FootprintsintheWind.com

We have been a dialogue
Melodies in antiphons
One song—still We are
—We can be—conversation—We
Unconversing, we die from memory
Or else—We make world

:- Doug.

Now that you see what is opened to you, what is your response?

:- Doug.

Martin Buber writes (p 103, The Knowledge of Man) “They demand without remainder the life of him who hears it.” Yet it is still given as choice. Dreadful choice. Joyful choice.

:- Doug.

Showing ourselves awake
To establish a common world
If such be the task we own
What sort of world will we make?

:- Doug.

Conversation is how we shape
our cosmos, bringing
it forth
in our image
the one we beheld in
between in
conversation

:- Doug.

What you can say about marbles—
I’m a marble short
She keeps dropping and picking up marbles
A marble here, a marble there…

:- Doug.

True freedom is
Free giving
Of one’s whole being

:- Doug.

We need a bigger
picture of G*d
—bigger even than that

:- Doug.

The dialogue is the weave
The movement, the dance, the conversation—
These are the whole &
What possible difference could there be?

:- Doug.

We want to throw our lives away
So do it bit by bit
Or all at once—which is better, say!
Both is the fact of it—but choose—
For then you know the Way

:- Doug.

When first we think we
All the answers may possess
Excluding what some other might us offer
Is when by piece by piece
We begin to cast aside the good we had

:- Doug.

A work without a model
This is what excites
Incites us to the possible
Human—Divine exchanging touches

:- Doug.

We live in a tension in which we can play a role (we can also go to sleep, which is playing a role just the same), and that role is to work at participating in making the world whole—and engaging others in that work as part of the bargain. This is the power of being, and it is touched in no other way.

:- Doug.

We all stand in the same wind.

:- Doug.

The little statute of a man in my window is ever tying on a new fly to offer to the life he knows is under the surface of the stream. A learning.

:- Doug.

Who will listen? Who will hear? I help create that person when I meet another. Meet! Go forth and meet again! It is the way.

:- Doug.

What is out there, past my skin, past the grey I imagine I see in the world that I imagine is known to me? What is out there in the betweens of persons?

:- Doug.

Now the sky in front of me is almost totally azure, with one or two long narrow continents floating in the sea. The wind is moving all this and more along the waves, and pin oak leaves are waving to me.

:- Doug.

Is the world one? Or do we make it so, should we choose? The latter draws me this day: some of us see the oneness and can work toward it; others see something else and do nothing or work toward that. Which is better, if we could choose?

:- Doug.

Faith is not only an individual thing. Faith is trust. So by definition it takes more than one.

:- Doug.

Humans are the avoiding animal—We see our possibility and we run away—We see our responsibility and we leave it to others—We see the sick and suffering and we turn our backs—We must be gentle with our selves—

:- Doug.

We make the world one through our thinking together, which is our speech. Or we fragment: we can choose which is better.

:- Doug.

What is the role of disagreement? Can it be fruitful? To ask the question is to answer it and ask the next: how do we make it fruitful?

We can go off on separate projects, a little group here, another there. We test out hypotheses and see what works. We say ever, this is not for ever.

Neither agreement nor disagreement is forever: together they are the dancing contraries that fit the rhythm to their bodies and carry us around the spirals.

:- Doug.