FootprintsintheWind.com

A Will is the biggest spending spree we can have in our lives—we can spend it all! Or we can see it as our largest investment. We can dump it all (the dump cake model) or put it to work (the sleeve rolling model).

Investing can be anywhere we want: we can invest in stuff or in people. In people we can invest in bank accounts or education or spirit. We can invest in It, Thou, Among, Poet, Whole-making. So we can invest to meet needs of people we know, people in our family (It and Thou), or in organizations such as churches or civic clubs with whom we already affiliate (Among), or in higher broader things (church, political parties, art, philosophy), or in making the world more inclusive (humanitarian work, our own movements). People tend to see the choices as family or charity, but the spectrum is more subtle than that, the lines more blended—and more meaningful.

:- Doug.

Tell someone “I’d like to show you a picture of my children,” then pull out a picture of galaxies!

:- Doug.

The more words we have, the more things we can say, and the more things we can think, and the more things we can do, and the more ways we can love. Similarly, to what can more diversity of people together lead? So if we want a larger world we need a richer set of contact points.

:- Doug.

You made things better yesterday; today we can make them even better. This is the nature of the world: always presenting us opportunities for better. This is different from the consumer ads which tell us how incomplete we are; we are sufficient and the challenges we face attest to our abilities to meet whatever comes.

:- Doug.

Now is a dance: dance the Now!

:- Doug.

A ribbon of DNA we are inside the inside of the heart of us: molecules of interaction with the world: I-It, I-Thou, Among us, Poetry, Whole-making. These make up all of us, and of what brew of these do we want to be?

:- Doug.

Empty, empty
Give up, give up!

:- Doug.

Big talk—is also about G*d.

:- Doug.

Hear people into our larger world.

:- Doug.

Children give us excuses to notice again the world’s wonders.

:- Doug.

Leverage follows attention.

:- Doug.

in stillness swirling
in silence childing
here we meet well

:- Doug.

Friend, it is now. Into your swirling stillness.

:- Doug.

Unknowable knowable mystery
Near to words, meeting
Beside movement, stillness

:- Doug.

What’s your journey? Where does it seem to be leading?

:- Doug.

There is a thing we can do
Beyond words, ideas, imaginations
Richness it releases
Into our unknowables
We cannot know the child in utero
Much swirls around us, silent we sit

:- Doug.

What have you learned from the down economy? I have learned that one can give freely to others, and live! And live!

:- Doug.

A blindness sets in
We tell ourselves we are fortunate
We have had opportunities beyond
Persons in poverty, in the third world

You are the man!
You are the woman!
Who prayed in the temple
“Thank God I am not like
One of these sinners!”
—The story is told of us

For they too have their opportunities
Who is to put a value on either?
Who is to say yours are better?
Some who never know yet are sick

:- Doug.

We find the best with each other, not in ourselves.

:- Doug.

To hear is to rip the grey cloth.
:- Doug.

Bring the inviting question to every person, every conversation.

:- Doug.

Someone asks “If you took a risk are you ready to face that your efforts to bring about a higher and better world you could fail?” The harder question is “Are you ready to face that you did not take that risk?”

:- Doug.

My road less traveled
Is to hear
Voices less heard

:- Doug.