FootprintsintheWind.com

Complexity is the key to our world and to making it work for all. We must engage the complexity. Since the complexity itself is increasing, we must engage more and more. How? By engaging others who have seen other parts of it. This world, these times: too complex for us? We do not “solve” complexity by ignoring parts of it. Complexity cannot be solved; it might be outgrown, it might be wrapped in a new complexity, plaited and tied with a ribbon, yet always there are stray hairs and growing; or maybe we get lost in the complexity, swimming and splashing and letting it float us. What’s in an ocean? Life and death, light and dark, movement and stillness, incomprehensibilities, vastness, lost and found, surface and profundities. All these, together.

:- Doug.

We need to disorganize ourselves in order to get anything done.

:- Doug.

Conversation impregnates us. We then know we will bring forth, but what is born will utterly surprise us.

:- Doug.

Conversation leads us far outside the boring stifling room of the intended, anticipated and controlled to the pregnant outdoors where exciting things are born.

:- Doug.

Conversation is the way we arrive at an accurate picture of complexity.

:- Doug.

This is about action. This is about making change.

:- Doug.

When you look at life clearly you get questions. Questions lead to more questions, questions lead to possibilities.

:- Doug.

To my good friends–

Last evening I saw something new here: an unprotected border means that the criminal element can make use of that, too. But then, we have ways of catching criminals here, and a fence and an orderly immigration policy won’t prevent them from doing us harm. They could always waft anthrax in on the winds. The truth then becomes that we want to protect ourselves not from “terrorists” (however we might choose to define or not define that term), but from the hordes of poor Mexicans. What then do we fear? That they will overrun us and we will have to learn Spanish? That we will not have enough jobs for ourselves? That they will corrupt (meaning change) our ever-changing culture?

There is a fear of people coming here “illegally.” What does that mean? It means simply that we have set up a way for people to enter the country and these people have circumvented it. Now that raises the question, Why? Why have they circumvented it, and Why do we think this is bad? The issue is on both sides. Perhaps the rules are more restrictive than they ought to be. Perhaps whatever rules we have they will ignore. Perhaps we have something here that is more important to them than breaking a few rules. Perhaps they have no in-bred respect for rules. Perhaps our quotas for their country are too low. Perhaps we fear them. Perhaps we could do something to make it better in their country so they would not want to come here. Perhaps we have a moral duty to do so. I do not know the answer and neither does anyone involved. Only together can we hope to find the better questions, and some ways to live together in this world.

For that is the object isn’t it, to live together? What would we do if there were a million Mexicans dying? Would we not send aid and food and medicines? What if that catastrophe threatened the lives of people in this country? Would we not send troops because a weapon of mass destruction threatened us? So if we must live together, if we do not want to see people dying on the other side of the fence because we would not open our hands, then ought we not be about the business of meeting person to person?

I don’t think I want people to blend in. I want to be challenged; actually I need to be challenged.

:- Doug.

Sometimes I state an hypothesis and add to it just to test it.

:- Doug.

There is a chance for us. Shall we then get to work? Only in a hope is it worth going to work. Life is a game of chance, built solely on hope.

:- Doug.

Might it be true subtly or more that G-d as world-ruler could mean something very different from what we have thought? Heavy-handed, magically snapping fingers, rescuing us from our poor judgments, having a plan that we understand—what if G-d were larger than this?

:- Doug.

I open by listening. I open by revealing. I also open by seeing larger.

:- Doug.

Jesus called us friends. Jesus said a friend will give his life for his friends. He did not limit the giving to one of the friends.

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

I have been drawn to ask if a poet would ever consent to being President of the United States. Is this nation ready for such a reflective time? Presently not, but things can change on a dime. But for how long? 9-11 brought us to a reflective, community-mindedness, but only for a few weeks. Then the President started beating the war and consumerism drums.

What if instead he had put on sackcloth and ashes? What if he had brought us to a reflective state of mind? What if the voices of consumerism and hate had stayed quiet a year longer?

Might creativity have been given a chance?

To what extent was the manipulation the source of what happened next, and would it have been possible to turn the attention a better direction? Or at least had a debate about where the attention should go?

