FootprintsintheWind.com

What is wholeness—in human life? In the extent of a human’s life, we have everything from conception to death, and this whole package is wholeness. In the breadth, it includes all that happens and is done by the human both externally (school, broken bones, skinned knees, marriage, ending of marriage, raising children, careers, work in the world) and internally (philosophy, spirit, psychology). Wholeness is also the relationships both intimate and beyond: whole systems of relationships, where nothing touches the web that does not transfer to the far reaches of the gossamer. Wholeness includes wondering at the stars and the clouds and newborn babies as well as balancing a checkbook. Each touches all.

:- Doug.

Our work is inviting friends to bring us all to life.

:- Doug.

Our elders are to be revered not because they are simply those who raised us, or even birthed us. They are not to be revered for their wisdom and experience. Nor are they to be revered because they are frail and fading out of our sight. They are to be revered for the life they birth and carry, even now. Even if they are dying. They are friends. They are equals. They are co-laborers in the task of bringing us all to life and life to us all.

:- Doug.

Many of us practitioners see Open Space as a quintessential action process. Some may use it for feel-good things, but its highest worth is in getting things going.

:- Doug.

Open Space is about attention—to each other and to the work at hand.

:- Doug.

Picture the appearance and dissolution of people over the generations from a larger view, near to without time. If our time-lapse photos are taken once every 30 years, people are seen to pop in and out of existence, like elementary particles in “empty” space. Let’s recalibrate to once every dozen years: the jerkiness becomes smoother and people arise up out of the soil, move above, settle back into the dust: an undulating holomovement. Change to centuries or dozens of centuries and these waves are also smoothed, and the various species become the focus in the holomovement.

:- Doug.

What could we do if we freed ourselves of the infinities we see?

We could see larger: what we see as possibility hamstrings us. Here we encounter an intermediate possible, which turns out to be an intermediate wall.

:- Doug.

Open Space invites people to act with and in our world.

:- Doug.

Our work is to embrace and invite.

:- Doug.

Everyone enfolds everyone.

We are a part of all we meet, we meet a part of us in all we meet. We are clod of the same earth, breath of the same wind.

There is only one. We are a part, enfolded, enfolding.

:- Doug.

Is there a way to see this differently?

:- Doug.

Not because it’s the right thing do I want diversity but because it is the optimal.

:- Doug.

The meeting yesterday was full of depth and especially of seeking after depth. But we did not attain it. What little we did attain we did not sustain.

Humans many not be able to sustain such depths.

If that is so, what is the air for which we must come to the surface? Perhaps it is purposeful action. We must put sinew and blood into it. We must body forth. Perhaps it is catching each others’ wrists and pulling together. Taking it out of our solitary heads and putting it into our working and meeting hands—this is life, continuing.

:- Doug.

Competition is a world view, word view, that is not necessarily in line with what really is. What really is?

:- Doug.

The earth is running out.

:- Doug.

What of the old order is no longer relevant? What no longer fits reality?—The reality our scientists and thinkers are opening to us?

:- Doug.

The answer to anger, for me, seems to be this: No, it is not fair. But who ever said that anything has to be fair? Things are as they are. Meet them as they are. Try to change them, yes, but do not bring unnecessary heat. Bring instead heart.

:- Doug.

Invite without ceasing.

:- Doug.

Flow and process
is the
Way
Now make

:- Doug.

G*d is not one
apart from us
rather
with us
I am there that
I am there
of us
one

:- Doug.

Can we be without know? Can we do without know? Can we know without either? Can we be without the other two? Or do?

:- Doug.

Information and knowledge are not the same as application.

Someone recently remarked that taking a shower is a difficult thing for a person with dementia to do: it takes many mental steps and processes and a coordination of them which is sometimes beyond their abilities. A towel must be laid out. Soap and shampoo placed within reach. The drain must be opened, the shower curtain drawn, the hot and cold water turned on and then tempered, the water redirected to the shower head, and only then must one step in. Then the body is rinsed, then soap applied, then rinsed again, then shampoo, then rinse again, then the shower turned off, then the curtain opened, then the towel retrieved and the drying process begun. Oh, did we remember to set out a bath mat to step onto? Quite a process, and an intelligence we do not all always have.

It takes another step to put information and knowledge to use. Beyond that, it takes a different intelligence: an intelligence of what steps and persons are necessary and how to assemble them to get good action.

:- Doug.

Group process is somewhat akin to putting together a jigsaw puzzle: it is easier to do in a group. Someone starts working on edges, another seeks out the corners, someone starts putting together pieces that fit with each other. The difference is that with group work, there is no predetermined design, no picture on the box to tell us what it “should” look like, and the pieces fit or almost fit in many different configurations.

:- Doug.