FootprintsintheWind.com

Wire cutters will not do. It takes a live flame to light a wick.

:- Doug.

Who cares enough to say what matters?

:- Doug.

Elements of dialogue:
Misunderstanding
Carrying forward
Creativity
Reaching toward
Opposition
Dark and light

:- Doug.

Don’t you get it? I don’t care about your sins! Now get on with the work of eternity, your home.

:- Doug.

Work for the kind-dom.

:- Doug.

It is to great work that we entangle people.

:- Doug.

In community, be a compost turner.

:- Doug.

To worship means to attend to G*d, word and response, turn.

:- Doug.

From the people
G*d arising
From G*d
People arising
From conversation

:- Doug.

The beginning was the word
We are the response
Still called to respond

:- Doug.

Being and doing are the same in their essence. Not the doing of intention, which interposes the intention between the being and doing, but the doing that flows from being and the being that flows from doing, unhampered. We do not so much seek to communicate as we have a need to communicate: it flows from our being and our being flows from it.

So there is indeed a mystery of word and answer. Sometimes the word is silence, or waiting, or standing there in the face, or even before the face arrives. Sometimes that is the response. Word and response. Silence to silence, waiting to waiting, together can be enough.

:- Doug.

Be a ravel-rouser
Dance the tangle

:- Doug.

Life is engendered in conflict. Physically, in two bodies working toward and away from one another. In literature, the life of the story sparks in the play of opposing forces. In cosmic dimensions, explosion creates. When all is spent, something new!

:- Doug.

Possigiggle and words like it are of synthesis: you cannot analyze them: tearing apart only yields letters and torn bits, and no learning. They want to stick to others, pull from them, and make new things. They are in the world to evoke our creative and playful

:- Doug.

First, ya gotta want to change the world. Then people gotta hear people.

:- Doug.

I can show you how to hear people into changing the world.

:- Doug.

Tell me, what’s really happening? What’s on your mind and heart? Beyond that, what, who?

:- Doug.

Last night I listened to a story about a king with a small kingdom. He was not a rich king, so he went from village to village visiting his peoples….

At this point I was wanting the story to take off from there, for I heard an echo of my own story. Although I followed along, tagging behind the story he was telling, I was also standing at the junction, wanting to follow the other one.

Here is where it went: In each village, the kindly king met with his people and listened to their stories and their thoughts and their cares. He had little he could offer other than his presence, his listening, his hearing. He had no gold coins, no silver bullets, no wisdom-solving-all. But his love, O his hearing! This did wonders. He told them what people were doing in other villages. He asked them for advice for the others. He encouraged them to try their own ideas, for he was only their common kin, not a ruler, as his title relayed.

So the people were grand. They grasped their world and worked it, molding it as they saw best. Each village was a little different, and each learned from the others. There was no violence in the kingdom, but conflict and tempers! O but were there lots of those. People contended mightily with one another, in their villages and with other villages! Large was their contention, but larger was their cooperation. They were not wealthy, but they were sure prosperous. Widows and orphans, the slow and differently abled were all welcomed and cared for, and each had what he or she needed—and each was part of the community and part of the con-tending.

All because one of their kin took seriously the work of hearing others. O to be that kin!

:- Doug.

Working together is how the world changes. More precisely it is how change emerges. Still more precisely, how we open space for change to emerge. One can seed a good idea, a small group can at once grow it and make it practical. One is handicapped, but a small group can shape the idea and give it wings. Give us all wings.

:- Doug.

Simply help people get to their work of changing the world.

:- Doug.

I’m a mystic I’m a poet I’m a community
disorganizer I savor all of G*d all
of humans all of community without
end time space body breath spirit wind
airs ways savoring playing
weaving ever weaving

:- Doug.

Small groups open space for big changes.

:- Doug.

When we are conversing what they say we take in and what we exhale they inhale, and this allows for health in each. We are literally necessary for each other. How is this news we can use? We give potency for living to others, we get it for ourselves, when we meet. We need to meet more. We need to encourage confrontation and conflict! For when there is real war, really meeting the other, then also we live.

:- Doug.