FootprintsintheWind.com

Today some—perhaps most—politicians see their job as To Oppose. Let us find those who would bring life.

:- Doug.

Accused of being an optimist! I am not an optimist—I am a worker, a whole-maker, one who says it is up to us. A pessimist says it won’t happen; I agree—it won’t happen if we don’t try. An optimist says it will happen; I disagree—so long as the will happen is perceived as without our effort.

:- Doug.

As lawyers what we have to teach ultimately are not technical rules but how to live life together, and the doing of it.

That can start anywhere, even in total ignorance.

In that the primary tools are reflection, conversation, and unfolding.

:- Doug.

Mystery compels humility
humility which is
the root of wise
action
& inaction
How can it be?—
Ignorance the source of wisdom

:- Doug.

Humanity is the enlarged way for seeing the world.

Humanity is the agency by which the universe sees itself. Other instruments exist, for instance the ants. But they do not appear to us to have ways for seeing the world larger than it is, for building or generating anything new. Humanity is thus the way that we can see the world larger than it is.

:- Doug.

Are you willing to risk your life to be whom you are? Because surely you are spending your life every moment, drip, drip, drip, it runs away from you. Or you can choose to run away with it.

Is this just a call to the extraordinary people? What about the folks who feel fulfilled in cooking a good meal, tending to children, washing floors, mowing lawns, fixing roofs? They may be ahead of the rest of us, because they have found their lives in building the most everyday parts of cathedrals.

:- Doug.

Diversity in these days carries a racial baggage which is too small a package for the word to carry.

:- Doug.

The more we have seen, the more we can see. Look at little children and all the wonder they see in the world, and in magic tricks: they have not seen that before, so it is all magic and they could not even imagine it. We are, in showing them things, opening their imaginations. Diversity is a key factor in creativity.

:- Doug.

Take two boards
Nail together
An angle appears!
A third thing
Not contained
In either part

Now add 99 more
How many angles?
How many purposes served?
Can any predict?

Now add motion
Now add life

Impossible to foretell
What people will do
When they catch glimpse
Of the possibilities
Of their own—inner & outer—
Universes

The more juxtapositions
In the room
The more we create
In ways we cannot guess
More niches mean
We combine in new ways and
We creatively destroy and
We fit existing ideas
To new purposes

Life throws itself upon us

:- Doug.

Life is a matter of how much of it you are willing to lay on the line for who you are.

:- Doug.

This is
Important Stuff
of the all there is
beyond experiences possibilities

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1070

How should we care for our fragile elderly? Tenderly, of course. Lovingly. Provide a level of care higher than nursing homes—someone to wipe their brow, help them clean up and not feel shame if their bowels or limbs or minds are no longer in their control. Watch to see that they are not abused, and instead treated well. Not for reasons of wealth or lack of it, but for reasons of the dignity and importance of life.

But what is the meeting place of finances and the way we care? Some things take money. Some things take care. Some people get confused and think that money can replace care.

One answer might be to remove money from the equation. But turning it over to the financial side of the community, whether the government or private insurers, subjects these our most frail to the economy’s ups and downs. We must open up our hearts and our tenderness first. Then the money will work as needed. The first level of response needs to be caring for life.

Please pass it on.

© c 2010, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

To throw in utterly our whole selves releases power. The tiny atom, when split apart releases enormous power; when fused with another releases even more. When one is used up, power; when many are dissolved more power.

We are more than we are. But the key is obsession—a totality of the soul forces available to our touch.

:- Doug.

Conversing is by G*d with G*d. G*d is each of us and the all there is; for G*d to speak there is commerce among G*d’s creatures.

So when we converse we are partaking in holy commerce, we are created anew by that holy commerce, each pass. Thus is the way also the truth and the life.

This holy commerce engenders life, a deeper, fierier life. Here we ignite, explode, no longer are but forever change what is. We touch G*d. We are holy, sacred action.

So in conversation, holy commerce, we go through the whole spiral, over and again: It, We, Us, Above, Whole-making. Not we through our struggles and efforts, but G*d through us. We are integral part of G*d, without which no such commerce.

But this is effortless effort: not concerned with finishing the work, merely with doing the day’s labor. We are not instruments rather partners. Fire! Exploding! Shattering! Used up, utterly.

:- Doug.

Unselfed!
a giant, gentle horse
part of
the herd knows
the all there is creates

:- Doug.

Framed in a new frame
our window now a larger panorama
wonders are performed
when I take my part in We
even the frame shatters open

:- Doug.

Something there is
that resides not in
beings but in Being

:- Doug.

Let us get people together for whom giving all is the point of life.

:- Doug.

Never, never power to the people
Nor yet power from the people
Rather power from within the people

:- Doug.

Obedience some say
Is what God needs of us
To my eye that seems tangential
Devotion is too washed out
What looks most true—obsession

:- Doug.

We meet God
When we sit
God is the chair

:- Doug.

You have a large ego
Yes, but what matters
Is the direction of its
Size

:- Doug.

I hear in your poetry anger
In the beat, beat, beating
You have been hurt,
I too am wounded, wounding
Wounding hurts me when I do it
Anger is good, love is bigger
Love stands in anger’s face
Anger spends itself
Love stands
Hugs are bigger than knife blades

:- Doug.