FootprintsintheWind.com

“Make money with your business. That’s the point, right?” read the billboard. Actually that’s not the point. The point is not you, not what you put in your pocket. The point is what good you are able to do for the common good.

:- Doug.

Life is not about guilt.
The fact that you’re not perfect
is your perfection.

:- Doug.

What’s the fun for G*d
if G*d knows
as you and I know?
Full of heart, G*d laughs—

:- Doug.

Does G*d grieve? Over our deaths? Over our griefs? Over our sins—or over our feelings of guilt? Over our sorrow when we ought rejoice? Over our failures to act? Missing our lives? Does G*d cry?

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

A general direction is preferable to a distinct target. For life is not a convergent problem with one goal, one target, one place to get to. It is divergent, with many things, a cornucopia, some of which are good and some bad. So it is up for us to find a direction, the direction of that which is good and wholesome and fulfilling and completing, not those which are divisive and killing and unjust.

Thus the purpose of conversation is to find and nurture and expand the good, to find a world that works for all, that allows all to be whole and complete, but it has no goal.

Thus we can perhaps have a purpose but no goal, a vision but no aim.

Where does that get us?

To the place of saying we have an aim in conversation of creativity and working together for something that is good and fulfilling, but no goal of a particular outcome. We are not pre-selecting, not prejudicing the outcome, but we do seek an outcome that is good and life-giving, life-enhancing. What that might be in particulars and specifics is what we leave open.

The concept needs to be cleared.

The purpose is coming up with new solutions. Engaging creativity. Living together despite our differences, in celebration of our differences. Working together. Working on a specific project to accomplish concrete things.

So perhaps our immigration conversations for example could be not Issues and Opportunities, rather: What projects can we work on together? How can we get on with the business of making life better for our nation of immigrants?

:- Doug.

Blessed are they who gather.

:- Doug.

I am infinite! I am part of all there is! I contain all. So each of us.

:- Doug.

Conversation is my business. Life is my business. Conversation is the blood of life. Conversation is the business of us all.

:- Doug.

There is harmony and disharmony alike. There is lovingkindness and there is murder. None of us is stranger to any of it. Perhaps this is the underlying truth of the concept of sin—that we have all of this part and parcel of who we are as people? Then our task is not to run from “sin” but to embrace it and use it all for good. All things work together for good for those who love life. Conversely, All things work together for evil for those who love evil? Even these are to be loved, for love is stronger than evil. It appears to me that the message of the Bible writers, taken as a whole, is one of caring and loving and being together in community. Community, coming together is the essence of love.

:- Doug.

Life is to death as love is to embrace.

:- Doug.

Out of death life will come. Flies lay their eggs, maggots crawl, buzzard alight to feast. Death is host and compost. Death is but a resting night dream rejuvenating life, pulling back its bow.

:- Doug.

This morning as I was waking I saw my connection to this earth and at the same time to all there is.

:- Doug.

Do you seek the concluding word or the beginning one? Thus you choose—against or for dialogue.

:- Doug.

Conversation is a tuggle between life and indifference. We must enter in if we are to progress. When we engage we huggle. A huggle is a hug with dance in its pants.

Tuggles and huggles: these are what we need!

:- Doug.

What’s the most enlivening thing in your life right now?

:- Doug.

If we could only bottle that energy we say looking on our grandchildren. Yet the energy comes in the living of it, and on its capture departs. Conversation is this tension between bottling our fear and entering into life. Death and life constantly tug, hug, dance, advance.

:- Doug.

ABW—Above, Between, Within—We are used to 
thinking of G-d as Above. Yet G*d is Between—between
      our      words,      between      our      
thoughts,      between      us,      here,
      now      we      don't      even
      have      to      listen.

:- Doug.

Conversation is difficult work.

:- Doug.

Who owns the problem? If it is many people and groups, then they are integral to the future. If it is in the system, then everybody affected should participate. If it is imposed by others, then the attention of these needs to be gathered.

Have we tried many ways to address our problems? Then do we need creativity? It is susceptible of one answer?

:- Doug.

Statistics and intellect can give breadth to the picture, but lack depth. To see the whole it is also necessary to see light and shadow. In the relief provided by anecdote and this living person we become.

:- Doug.

To call the participants’ attention to the significance of what is happening between them is perhaps more central to the curriculum of conversation than we thought. The conflict is part of the conversation.

:- Doug.

Which challenges us more: answers or questions?

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

What do you think of this?—

Yesterday in Ft. Wayne John Steinbach and I came upon a new way of looking at discussion. Because it is related to percussion, and because drumming is one of the earliest ways of touching souls, discussion also shares in that. Percussion is to strike or shake through. I had not seen this word shake in there before. It is from the Latin, quatere. Quake I suppose is related. Looks to be closer to Quash. It is something that shakes us, to the core. So discussion does not have to be avoided—it touches us closely, in our chest, in our diaphragm. The dance of conversation perhaps can make good connection through the drumming of discussion.

:- Doug.