FootprintsintheWind.com

What is left when the jar breaks and the water runs out?
When the cage is opened and the bird flies away?
To the play when the theatre goes dark?

What difference did the jar, the bird-song, the play make?
Almost none if it be one
if it aims to make differences

Will the water remember how it was shaped?
Will the birdsong echo down the millennia?
How many futures will the actors speak to?

What remains after the jar, wing and dialogues?
What remains of the will of potter, cage-builder, play-wright?
Yawn, stretch, greet

:- Doug.

Where do we get the pictures of G*d we carry around in our wallets?

:- Doug.

Let us look and see if that is true, if it is wholly true. Could its direct opposite be true as well?

:- Doug.

It’s a ponderful life!

:- Doug.

Look in yourself
you will see
a desire to improve
This is life speaking:
“I want to unfold:
You are my fingertips.”
Although we quarrel over details
this is the only proof
you will need
that we evolve

:- Doug.

A calling is not a leash
It is an unleashing

:- Doug.

No one knows if others
see green the same way
they do
no man knows what an orgasm
feels like to a woman
nor another man, either
but in that space between us
where we meet and become
a third person together
here we can know
one
mystery

:- Doug.

To say too much is to say nothing.

:- Doug.

Trust people
expect not
we all give birth

:- Doug.

We are not here to
change the world
Instead something larger, more difficult:
We are here to meet and stir
each other
the world
G*d
To love them larger.

:- Doug.

Picture this:
Here is a lock
you
are the key; you
are a lock
I
am the key. How can
two locks be keys in each other?
We each are keys
to most people
we meet
keys to open
keys to start
keys to admit
We
are the keys to
us
loosed upon the world

:- Doug.

In emptiness
All possibility

:- Doug.

Too grey to dig ditches
Too green to lie in a grave
To copper to quit working
So I will contribute red
fire and hoary
questions
to people budding and flowering

:- Doug.

Nastiness in the campaign
cannot lead to
kindness in the legislature.
One candidate says
We do it because it’s effective:
our polls go up,
more people go to the polls,
anger is good.
I wonder as you do
if he will sell himself
for a few votes,
what else will he
sell himself for?
If she can only see
what the other lacks
is she lacking
the imagination we need?
What kind of government
do we deserve
if we elect only
those who become
nastiest?

:- Doug.

It is out of the emptiness
of this circle
that G*d begins
us new each instant
Eden tells us the world is ever new
and we are in charge
for good or ill
Easter tells us we have
a fresh slate each day
and we are in charge
of what unfolds
being the salt of the earth
we are not led
but turned loose
it will all work for good
to those who love
out of this emptiness

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

There is still something just beyond my words, tickling the edge of my thoughts. This notion of being led, of a benevolent puppet-master god who controls all the actors on the stage, who has so many fingers to control the rocks falling down the mountain and the places where the winds blow, somehow is over-simplistic. The idea that all is woven into something beautiful after the fact is closer to what I am seeing. There is something larger yet. Randomness is permitted, and willful aberrations, and surprises, even to G*d. The OT records instances where G*d’s mind was changed by what the man or woman said or did. There is relationship: G*d is touched, persuaded, changed, by G*d’s creatures, somehow. Yet this is not it fully, either. But it touches a bit of the essence. G*d is touched. G*d wants to be touched.

G*d is weaning us of God. There is a role for dependence; yet also for independence; and now coming for interdependence. Use the metaphor of becoming adult: this is still good. The dependence we need is in the nature of interdependence. We cannot go it alone; neither can we be half people, refusing to shoulder our share of the load. And that share is always larger than we think, heavier than we want.

There is mystery, there is emptiness, there are circles. There are larger wholes beyond the ones we see. We touch and then we know. We grow to someplace G*d had not imagined and we find that G*d was there just ahead of us. We are expected not just to tame the wilderness but even more to make wild the tame. We are to stir the heart of G*d. Is that a large load?

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

We live in a compost heap. We think the crap on the top has all the answers. But the heat and the work is getting done inside…by all of us together. Yet we will not accomplish anything of use with all that heat and all that work unless we spread it around and mix it up with cooler earthiness, with water, with seeds and seedlings. Then the job is just begun: the greening of the earth. We are fecund. That is our job: to be fruitful and multiply that fruitfulness.

:- Doug.

Talk it through!

:- Doug.

Just because they’re different
does not mean you’re better
just unfamiliar

:- Doug.

Think Johnny Appleseed, Jesus, Peace Pilgrim. Only we are not planting; we are uncovering seedlings. When they are seen and given space, when you are heard, the world grows. By just that much. Wander. Uncover the bright and greening.

:- Doug.

In conversation persons say themselves
sell not some proposition rather
tell of themselves
(sometimes just for their own ears)
care not if others agree
—some of this is pure exploration—
or even respond
for the response they need
is to be heard

:- Doug.

Cars before dawn
chasing the light
that stays just ahead

:- Doug.

You are a bright spot for the world. The role of conversation is to open a door to seeing this light—and putting it to work. It is a generosity of curiosity. My work is curiously seeking out your sparkle and helping you set it loose upon the world. It is not about fighting uphill to make you do what you don’t want, but helping you make real your best. My spirit is generous—I have to give.

:- Doug.