacity to respond to and repair and heal the world: we can demonstrate movement between and together: love. How can we give body to God’s love of this world?

We are not the hands
not the feet
not the mouth of God
We are the love
This love moves
our
hands feet and mouths
to work

:- Doug.

A metaphor for God speaks less of the parties and more of the relationship, the betweens of God and humans.

:- Doug.

We can begin to see God as mothering, earth as God’s bodying forth, loving, befriending.

:- Doug.

God is the among and between, the movement: verb.

:- Doug.

If I look between the twigs and leaves I can see sky between and mingling among them. If I look between and among people, what can I experience?

:- Doug.

Our ecstasy and God’s are one. There is but one life, one love, one ecstasy, and it meets.

:- Doug.

Let us go to base. Let us find out who we are, beneath any masks.

Let us find God. Let us let God find us. It is not a quest but a falling onto the downy bed. Once there, we get up and get to work. The cycle of coming home and going out to fulfill the world is the base.

:- Doug.

What is deepest in humans, what is perhaps deepest in all the world: this is where we have the inklings of God.

This points to this emerging picture of God’s face disappearing as God’s face as monarch, and re-emerging in the green of nature, the blue and grey of the skies, the thunder and the sound of still hush, the cry of the baby and the lulling of the mother, the face of a friend and of a foe, the flow of history, the meeting, ever the meeting.

:- Doug.

Some of our models of God translate well and almost directly as models of human conduct: our role in relation with the world. They become ways of asking, How high can we aim? Thus, God as mother translates as each human as parent to the world. The earth as the body of God translates as the earth as our own body-extension.

How high can we aim?

:- Doug.

We can in our volunteer hours and in our donations to alleviate suffering from hurricanes and tsunamis, and especially in our attitudes about our work (I am making the world better, little by little, by my work) and our conversations (When we talk about global warming and starving children, we are helping, just that little bit). Not everyone will want to be an activist, jumping in and making something happen. But we can make something happen on this block, in this neighborhood. What is needful is this mindset of taking charge for.

:- Doug.

Let us have a momentary religion: spirit arises within the moments of our lives and challenges us face to face. Let us notice those moments and work in them. It is in the moments and the experience that we find G?d, moments when we meet the really real.

:- Doug.

I am not enlivened by the notion of rescue—this has for a long time not called to me, and sometimes repulsed me. What I like is fulfillment of humanity. The twin ideas of justice and inclusion pull me most strongly. What we need is not the grey cloth nor even the ripping, but the rainbow lights. Fulfillment, a nice Old English word, is grand! Fulfill, don’t sustain! What is the absolute best we can be?

:- Doug.

Go forth and disorganize!

:- Doug.

Take on a work radically different: Ask the people to take charge for their world.

:- Doug.

What is this—
The melody
of still hush?
The touch
of opening?
The opening
of presence?

:- Doug.

How do you engage the world?

:- Doug.

World is womb
Children are we
God facing
Moving
Deeps are we
Deepening
Livening
What is here?

:- Doug.

Look to the little children who demand our engagement. Here is God coming to the surface, seeping through.

:- Doug.

Speak to me of—
comfort without being in arms
love
lovingkindness
using diversity to make good
cosmic reach in the stellar sidereal
presence in the here
this comforter that bounces when I fall on the bed and pull it up to my neck
safe resting places
rejuvenating places
kids playing and scampering on a big old bed of our grandmother’s
closeness and coolness and warmth and feeling good at the same time
opening my world to an always widening view

:- Doug.