FootprintsintheWind.com

Dialogue is action because dialogue is at the root of action: We need first the idea to move, then the courage to move, then move. Dialogue directly gives the first two, and adds hands to the third.

:- Doug.

Talk well together.

That is one vision. Another might be:
See well together.
Touch. Hear. Smell. Dance. Move. Music. Rhythm. Taste. Story.

:- Doug.

Dialogue is discovering
third alternatives

:- Doug.

Dialogue is people together
going into the woods
discovering places
they had not imagined

:- Doug.

Much of our economics splits costs from enjoyment. We enjoy our cars today, leaving the costs to others. What costs? Poison in the air, global warming, death and injury. Who are the others? Taxpayers, our mourning families, our grandchildren. What are the alternatives? Move costs closer to joys by designing in more safety, cleanliness, care for our home place.

:- Doug.

People don’t get involved because they care so much as because they want to be a part.

:- Doug.

I’m a-mong.

:- Doug.

More people
tracking
more possibilities
dialogue is creativity
only more
creativity grows strong
in the among

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

What is this emergence? What is going on? It is not pure reaction, caroms. Caroms leave the people the same. Nor is it the workings of catalysts, for the agent is changed too.

We must then examine the possibility that it is the work of fields. There are fields of energy around each person, not as the new agers would have it, but simply the area of influence of a person’s physical swing, emotional throw, imaginative appeal. There is some potential there, some possibility within that field. When the fields meet, they play, they commiserate, they do all things human. And is it possible that the field comes first, the person is the emanation of the field, rather than the other way round? This is difficult to conceive, yet possible, for how could a chicken be contained in an egg?

Consider a man and a woman coming together. She brings an egg, he sperm. Neither bring the child (or for that matter the no child) into the room, but one could come out. Note this: the child is not just the combination of traits of each of them, but each one is someone who is different from the parents. Ask any parents of two or more: each child is different—significantly—from his or her siblings. There are so many possibilities; chance plays a role. Planck’s constant. Something more comes into the room that neither one brought in. We can predict that there may be a baby, but we can never predict who. And what will she do? We can only stand and wait curiously.

So there is something that happens in life. Do we need to name it? If we name it, we think we control it. We have a handle for it, and that makes us comfortable. But perhaps when we take hold, it now has a handle on us. Does it matter which? Is the pooch walking you?

There is something that happens in life, so we ought to accept it. Perhaps we can make ready for it: not just to welcome, but to invite.

What is this emergence? Have we found out anything? We have found out that it is there and that we might be in it. We are not victims but actors, not actors only but writers. There are seven billion of us actively writing and acting in this play at this moment. We have protagonist and antagonist roles. We are in emergence and inviters and creators.

:- Doug.

Do you have all the answers?
So perhaps you could build your world
on the proposition that you do not—
Then is more possible?

:- Doug.

To live is
response
traffic
dance
aha
shift
transcendence
fields
kaleidoscope
emergence

:- Doug.

There is nothing over there. There is only conversation between.

:- Doug.

We are not asked to seek forgiveness over and over. We are not asked to seek for the G*d who is present, who converses. We are asked to live out that love and wholeness. We do that over and over because life is a breathing kaleidoscope.

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

The past few days my thinking has been going toward the idea of emergence: what does it mean in human interaction?

We OS people see the magic, but people are afraid of magick (which they think is what we mean). They think it is not replicable. The fact is it is replicable, but the precise outcomes are not predictable. That there will be outcomes is sure. Or is it?

But is it predictable that the outcomes will be good?

It seems to me that if you have good heads and good hearts going in, the results will be good. As my friend Philip Thomas says, let’s examine the alternative: have we been getting good results with what we have been trying?

So it is worth our while to try something new to see if we can do better. And we ought to do better because A. we have more brains brought to bear, and B. the people who implement are the people who come up with the plan so it is more likely to be implemented, and C. implemented according to plan. Is that true?

But we also need to account for the magic, the emergence, yes?

Something unpredictable does happen. If it were predictable and obvious we’d be doing it already, given that we are not brain dead. If it were predictable and obvious we could read the book and follow the recipe and we’d have a perfect soufflé every time, yes?

Is it indeed unpredictability we are after?

That scares us because we…what? Because we don’t trust the people. Why do we lack trust?

Because we have never given people their heads let alone their hearts? We don’t know them?

The first time I had a Tootsie-Roll Pop, when I got to the center I thought it was rotten and I threw it out. I did not know. Later, I found out it was simply another kind of sweet.

So what is emergence? What do we know about it? What can we yet learn? What is the edge of our unknowing?

:- Doug.

In our collaborative times it takes more than one to make the world better. But with two or three…?

:- Doug.

Is this what presence is: the in between? We stand in presence, it does not emanate from us, it is not in us, but we in it. And only We. Presence does not exist for just one person, but takes two who then become the one presence.

Can I say that more clearly? Do we have a field of potential presence about us, and when this field crosses the field of another, then presence becomes actual? This presence lasts only as long as we are together either physically or otherwise. It is a bubble which pops and sprays us with its magic. Sprays us and those about us and our fields of potential presence all. So it has a residual that then works in the meeting-presence of another event.

:- Doug.

Take care that action not be a waste of life time. Meeting is the real.

:- Doug.

We are hardwired to seek intimacy.

:- Doug.

Remember “In the beginning was the word?”
G*d spoke, expecting answers.

:- Doug.

The more deeply we live
the more deeply we want to

:- Doug.

We cannot both be present
and have a way to be present
Being present is the way
I am is the way

:- Doug.

When you don’t know what to say
Say nothing
Pause
Wait
See what emerges
from between
people

:- Doug.

Intricacy generates good
justice arises from complexity
From people coming together
clarity emerges before seeing

:- Doug.