FootprintsintheWind.com

We live in non-conversation
We live in the avoidance of conversation
—chit chat
—deflected dialogue
—meaningless drivel
—avoiding challenge
—turning away from thinking
—fearing to commit our time
—afraid to be touched
Hear the buzz in the room?
It’s probably not conversation
not enough silence
not enough banter
too earnest.

:- Doug.

Rhythms and echoes
People and events
pulse and resound
when we turn our ear

:- Doug.

I ask people about the bigger questions that surround them, and they most often draw blanks. Yet there is violence all about, injustice, starvation of a hundred kinds. I do not know what it is, but you do. What could you hear, if you tuned your ears to it?

:- Doug.

Sparkles on the pond, dance of the raindrops
sparkles on the pond, count them if you can
count can be redeemed by joys of sparkles and of dances

:- Doug.

There is a poetry to our meeting
a poetry to life
rhythm and sometimes echoes
we take for rhyme
we might as well
for we are the only ones
who will find meaning
here

:- Doug.

Isaiah hears out of the mouth
in verse one chapter Forty-three
echoes I hear, echoes:
redeem you, you redeem
call you by name, by name call you
you are mine, I am yours
he, she, it are yours, you are theirs
and in the echoes, life, life
and in the life, echoes, echoes
When you redeem the world
(this task and joy I give you)
call one person by name
then you have that one
and me
and we have you
you call her name you buy her back you give her birth
call you by name, by name call you
by name echoes echoes echoes

:- Doug.

I’m a mystic
which means by necessity
I’m an activist
ripping, ripping

:- Doug.

What does it mean to redeem
someone? A whole
world full of someones?

:- Doug.

There once was a boy from Id
When climbing a tree lost his lid
He scampered on down
And fell on his crown
‘Twas not a thing bawdy he did.

:- Doug.

In this world we find life and movement, growth and decay, rain and evaporation, cycles all about. Shall we then seek change? Perhaps it is better to initiate than suffer, and when it comes, to accept with open heart. Go to whatever comes, turn to it, love. Be the one who comes, turn to people, love.

Meet whoever comes. Be the one who comes. Meet.

:- Doug.

Are we assuming—perhaps—that we have the answers? Or even the questions? Why are there no clients—no poor—at our meetings?

:- Doug.

In order to design a ladder to get us to someplace we cannot touch, we need to engage a certain level of imagination. In order to climb that ladder across the yawning abyss, we need to put aside our imagination so we see only the ladder and the firmly planted ends of it.

:- Doug.

Why do we put such effort into sending people into space and on to the stars? Are not the pictures our robots take, and the samples they bring back enough for us?

Why is it less satisfying to see a travelogue than to visit the place?

:- Doug.

When we meet others, we both have blind spots. Between us we can point out things the other misses, have us each turn our heads just a bit so we can see more of the real. Experts as well as lay people have blind spots. The key characteristic of blind spots is that we do not see what we do not see. It takes someone else with a different vantage point calling out what he or she sees, to call attention—and this indirectly! So when we are stuck with looking at some­thing as so many facts and figures, Dollars and numbers, or in some other concentrated way, we should be alerted. Are we not doing all this to support and nurture life? Whether it be starting a business, earning money, or building a warplane, is not our ultimate the advancement of life? If it is not, what use is it? So this needs to be part of our equation: life. If it is not served, then we need to question what we are doing.

The idea here is to be gentle with ourselves and each other. We need to call our attention to where life lives.

:- Doug.

We want to do larger things, and those things come in I-Thou. If the human is more important to save than the horse, why is that? What do we have that the horse does not? We have intellect to be sure. But we also have dreams. Dreams and story and laughter and the ability therefore to power our intellect. Our imperfections lead to our dreams, often directly. We see things that are possible when we do not go in the straight lines our intellect draws. Drawing the really real takes curves as well as straight lines, shadows as well as light, colors as well as black and white, missing pieces as well as wholes. The rabbit hole we stumble over can lead us to whole new worlds.

:- Doug.

Who is a person? A person has dignity. A person has worth. A person has uniqueness. A person is someone. On the other hand, an individual is one example of the people, a single number, but not special beyond being an example. An individual is expendable, a person is irreplaceable.

:- Doug.

Touch, taste, smell, sight, sound, beauty are interwoven for strength. Durability.

:- Doug.

What’s most alive
is what’s between us
you are here

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

Can one become skilled in dialogue or is it something that just happens? Buber would seem to say you cannot create meeting, but you can be ready for it: wait and watch. Know what to watch for. Open and offer and be ready to welcome. Can we do more? Harrison Owen seems to say when the conditions are right, the dialogue self organizes. This suggests both waiting and preparation. The conditions of importance, conflict, diversity, complexity, urgency cannot be created: but perhaps can be heightened, can be brought to our attention. We can look for the other points of view, examine them as Bohm would for hidden assumptions. But the click, the combustion, is spontaneous. So who are those skilled at dialogue? Persons with good heads and good hearts who open them to others: people who listen for and point out similarities and wholenesses, conflicts, complexities, diversities and significance; people who listen for sparks and look for clicks; persons who trust others and self and the meeting.

:- Doug.

Proposal: Add to the Bill of Rights the Right to be heard.

:- Doug.

Dialogue is dangerous because
It proposes that interchange
Is more valuable than
Information, knowledge, status, or power.

:- Doug.

Dialogue is work
Not only threatening
But working through
Complex, unpleasant, knotty places

:- Doug.

Explain less
Resist your desire to sell
Heartbeat, laughter and story
Do

:- Doug.