FootprintsintheWind.com

We dare not solve life
once for all time
we must continually
go out
Meeting we find living

:- Doug.

Living is increased
by concentrating it
focusing it
on other living

:- Doug.

The stream bubbles
& giggles, runs & lies low and broad
Roars & whispers
Yet it is not alive
Save that it gives life to
Birds, deer, fish, child
& woodlands, meadows, city
& sea
It’s not just flow
Flow has a purpose

:- Doug.

To activate our humanity rising detectors
—This is not merely a cute saying
It is why we are here
—To stir up life
From its slumbers of separation
To living

:- Doug.

Helping living is living
Living is helping living

:- Doug.

We are living
Only
When we are helping living

:- Doug.

The reason we say we can find reasons for any result we seek is that our reasons are mental constructs of the world and not the real world itself. The way out of this endless circle is to step out and experience the world as it is in itself—and many times it gives us no reasons.

:- Doug.

Life = play = light = vibration = all there is

:- Doug.

Magic—living—first!

:- Doug.

What would you do now if your children were watching?

:- Doug.

I work in conversation.

:- Doug.

What can we talk about to make this conversation matter?

:- Doug.

When does conversation matter?

:- Doug.

Conversation matters when we engender. Living.

:- Doug.

The living question is, What are we doing right now to help people’s living work?

Living is working everywhere, all the time, but there are degrees. How are people to be told when they have not experienced a different degree? And yet they have. We all have experienced a sunset, a meeting where our contribution was central and important, a time when we mattered.

When was the last time something you did mattered?

Talk about bicycles, proms, first kisses: specifics, triggers.

An off-hand remark that changed everything: trying to get a man to remember specific stories I told him one of mine, and that triggered one in him that was not at all the same, even had a different theme for him. How does the mind work to do that? Yet we both felt we communicated, we were somehow more whole, more alive after the two stories.

Yesterday as I was walking from my home to my office, in my back yard I saw a turtle—its shell was 9 or 10 inches across and flat and armored looking. What a thing to find another form of life you didn’t know existed, living in your same space. Kind of like Rod Serling, a Twilight Zone in which we met.

Yesterday I had hot chocolate with another lawyer, just to get acquainted, and we had a marvelous conversation, very little of it about legal subjects. Animated. About reading books, and children who are not like either of their parents, who are more interested in next weekend’s party despite all the order and life planning advice parents try to give them.

Specifics. Microcosm. Last week…. Yesterday…. Our wedding anniversary….

Then, when they are hooked, reel. Real. Work. Living working.

:- Doug.

Is your life working? Is your work working? For you? For those round you?

:- Doug.

How does the
—configuration of the space
—way of interacting
—relative amounts of time
—timing between events
—people invited
—lighting
—food
—tools for interacting
—geometry of the space
—closed and open parts of the space
—range of people invited
—time we start and end
—total time we give
work for the completion of each person?

:- Doug.

Tell me about a time when you were your most whole self?

:- Doug.

How do our meeting environments contribute to each person there being fully him- or herself? What do our meetings contribute to each person there being fully him or her self?

:- Doug.

Let us be fully ourselves.

:- Doug.

Environment can consist of actions—our actions.

:- Doug.

Engage our fellow creatures.

:- Doug.

Nor yet opening
Nor yet entering
Throwing self in

:- Doug.