FootprintsintheWind.com

Being heard may not be the spark in living, but seems to be the receiver, the tinder.

In an effort to live, we put forth shoots and tendrils. When these find soft moist good earth (another way to spell heart; ear, heart, earth are bodily related) then the spark of life catches, then there is fire. The spark falling on unreceptive materials dies before it lives. Received goes. The ground calls forth the lightning.

:- Doug.

We want to live
to live we must bring ourselves forth
fully express
discover
share
these give no life
unless
another receives
being heard we live

:- Doug.

How does a tree bear fruit?
Necessarily?
Inevitably?
Effortlessly?
By relaxing in the sunny breezes?
By eating?
By standing in place?
By being?
Or does the fruit bear the tree?

:- Doug.

Contemplation is giving a thousand pieces of your mind to G*d.

:- Doug.

Notice what we’re doing. Point out where the energy is or is not. Invite slow-downs and silences to refocus.

:- Doug.

The bus
takes you places you don’t
want to go
with people you don’t
want to meet
you can bring something to read or work on
and so escape
and miss what the bus
wants to show you.

:- Doug.

Let us prefer “whole” to “collective” as suggestive of symphonies, flows, great epic novels: we is greater than an aggregation of Is.

:- Doug.

The artist’s dry period and the mystic’s dark night of the soul seem to share one essence.

:- Doug.

In a great symphony, each note is essential, has more effect played just so at precisely the right time, adding to and being added to by the others. This is how people are incomplete wholes. Conversation is symphony.

:- Doug.

I don’t know.
I firmly believe
I don’t know
It is obvious
I don’t know
You idiot!
I don’t know
We believe
I don’t know
You always, never…
I don’t know
All outsiders are inferior
I don’t know
We don’t have enough money
I don’t know
Here’s the answer
I don’t know
I don’t know.

:- Doug.

Dialogue is the group saying
“I don’t know” so they can move
past the intermediate

:- Doug.

Unknowing powers the going.

:- Doug.

G*d is sprouting out all over!
Walking in the autumn woods I see:
Trees sprouted out of the earth, large ones
new ones, seedlings, fallen ones
grasses and seeds, seeds with prickles
seeds with wings, flying
spider webs, gnats, mosquitoes
—all of these G*d in many masks
yet not masks, revealers
a leaf falls past my eye, beside my path
lands, to return food to the soil for a hundred
other plants, all G*d emerging
and for the earthworms, G*d crawling, with
no eyes, but all heart
the wind blows the leaf a little ways to the
better spot
shrubs and broken limbs, coming up, going back
a respiration of solids, whatever that means
all over!
Look and see and hear

:- Doug.

The task is not to rip further what is already started, but to poke new holes. Poke first some who want the poke holes, who are looking for light and air and space. Who are these people scratching at the grey cloth?

:- Doug.

Anger does not grip you: you grip it.

:- Doug.

There are two questions: 1. Are people capable of changing their community? Although most do not believe it can be so, there are plenty of proofs that any group, any where, any time, can improve their lot. This is beyond question. 2. Whether people want to make change, or more precisely, whether they’d ought to want it? This is a close question and involves further questionings: motivation, whether change is good, and the toughest one: even if it is good, whether we are better off just letting things stay well enough.

:- Doug.

Intimate with a crowd.

:- Doug.

What if conversation were how we unfolded together?

:- Doug.

Conversation is not about talking
It’s not even about listening
It’s about hearing
—the other
—your self
—the in-between

:- Doug.

We live in conversation. Most of the time it’s meaningless drivel. My life’s work is to invite the other kind. For pay I help people converse across death. For giving back I invite people to make change in communities.

:- Doug.

What I want to say is close to this: We don’t hear each other. Maybe never much have. We don’t hear ourselves. And we certainly don’t hear the in-betweens. My work is the in-betweens. A Will for instance is an in-between. It is a conversation.

:- Doug.

With some people,
you have to work hard
to hear what they are trying
to say
often me
stumbling among the scattered words
but your effort can be rewarded with richness
I promise

:- Doug.

Exchange, interchange, intercourse: how far along is your conversation?

:- Doug.