FootprintsintheWind.com

Will the way things are ever satisfy all needs of all? No. That is the reason to keep working to fill all needs. The more filled, the more created, and these needs are the reason to go on living.

:- Doug.

Disorganization is life. Life’s business is to disorganize what it touches. Life moves; life reproduces; life reacts to its environs: in all cases life disorganizes. Community Disorganizer = Community life bringer.

:- Doug.

How can we communicate, how do we communicate, to the seventh generation, in our Wills? What do we have to transfer to them? In the seventh generation our stuff is rusted, our houses turned to dust, our footprints upon the earth no longer traced; and yet, and still: we were here. What real gift have we to give these our grandchildren?

:- Doug.

A meet meeting is one precisely fitting, right and measured—commensurate—with the juice of life. It flows, it heats, it turns, it cools, it heats again.

:- Doug.

The juice of life:
flows through conversation
Absolutely essential then is that we meet:
meet often, meet well, meet purposely

:- Doug.

Where do I see conversation and cooperation at work in my life? The telephone—between lawyers and between businesses and between people getting things done. Coffee shops where people are selling, playing, learning, combining, intercoursing, recruiting, finding one another. Emails and blogs and social networking sites. Apparently even spam emails and pornographic commerce on the Internet. Community organizers inviting. Social entrepreneurs conspiring. Wills and Trusts communicating through the generations: letters to my grandchildren.

Doing the work is not the main focus of life. The main focus is deciding where to go, reaching agreement on what to do, inviting others to help, exciting each other, becoming part of something larger. This we all do, this we do everyday. We look to the future. We look to the past. We tend and console, we do the work of the day, we enjoy talking with one another—not just passing the day but something real is going on as well. We are meeting. We are secreting the special juice of life. In some societies we stand so close as to smell each other’s breath, each other’s life force. In others, we do it with pictures in the mind, stories, songs, games, orders, speeches, videos, memos. All this paper, all this noise, all these bytes are but carriers of the juice of life.

Once we notice that this is true, then do we possess another truth, another good, another power? Does this reach beyond the other, embrace it, hold it? Does it have the power to direct the first? Is fusion more power-releasing than fission?

What then can we say? When we see this truth, to grasp it and use it: do we have responsibility?

In this responsibility can we seek out its joy and its love?

:- Doug.

What if we do already know and even feel the need for other people and for collaboration? What if we found a more lively word? What if we sought out each other for what we already know we can give each other? What if we went out into the world with the expectation of finding one another?

What if we recognized the power of the heart to get work done? The broken heart?

For me the what if means I am not going to meet people with my fists clenching in anticipation, I am going with my arms reaching to embrace. It means loving people—as they are, where they are—not even wanting them to engage the world. Yes, I need to stand for what I stand for—but I can invite and hear.

Invite and hear. Listen to my own heart. Listen for love. Invite and hear.

:- Doug.

This morning
on the way out
rain water was clinging
to the bottom of the clothes pole
each drop a prism of greens and
golds and browns
flashing as I walked
towards it and the sun
These are the kinds of days
in which we can dream….

:- Doug.

To be more inviting might mean to be more cryptic.

:- Doug.

What if we already knew and felt the importance of conversation—lived it every day—and only need to be lightly touched on the shoulder—to turn and let it do our heavy work?

:- Doug.

All we have is
All we ever had is
Each other

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 907

The future is not somewhere you go
But something we do

Please pass it on.

© c 2009, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

One can speak with those
who are prepared to hear
but with those not
words hold themselves back
knowing?

:- Doug.

Why disorganize?
For the seed to grow
it must burst the shell

:- Doug.

My purpose is to help people [work and] play together better in society. I do that in micro ways and macro: micro is Wills, Trusts, nursing homes, and Complex Family businesses; macro is in community disorganizing.

:- Doug.

Together
This country is
not something that is
rather something we do
This community is
not something that is
rather something we do
Our G*d is
not something that is
rather something we do

:- Doug.

To view the environment as something on which humans operate misses reality: We are within and part of the ecology, affected and affecting. We do best if we work with and within not apart or upon.

:- Doug.

G*d is to me community
& the conversations within community
The whole and the flow
The music and the dance

:- Doug.

If we were to turn around our inquiry: instead of working on crises, if we worked on the place we want to be, what would that place be?

:- Doug.

Conversation is spirit in motion.

:- Doug.

If we see G*d as the
parent cell of all there is
and that cell as the
love-impulse holding all together
as one
What is possible?

:- Doug.

I disorganize communities through conversations that matter.

:- Doug.

My work is to promote conversation as the modus operandi of the world.

:- Doug.