FootprintsintheWind.com

O you who take
the song, the poetry, the hugging
out of scripture—
How sad it is for you
and your children!

:- Doug.

People get heard. People connect. Things change.

:- Doug.

Speaking eye to eye
we seek
we startle
birth alive

:- Doug.

Conversation conceives persons.

:- Doug.

The seed of change is conversation.

:- Doug.

The course of human events can turn on a conversation.

:- Doug.

Winning is not everything, but participation. Live life. Don’t steal it from another. Give life.

:- Doug.

You can do large things: but it requires conversation.

:- Doug.

What can we add to the possibilities of life, in this conversation?

:- Doug.

Conversation is not just discovering understanding of each other. It is working through how each of us thinks and meets and more importantly how all of us think and meet. From there we work toward directions and dimensions of thought and meeting and growth beyond what we have known.

:- Doug.

You older generation: what are you generating?

:- Doug.

Is the purpose of Estate Planning preservation of wealth? Or nurturing of humans?

:- Doug.

Why do we say when someone dies they are “late?” They got there before the rest of us.

:- Doug.

What is on your way?
What is up ahead?
Whom do you encounter these days?
What is the meaning to you, to us, of your way?

:- Doug.

We do not need competition: rather the tension of meeting true self and asking growth producing questions. Competition is a mere surrogate for the tough questions—and a surface one at that. Meeting is not compression but stretching: growth if we permit.

:- Doug.

The way of conversation does not exist.

Doors open and gates close along the way of conversation; quick you must be and ready; or slow; even so these are not the way.

:- Doug

Another thing I saw: when we learn a new language it changes how we think. Having two languages gives us new ideas we couldn’t hold in either language alone. Immigrants, by living among us and teaching us their language, are giving us a gift, a gift of great value: an opening of our eyes, minds, and hearts.

:- Doug.

What is the predicament of humans? It seemed to me last night that it revolves around knowing we have to move, must do something, must be someone, but not knowing what or who. We have been given a puzzle with pieces missing. We are expected, commanded, to solve. No, we have an inner compulsion to make the pieces fit.

We only think there is a puzzle.

Or we only think there is a puzzle with one way to solve to make a picture. Or only one picture to make.

We are a puzzle with pieces missing.

We have a puzzle with pieces missing. Sometimes we have to shake those up to see new patterns.

:- Doug.

Every good and generous person started by shaking the foundations of their parents’ world.

:- Doug.

Could we meditate/contemplate in conversation?

:- Doug.

Do you need to meet G-d?

:- Doug.

It is entirely possible that to get where we need to be we will need first to break what has been. Sometimes to give the good seeds a chance, ya gotta break apart the clods. Ya gotta forget how to walk in order to swim.

:- Doug.

I hear the word redemption
as freedom
freedom to do who I am
as predicament
being lost but having to act
as sanctuary
knowing who I am is enough
without any doing

:- Doug.