Antennae
The twigs on a tree are antennae
seeking to pick up the signals
from the starlight, the winds,
the rains, the pollen
by which we are nourished
:- Doug.
Archive for the 'Conversations' Category
aliases
In our conversations
we are consciously
or almost consciously
hoping to find
the sparkles
profound connections, even compassion
larger vision and more inclusive truths
breakthroughs
action
all of these
are aliases
for the divine
:- Doug.
We teach ourselves
We teach ourselves to chase a buck—we could school ourselves differently.
:- Doug.
Visions!
Visions!
Most have them
We all wander among them
We should… Why don’t they…
Insights, glimpses, wonderings
Panoramic sightings
How dare you withhold your
Visions from our grandchildren
Who could live off one
For a thousand generations?
Shout them, whisper them
Write them and leave them
In a public place
For a child to discover
From vision, life!
:- Doug.
What is inner is
What is inner is
the gossamer
whose filaments
connect us
soul to soul
What is most inner
is to be touched
by each other and
become quick to help
It is false to
surmise inner refers to one
individual rather than
the meeting
here is the seat of consciousness
:- Doug.
What if we were to live the life of Jesus?
What if we were to live the life of Jesus in our lives? Would we be willing to give up our jobs and families and walk about the countryside speaking truth and love to people? Would we trust G*d to turn over everything to him? Is it scarier to give up our whole way of life for years and our picture of ourselves for ever than to lay down our life in a day?
:- Doug.
Micro conversations
Micro conversations can be a counterpart to micro credit: what if we could encourage people to converse in little groups, to take charge of their lives, jointly, in little snatches, and spread these micro conversations to thousands and thousands? Here is where the pyramids and circles work, because there is an infinite set of permutations and each one is creative (not additive, not multiplicative, not geometric). It is not zero sum, where one gathers at the expense of another: all benefit. Not just individually but in our interwoven whole.
:- Doug.
main business
Every day something
calls me to the main business
of my soul
every day something gets in the way
which may be the main business
:- Doug.
Health draws sickness in
Health draws sickness in
Giving to each
Broken piece
All it needs to be
Roundly filled
:- Doug.
Evil at work, good at work
Look, look about you: the vast majority of the earth’s peoples and species are good, intending good. To intend harm and evil is an aberration. To teach these that they are evil and deserving of guilt is evil at work. Good draws out good.
:- Doug.
I offer it to you
Lord, I do not know about this, so I offer it to you: not for a decision but as grist for conversation.
:- Doug.
We have the capacity
We have the capacity to invite emergence
We open to connection & conflict & crisis
We welcome rhythm and pattern
Story & dreams & hands call the dance
:- Doug.
To my vaguely depressed baby boomer wife:
To my vaguely depressed baby boomer wife:
For the last several decades you have been somehow dimly aware of something in the back of your heart, nagging at you. There are days when you can’t get anything done, you have told me. There are times when you would rather eat bon-bons and watch “The Price is Right” than do any work. You have told me this too. Sometimes you don’t tell me: we go out for supper or you make bland.
What’s going on? Perhaps it is a symptom of 1950s upbringing: every little girl’s dream is to get swept off her feet by an handsome prince, have a glorious wedding, and live happily ever after. “Happily ever after” is always vague, so we got exactly what we wished for: vagueness.
Perhaps it is our society: all individuality, all for me. Even our churches preach a gospel of individual salvation. Our advertising certainly defines satisfaction as getting more for me, ever more, and always being dissatisfied.
What it amounts to is something else you have told me, and which I myself have said more than once: I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
The solution? Well, does life have a solution? Can you solve life, once for all? If not, how then shall we live?
We live best when we face these questions. We live most when we live a larger life: larger than the little day-to-day one we see when we are vaguely depressed.
This larger life gets us outside ourselves. It invites us into other peoples’ lives. This may be why you sang in the church choir, lead another, and volunteer in several organizations. You are reaching out to others. You are helping. You are seeing a larger world.
This larger life calls others into our lives. This larger life calls us together.
This larger life calls us to love, justice, beauty, goodness. There is much that needs doing in the world. There is much that can make this world better, whether we are righting wrongs or working on dreams.
What do you see that needs doing? How can I help?
What gifts? What worlds?
You not only are capax universi, but you hold the universe in your palm. You can change the worlds, you can stir the stars. Yet your visions, your visions! are of such small inconsequential things! How dare you waste an earth mover on scraping the stones from your car’s parking space! The insights of a mystic on vacuuming your carpets!
Yet what does this mean? It means there is justice and peace going wanting for your efforts. It means people starve and die. It means people go homeless. It means children who hear not a kind word, children who are not heard. What gifts do we have, what worlds can we serve?
:- Doug.
My task
This is my task—to tease out another’s vision, to help that person name it vision. This opens the universes, for ever.
:- Doug.
Memory it is that kills the child
Memory it is that kills the child
in us
Been there
done that
we say to ourselves
before we even have the words
when in truth we have
never
been here
done this
:- Doug.
Perhaps I need to be turbid for awhile
Perhaps I need to be turbid for a while,
allow the water to settle itself.
The world is not only clear.
The world is beyond clear.
We so often want clarity and simplicity in a
muddied complex world. This is
denial of truth.
We turn away from ugly, in
denial of the beauty there to uncover.
We stay in our rounds,
afraid to expand our circles, in
denial of good.
These three strands,
woven, one, us.
:- Doug.
Are we too fat?
Are we too fat?
Do we keep taking in after we’re full?
Take time to eliminate, get empty first,
through exercise or simply
time between stuffings?
Can a full jar accept fresh liquid?
Programs, plans, platform speakers
but no effort given over to
emptying, opening, lying fallow
in preparation to receive and
be fertile ourselves?
:- Doug.