Sure it is natural to have a “Let’s get the bastards” reaction. But it is also natural to step back and see if there is a better way, a longer view, a more loving view, consistent with the soul of this country.

What is this country about? What is our vision? What is our place in the world? Is it purely economic, the land of plenty? Or is there something more here?

What is this notion of freedom? What is this notion of democracy? What is this notion of a republic?

Our recent emphasis on the economic, probably dating from 1929, has narrowed our horizons, and has led to our current desire for security. We are trying to preserve what we have and have lost the who we are. We have confused the what we are about with the what we have.

War? Terrorism? They are cut from the same cloth. There have for all recorded history been criminals, those who try to take what belongs to others. Terrorism gives us a label by which to demonize criminals and allows us to cast a net that is at times wider than necessary.

The power of this label derives from what it plays upon—our fear. Fear of what? Ahh, that they do not say, for to say it would take away its power over us, and consequently the power from those who seek to wield it.

For the Fear they purvey is fear of losing our stuff and our perceived superiority because of our stuff. People who look or sound different would have to be met toe to toe, hand grasp to hand grasp. We might no longer be richer than they. We might no longer have our excess stuff. We might lose our identity as the land where people have more than enough stuff. We might also lose our identity as the most over-stressed, under-relaxed, over-medicated, over-busy people in the world.

:- Doug.

Could a poet ever become President of the United States?
Would a poet ever consent to?
Is it only for the Czech Republic?
Could the spirit of this diverse nation
be touched in a verse?

:- Doug.

Our pictures of our gods tell more about us than about our gods. Our unchanging God reflects our distress at the swirling nature of life and events.

:- Doug.

I record my meetings and glimpses and their effect upon me. To the extent they reverberate in the lives of others they may hold a wider truth.

:- Doug.

We need to take account of the individual experiences of billions of people if we are ever to know reality and truth. Our science so far is impoverished by giving little value to these facts.

:- Doug.

Get to work.

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

There is always much to do. It is a matter of choosing and doing. We need to kick ourselves in the pants. Actually, we cannot do that, it is only a service others can provide for us. Kind of like the picture of Heaven with the splinted arms at the banquet. You’ve heard that story. Now realize that the second part of that story is that it is already that way on earth. In order to get the right things done in this world, we need a kick in the pants every so often, and we cannot do that physically. It takes someone else.

The bright red cardinal is under the deck at the moment, exploring. He is lovely to look at, startling in his brightness. And going about his business somehow touches me.

How he survives, but it is just a garden of Eden for him: everything he needs is there for the eating or moving to his nest. Keep busy, keep busy. Love, serve others, make yourself useful. Find what needs doing and do it. Get your kick in the pants from looking, asking, listening to the story.

Red cardinal, red cardinal, what word do you bring me? Be useful, be useful!

:- Doug.

People are verbs not nouns. We exist only in moving and relating.

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

Perhaps meeting is about being real, finding one’s self and others to be. We are never sure that we exist. We think what we think might be invalid. I certainly do. When we seek to keep up with the Joneses or impress them, it is based on this same fear. That all fear is the fear of death might be looking at it wrong side to: the real fear is the fear of never having existed. For having once existed we can go to an eternal death satisfied. Religion could be based upon such a proposition.

We think that we might not be valid. It is in meeting that I find I am real, valid, existing. I find also that there is something more than I: there is a we, and moreover there is a between which is dynamic and static at the same time, coming and staying a short while and going. I find and we find that this between is not just between us, but between and among he and she and us as well, giving a lift and a light and a continuity. There is something more when people meet. It is almost palpable in music and story.

This something inexpressible is perhaps a soup in which we stew and swim, and so it does not come and go, but it is we who close our eyes and minds to it. It is more than a thing: it engages, sometimes you, sometimes me, sometimes he and she. Makes real as it engages. I suspect it is bigger than all that.

But what difference can we make in our lives because of this? We can meet and seek to be met, consciously, on purpose now that we know it. We can seek to be met in a context that engages more of us.

This expresses some of conscious evolution.

:- Doug.

To meet and be met embraces these: to be heard; to give; to accept; and something inexpressible beyond and encompassing.

:- Doug.