FootprintsintheWind.com

I have a Why, not a goal.

:- Doug.

Community, beloved community.

:- Doug.

Heaven is not cells for each soul, but has mansions. And what are mansions good for? Parties! Banquets! Gathering!

Heaven is not composed of mansions, either. Heaven is composed of G*d—the same as here. We are children and of G*d is our very essence. When we meet face to face we shall see our family resemblance, we shall see our face in the face.

:- Doug.

We are seeking what is higher and better residing in us, indeed the higher and better within which we are residing. What is this if not truth and love and beauty, in a word, G*d? Community is where G*d is alive. Community is what G*d does.

:- Doug.

We need to find G*d in between us, among us, for the thing we are doing is larger than us. But it is us: us is bigger than us, yes? For if we do not see G*d here, then where?

:- Doug.

We do not generate spirit, but we can open ourselves and the world to spirit. We can open space for the world to be larger. This is not simply a social fact of life, but a profound spiritual fact of life.

:- Doug.

Do you see
—Things—
Against which to compete
Or
—People—
With whom to meet?

:- Doug.

We are not so much a
Do It Yourself culture
As one which is
Go It Alone

:- Doug.

Spirit is bigger than
The pie in the sky
G*d is more than
Puppeteer
Whose strings we pull
Look to
The wind
The ground
The life everywhere
The person near

:- Doug.

We do not spirit generate
We welcome, accept, allow, invite
We open to it
Spirit is our
Amongs & Betweens & Throughs
Gathering allows us to touch

:- Doug.

What is our role in this world? What role do we choose? Large or small? Important or mundane?

:- Doug.

Sign to see on every elderly person in a nursing home: “Ask me what I prefer.”

:- Doug.

We need to find our deeper wave-length, the rhythm and heart beat of what makes us worthy of life. Be still this moment and hear.

:- Doug.

Friend, we grieve this living, dying world. Oh!

:- Doug.

Challenge people to be community: to experience anguish together. To grieve together. Then to hope together.

:- Doug.

The problem with global warming is that word “warming.” We are the frog in the boiling pot. If it were called global hell-fire, then maybe people would get out of their sofas. No one is worried about sustainability. Only concerned. Until we get in anguish about it, nothing will get done.

:- Doug.

Work on the anguish. Find G*d’s anguish, and build community there. Not for force of arms, but for soul force: upholding and nurturing one another, getting the best out of each other, finding the hope among us. It is in the amongs and betweens where G*d is found. Hope and truth and love and community are part of each other and the nature of the holy.

:- Doug.

Where are the needs and especially the anguish today? Do we even connect them as anguish? For instance, the earthquakes and hurricanes and crazy weather: we think we cannot influence those, yet the evidence is pointing in the direction that we have set some of these forces in motion. By the time there is proof, there might not be a livable world. This is cause for anguish. But it is not obvious.

:- Doug.

What is G*d’s anguish here now?

:- Doug.

Friend, time to listen to you and hear.

:- Doug.

We have been satiated and surfeited to the point of numbness. We are numb to the world and think that what is always will be. Done that, been there, oh well: the things we say which are the coin of our realm. We are bored and overworked. We do not see the beauty of the sunrise, we are too tired to enjoy the sounds across the water of an evening, we did not see the stars overhead last night.

Numb. But is that something to cry over? It is, because we are losing our humanity. We are paving it over, building wallets on top, working not for the joy and action of working but in order to pay for health care insurance.

:- Doug.

We have answers to everything
look them up on the Web
it’s all there!

We have time aplenty—if we can catch up
it runs ahead
it runs out

Although we eat our fill
and beyond
we hunger and thirst

But the answers are empty
in the time is no fullness
in the filling is emptiness

:- Doug.

Poke what’s been deadened.

:- Doug.