Snow!
Snow! Beautiful snow!
:- Doug.
Lord, show us the fountains and rainbows!
:- Doug.
Archive for the 'Conversations' Category
Grey Busters!
Who ya gonna call? Grey Busters! Us! We are the ones we have been waiting for. Why are we waiting? We must find ways to start the conversations, to spread them, to engage. This is the way to engage persons: conversation. So look for the conversations. Find people to sit with.
:- Doug.
Choose not the grey cloth
I choose not to look at the grey cloth but only at the rainbow it holds back. To release, to release, colors upon colors, persons and voices! To color the world, to release the peoples, to make new! To love and imagine!
To choose life over death, to choose color over grey, to choose truth and imagination and love: these are where we need to attend.
:- Doug.
Stuck in a great lake of mud
This morning I saw that we are all, even those who are seeking to make a difference, stuck in a great lake of mud. We are moving, but in slow motion, our feet clung to and weighed down by the mud. We are fighting inertia in others and we see it so much that we are held back. What are we to do? Head for dry ground and throw a rope to those in the quicksand. Float to the top. Look to the sun. Separate the earth and the water. Bring fire. Give courage and aid to those who are helping. Ask for more workers. Woe, woe, woe—but we are who we have, and so we must do the work that falls to our hands. We must attend not to the mud but to the rainbows.
:- Doug.
calling wrapped in a deep sense of
A deep sense of calling is wrapped in a deep sense of hearing and being heard. This is heart work, work from the depths. This is braiding, weaving, hugging work.
It is about conversation among people about things that really matter. It is personal and active. It is making the world a more loving place by making it a more heard place. Every voice heard.
:- Doug.
Personal fire
My work is igniting conversations. Locally. One on one or a few at a time. Personal fire.
:- Doug.
The best way to frame the live question
Fighting global warming is not the best way to frame this live question of the day. For one thing it is a double negative, and no one has yet figured out how to do that. More importantly we need to focus on what we want to accomplish. It needs to be more than stabilization or even a return to the levels of an index year. If we believe that the earth is really a living organism, or is akin to one, then realize that the earth cannot stand still. Only when finally dead will it reach stasis. It is easy to posit we want global cooling, yet that is not likely to be good either. What do we want?
:- Doug.
Spread the fire
The most effective thing you can do to help your cause is talk with persons. Wherever you can, as much as you can, spread the fire. No thing spreads the fire as persons conversing.
:- Doug.
This year’s Christmas gift giving upset me
This year’s Christmas gift giving upset me: the kids had so many toys they were not given time to play with them—just open them and then Here is another, Give me that one, Put it down so you can see what else you have.
I do not want gifts of things. Things don’t make me feel better; ideas and imagination do, and you don’t satisfy one with the other.
My preference is to limit the gifts we give to children. If we gave them one or two well-thought-out gifts, things that will allow them to use their imaginations and lead them out into a larger world, to think of others, to give themselves away, then we have done well our jobs as grandparents and parents. If we think of what we value and where we want to lead our grandchildren, then we have done well our tasks. But if we simply heap on by counting numbers and Dollars, then we get the shallow next generations we decry. So let us choose and think out and love.
Let us see what lifts us up, what serves our grandchildren. A cornucopia may not be the best metaphor: what they get is about as deep as the horn goes, and if they keep digging, there is no more stuff. But if we give from our love—our minds and hearts working together—then we have a horn that can never be emptied.
:- Doug.
The work is the work
The work here is the work, not the answers. Answers are never final, questions always live. The work is to do the work. The answers are not to be memorized, only the feeling of doing the work, the way of doing the work, so that if the questions, any questions, arise, the work can be done in that moment.
:- Doug.
From differences
From differences
Look away
Seek where we are one
To our hope
To call our attention
Where we are one
Is a small voice
Still, seldom heard
Shh…gently listen…
To call our attention
:- Doug.
What is the real divine sacrifice?
What is the real divine sacrifice? It is Jesus dying on the cross, but not to buy off an angry god. It is the giving of his life entire for his friends, as we all should, if we are to have life abundantly. Who loses his or her life gains it. It is a we thing.
Why so horrible a death? You do not have to fear death, even death on a cross—it cannot touch you. Cruelty is judgment. Love overcomes cruelty. What is worse than cruelty? Fear. Love overcomes fear.
How is it fruitful to die horribly, painfully, under sentence? It says the “they” cannot sentence life. It says Judgment cannot stop Life. Life, imagination, love: all this is eternal. Death and Judgment is temporary only: is nothing. So the worst Judgment is a nothing, because it seeks to divide what no man can put asunder, it seeks to hinder, hamper, hold life—which cannot be done, because these are negatives, not contraries.
:- Doug.
Being ones or being one?
We are especially good at being ones
But have forgotten how to be one
:- Doug.
Round bales
Round bales of straw or hay are sitting in puddles in the field.
The trees are are huddled together in a corner of the field, waiting out winter.
A lone bird wings across the highway.
:- Doug.
How much time?
How much time do we spend on Christmas shopping, choosing just the right gift, going from store to store, week to week? What if we spent that same amount of time with the person, getting to know each other, giving our life-stuff to him and her?
How would the world change?
What if we counted not things but giving? How could it be good to spend time with people?
What if we asked them? What if we gave our selves? What if spent—our very beings—on them? What if we learned what is on their hearts and heard them?
That of course is something I can do with Nathan today. I can learn what is his favorite thing, the most surprising thing, the happiest thing.
What if Christmas were family time? What if it were about loving people, not showering them with things they may or may not want or even like? What if we made gifts of what is most precious, as we mouth words about G*d giving a baby?
This is not to say Do not give gifts. Rather, give the larger gift.
It is not something we have to do in a radical way. We can sit with one other person and hear them. Today. Christmas day then is any day.
:- Doug.
What I can contribute is this
“What I can contribute is this” he said thoughtfully. We all know what he means. It is a large gift to our movement both to receive and give. It is more than money—it is time and contacts and commitment. Yet all of us have it outside in. In eternity we ask “How much can we give?” “To whom can I abandon myself?” There we know we live on what we give away—it is the very bread we eat. That little “What-can” in his offer focused on what he could afford, not on who might be, giving. It focused him on what he kept, not on what he could accomplish. Let us all be present, present all. Eternals count not cost but giving.
:- Doug.
And so are you
I’m a prophet
I’m a poet
I a creator of new Heavens & new Earths
And so are you
And so especially are we
:- Doug.
