FootprintsintheWind.com

What needs to happen in our community? Who else feels strongly about this, pro or con? What little thing could you do together to help?

:- Doug.

The savior is in our group. Which one of us is it? Is it you, or you, or me? Or us?

:- Doug.

Walk the earth. Find the little meetings that need to happen. Gather the people. Meet. Go on. Plant light seeds.

:- Doug.

It is possible to do larger things. Look around you: It is you. There is a job to be done and no one is coming forward. So the doer, the one to make things better, is you. The job needs doing, the work is necessary, someone must do. It is you.

:- Doug.

What kind of government do we get when we elect our representatives on the basis of how nasty they can act?

:- Doug.

Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who’s the nastiest of them all?
Nasty’s what we want in Congress
To our future we are speeding
Hate and malice we are seeding
Toward the vicious is our progress

:- Doug.

Have a conversational day!

:- Doug.

It is—what? interesting?—to see
what comes out of my pen
accept the starting line
tell the truth
if I could do that in conversation
where might we go?

:- Doug.

Election time falls upon us
a mugger in the night
all we can do is hope
soon it will all be over
All those nasty ads
show us what kind of government
these candidates will give us
—one which prizes nastiness
We are not a nasty people
—yet
O, what to do?
Do not vote for the nasty
or vote for the least nasty
and you and your group
find a way to tell ’em
we do not want government
of the nasty, by the nasty,
for the nasty

:- Doug.

When candidates fail, voters must take charge.

:- Doug.

There is an intensity to life
And here we all are
bored
repeating motions
make a fresh crack
in our shell every day
listening can get in the way
putting a coat of the expected
over old cracks
make the new cracks small
let a little out, a little in
work to understand and be understood
to savor and be tasted
in this explosive mixture
is life’s full flavor

:- Doug.

Out of stunning comes silence.
Out of silence comes meeting.
Out of meeting comes conception.
Out of conception comes life.
Out of life comes stunning.
The mesh gets finer each turning,
so each is wildly fecund.
Much waste, much life.

:- Doug.

This being stunned is what happens when we meet a truth: a truth we did not know before. There it is, looking in through our eye to see if we recognize. If we do, we must go forward for there is no back there.

:- Doug.

What are the truths that are calling to me in this moment?

:- Doug.

Still, there is some truth I have not yet said. Truth is always bigger than my words. It calls me forward to try to express, and before that to find. What is reality, and where does it reside?

:- Doug.

Wal, shut my mouth!
(I hope you will get some meanin’ out
of these helpless words—they
are the only way I can think of
to reach to you on paper)
what I was thinking wisped away
in that instant when we heard
(and knew we each heard)
an echo of what one of us said
then ever’thin’ went still
I am left with an empty
head and a new sorta
inkling away in my noodling
all the goo between us is scraped away
so’s to see the ground beneath
is solid for a dancing path ahead

:- Doug.

How to tell when our conversation is about to change the world
a person is stunned
the person made up of all our group
mouth shut by what we heard
words fail, silence incubates
life will not allow us to meet it again the same
being stunned is the space for awareness
the start of wholing

:- Doug.

The truth I want to tell revolves here. There is a story of things working under the surface, needing quiet and dark and warmth and to be left alone, not to be watched. The story involves yeast and roots and compost and marinades and something just a little beyond hearing. No, not working our brain nor the ideas, nor any activity at all. The story is about being worked and savored and allowing natural processes to unfold without turning them to purpose or spurring. This is not a “Do me” resignation, but an active part-taking, one step of which is steeping, gathering, growing in the dark. It is a time apart, a time even purposely taken to soak and ponder.

This is human. This is life. If we go all the time, we run out of gas. But our tanks are not filled with gas, rather something more complex goes on. There is participation and there is hands-off, at the same time. There is a plaiting, a weaving, a being woven, a steeping and choosing to be steeped. Here we are held back by trying to steep or dive deep—we must permit it to come to us. This permitting is activity. Active allowing, passive activity, bravely choosing to undergo a surgical procedure by which we will be changed. And we do not know in what ways.

:- Doug.

I am seeing that I need to interrupt conversations more for the silence, to call attention to where we are and what we are doing and how we are meeting, so that things can slow down a bit, so they can steep. To talk about the conversation is to talk about what is going on inside the participants, to find possible meeting spaces.

:- Doug.

Do you hear?

:- Doug.

How do your daily rounds enliven you?

:- Doug.

Yeast working
roots growing
juices soaking
large nows
our hearing

:- Doug.

Silence
Listening
Hearing
Marinating
Riddling
Being savored
Swirling
Meeting
Eddying
Spiraling
Stilling
Silence

:- Doug.