FootprintsintheWind.com

The greatest problem we have is precisely this notion of being lone rangers out in the world. It is something the Rays highlighted in Cultural Creatives. We think we are alone, and we have not really made the effort to bring people together. We have not even thought about how to bring people together.

:- Doug.

Activists are such because they activate other people, act with others. If we continue to leave people where they are, one to each automobile, then we get no where. We get further when we come together, which is exactly what activists are doing. So why force them to sit still and be an audience? They not only have twitchy feet, but they are there to meet each other. The breaks and the hallways are at least as important as the speeches and auditoria. The question to ask is Why is this so? What is really going on? What is working? How can we do more of it?

:- Doug.

Why do we want to hold this meeting? I’d guess the answer will be something like informing people of what’s going on in their community, in a big picture way in the morning and in specifics in the afternoon. But that is not what we want: Why would you want that? Here we start to dig into things like to make the community better. And why do you want that? Why and why again. Find out what people want.

:- Doug.

Meetings as we practice them, with one or a small number of people in front and the rest in rows arrayed out to watch, get in our way. They have their place—to rev up a mob or to inform the uninformed. But if we are facilitating action, then we need to get people together, meeting one another, learning from one another, hooking up to see where their common efforts can be made. So we need circles and small groups. The physical setting directly greases or fences off the ability of people to get work done.

:- Doug.

Control = Getting = Never enough = Disappointment = Misery = Greed = Failure

:- Doug.

What is the relation between measuring and unhappiness?

:- Doug.

Competition makes losers
Measuring people makes us small
Measuring subtracts from people
Measuring however increases one thing:
What we don’t really want.
If we are quick, we hear it whisper to us
What do you want?

:- Doug.

Measuring is a way of finding out by how much you do not measure up. The focus is what’s missing, your falling shorts. Why would I want to see those?

:- Doug.

In our community many people have the rush hour model of activism—a thousand cars, most occupied by one person, jockeying for position in order to make it downtown ahead of the others. Thus, we are all competing for the same funds and volunteers, and a few of us will win.

The reality is much different: telephones, coffee shops, and chance meetings. Everything is done by people talking with people, people with 1000s of different interests engaged in many ways, asking for and giving help. With the meeting of hearts and minds much gets done.

It’s just so normal it’s invisible. What works? This does. How do we get more of it?

:- Doug.

Softly she touches my hand
not in the touch exactly
but in the the leap of something
between her skin and mine
here is where love lives

:- Doug.

The magic is in the betweens and amongs. Here is where love lives.

:- Doug.

There is something in the betweens which improves the world, heals the world.

It is the turnings of the heap, the turnings of the dancers, which call forth the heat and the music.

:- Doug.

When ordinary people come together, when ordinary adds to ordinary, we become a little more ordinary. Ordinary plus ordinary plus ordinary: in the plus we become extra.

:- Doug.

To what extent do we define ourselves—draw a line around ourselves? When we do so, we disconnect ourselves from others, and from the oneness out of which we have proceeded. Start with a human embryo, which grows by adding and expanding and modifying what is already there, not by grabbing parts off a shelf and bolting them on. Even the embryo came from two humans, who came from one earth, one air, one solar system, one universe, one singularity. So if we wrench ourselves out of the oneness that is one and say they are not part, then we have done violence to the all there is.

:- Doug.

In order to say who we are we often think we have to say who we are not, when it is more important to see that we is who we are.

:- Doug.

If you would have community, find the beloved in your community.

:- Doug.

If you’re not working to make this community beloved, then it already is beloved, or it never can be.

:- Doug.

If you won’t work to make the community beloved, you won’t work to make it community.

:- Doug.

Sometimes when we let out what’s deep inside, it smells.

:- Doug.

Hear. Question. Story.

:- Doug.

We’re all working for beloved community.

:- Doug.

To tell a good story throw in at least as much chance as choice. That makes it true to life.

:- Doug.

Wait to be chosen. Then choose. Or choose to wait to be chosen. Life is only full with both. This is why marital love is necessary. This is why spiritual love is essential.

:- Doug.