FootprintsintheWind.com

The way to change the world is to change the way we converse.

:- Doug.

If groups around the world are meeting to respond to the breakdown of our institutions by looking for ways for us to consciously evolve, how then shall we work and play? Together?

:- Doug.

How do I best help the world? Whom shall I ask?

:- Doug.

This country is founded on something more than the ideal of being the wealthiest country in the world. Indeed that notion only developed in the years of the Depression when we told ourselves, “Never again!” It is the opposite face of the coin from the 60s when we resolved to put a human on another cosmic body. It is now time to re-examine whom we really want to be.

:- Doug.

People who are marginalized, people who have limited physical resources, all people can be leaders. Every one can ask a question, get a conversation going. Everyone can tell a story, even by just sitting or lying there. Be the story, be the question. A reason for living, a season for giving.

:- Doug.

It is indeed simple: what we have does not work, and will work less and less as we have more and more population compression. What will work is the new community—meeting each other, hearing each other, working together. How’s that working? Is it getting any better? Then we need to change our ways. If you’re headed toward an abyss, repent. Mid course corrections. All very familiar and common sense. But not so common actions. Now we need to get serious about making it better.

This is the work of the people, not the work of manager-mind.

But there are no enemies. We are our own enemy. We have met the enemy and he is us…. Meeting is indeed the key. When we meet, when we see that other is really like us, then progress is possible, not before.

Indeed manager-mind is what is holding us back. We are trying to progress with both feet staying in the same place! That is a recipe for falling on our face!

How to fall on our face:
Keep both feet stuck in place

Manager-mind is the part of us that says, let’s make the best of what we have, let’s get used to what we are getting and what we are doing and just do them faster and better. If we will not dream of a distinctly different future, all we will get is what we have already gotten—until we run out of that road. Someplace, we need to see that something else is better—and possible.

:- Doug.

This is in fact our setting: top-down cannot work. Things are too complex for one mind or one discipline to solve. We must work together. We must converse—we must speak and hold others to answer us. We must encourage us to find one another, to turn to one another. Creativity comes from the people. The management way of seeing—which aims at rearranging the blocks already in place—lacks the necessary imagination.

:- Doug.

Our work is to ask, What is common among us? What is common among our issues, our passions? What makes us a people? What lifts us above?

:- Doug.

Some things unreasonable—
Compassion
Truth
Reconciliation
Visiting friends
Parties
Dancing
Poetry

:- Doug.

Sometimes ya gotta be unreasonable. It’s the only way to break with the past: the culture that says this is the way things are—from now on. Be reasonable says to be the way things have always been, will always be.

:- Doug.

SG + LQ = R —> A

Small Groups plus Live Questions equals Resources producing Action.

:- Doug.

If you’re not willing to be unreasonable—to do something beyond ordinary and reasonable—then we will move on and you can stay where you are.

:- Doug.

There is a calling from the woods through the opened window this morning: “who?” It is a quiet voice, staccato. I have not heard it before.

:- Doug.

A small group of ordinary people can change the now.

:- Doug.

Meeting is of a different order from debating or chatting or partying or encountering. It is not so much a matter of its purpose, although that is involved, as it is that its character is in the persons’ being. It is a discontinuity. It is not the same kind of conversation, and I cannot apply the word conversation to chat or other variants.

:- Doug.

Community Disorganizing is gathering a small group around live questions to find we already have the resources to take action.

:- Doug.

The tracks of the old history
Are shattered
A new land
—All directions
All possibilities—
Is opened

:- Doug.

Been there, done that signals a need for grief
Despair signals a need for hope, possibility, new story
Hope only has ready ground where
The heart has broken open

:- Doug.

I have been afraid to say it big enough.

:- Doug.

Many are the voices of G-d
Varied are the homes
Many are the voices of G-d
Calling us to home
Calling us to whole

:- Doug.

In us, G-d

:- Doug.

G-d speaks
In many voices
Small & shrill
Silent still
Raspy pained
Triumphal—pieces
Conflicting confused
Listen

:- Doug.

How does 9-11 relate to new community? First, it shows the dangers of population compression. A fire chaplain struck down by one of the very people for whom he was praying speaks of the results of a failure to hear and help others. People running or wandering through a world of ash tells us what our world will be when some of us only see others as other.

Second, 9-11 shows us what can happen when a people comes together—we can feel real community. We can have heart, and we can ponder. Even if we abort these efforts. What could happen if we give full play—and work—to reflection and compassion? What is our best work, our true work?

:- Doug.