FootprintsintheWind.com

Don’t listen to me! I am in pain. I moan. I am captive. I groan. I am confined, unfree in my poverty. My children starve, their bellies distend—they cry out. No, do not listen to me: hear me.

:- Doug.

Goal-setting is an attempt to sever the essential complexity from reality; to simplify to the point of jots on a paper the immense interrelationships of people, environment, fields, chaos, and all the rest. It is the work of minds hoping to skip the work of life by ignoring the larger part of it.

:- Doug.

When feeling perverse
—Converse!
When feeling reverse
—Converse!
Verse! Sing!
Turn! Dance! Compost!

:- Doug.

Emerging is a name of G*d.

:- Doug.

through conversing
emerging

:- Doug.

Whether people emerge from G*d
or the other way round
we know and experience
G*d does emerge
with us now

:- Doug.

My work is conversation
People meeting people
To emerge

:- Doug.

Let’s form Community Disorganizers Onymous.

:- Doug.

Faith is questioning
& trusting that there are answers
—ever—
And deeper questions
—And—

:- Doug.

daffodils
edging the pond
puffs white and yellow
in the breezes’ flow

:- Doug.

True thyself.

:- Doug.

casting my line
in waters
offering
inviting
maybe you bite
maybe I get
my hook into you
gently and we play—

:- Doug.

Speak your poetry
Sing your song
Hear us, take us in
To your soul
Together calls all
To sing!

:- Doug.

There are some things I will never know, even things I want to know. Knowing is not everything. Unknowing going can be a fun thing, no gritting your teeth at all. Forward, forward, into the loving chaos: dance! Dance the unknown dance!

:- Doug.

There is a value in giving yourself for another person
For something larger than ourselves, our all
There is something emerges from people opening to one another
Not available in isolated people and ordinary hours
There is a pay that uplifts
More than money ever could
There is a possibility in the human species
We never expected

:- Doug.

When we seek to do anything organizational, the goal—oft unstated, perhaps to deflect questioning—is to serve the existing organization, without questioning whether it ought to exist any more or at all, whether it serves the larger human good.

:- Doug.

Long my quest has been
Discovering the unknown
Though when I lift mine eyes—
What flickers in my candle’s light?
Herein might I revel e’en frolic?

:- Doug.

What might generosity accomplish?

:- Doug.

In our fullest
Our highest
We are gifts
More: active, verbs:
Giving

:- Doug.

You church men!
Your metaphors no longer sing
Draw me pictures of what I know
That I might touch the intangible
That I might see, to me sing!

:- Doug.

People will pay attention if we give our flowing out our attention and respect and give our all, our best, our last measure.

:- Doug.

We see with our minds, not our eyes. What we see is not there but here. When you look into the sky, do you not see a bright disk, somewhat like a coin? Oh no, no! Blake saw a company of angels singing alleluia! When you look at another person, do you see “black” “skin,” “hands” “complexion” and “colorful” “clothing?” What would an artist see? What “textures,” what “shapes?” What would a poet “see” and “hear?” It’s all in here.

:- Doug.

When we see the world this way, the old way of seeing individual particles and operating on statistics becomes limiting. We can meet people or we can make them numbers. Why do we give prisoners numbers and take away their names? To break them, to take away their person. When we meet people, when we see the particularity and heart and past the soupiness of sameness of skin, then we are in life. Life matters. Things don’t—simply because we deny them the ability to matter.

:- Doug