FootprintsintheWind.com

Fundamentalism consists of fear
Hate is the daughter of fear
Fear is the estranged daughter of truth,
The sister of love
What is true and real brings forth
Love and beauty
But sickness and misunderstanding twists
a few away.
Beauty flowering from love hugging
Contains healing for the afflicted.

:- Doug.

Is it enough already? When will we reach enough?

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

Two related insights this morning, not overly new, but putting them together brings again to a crux the issue I have been wrestling with: how to connect G*d and conversation. G*d is the G*d of conversation. That is one way.

First: There is something more and it is released in conversation: it is met in conversation.

Second:
There is much to do
Many to do it
Enough to do it with.

These are strong learnings for me. More and much. Perhaps this is one poem and then would it make sense?

There is
Much for us to do
Many to do it
Enough to do it with
Something more released in conversing,
Met.

What are the further reaches of this? Where does it want to expand? (Note, not What are its edges, limits?)

It wants to expand toward meeting the needs of persons. It wants to value each one. It wants to value all the interconnections, which is a way of saying what life is about. Life is about interconnecting, intimacy, intercourse, movement. The more of us we kill or ignore, the less life we have. Life is about opening it all out and bringing new interconnections to life. Bringing forth. Birthing. Respecting the dignity of each life and each creature. Reverencing them. All. One.

It wants to expand toward finding new needs as we expand. It wants to expand to embracing new worlds, and there seems to be an infinity of them.

It wants to expand love, to where there are no borders, no defined limits to love.

For me, it wants to expand toward bringing G*d in as a necessary part and party of the equation. Perhaps the whole of the equation. G*d = G*d + people + conversation + work + resources + imagination. Or for short, G*d = people + conversation + work + resources + imagination. This is not just what G*d expects, but who G*d is.

What are the further reaches of this? Toward bringing more people into the essential conversations of our time. The essential conversation, singular, of our time, for there is only one conversation: How large can we be? Who large can we be? It is not a matter of eliminating conflict, but of finding ways for all parties to be part of the conversation that is life itself. Life itself then is another word for conversation, and conversation is another name for G*d.

People + work + resources + imagination = conversing = living = G*d.

:- Doug.

We have told ourselves for too long that we are broken, defective, incomplete. We are none of these things. We are whole, growing more complete, able to complete us all. We are not perfect, it is true, and that is our perfection.

:- Doug.

Life consists not just in the greening shoot, but in the events which happen: the things we stir come back to touch us in new ways; others stir, and these stirrings touch us too; winds stir and touch; mountains seem to exist timelessly and they too touch and are touched. Life, thus. Where do we fit? Where do we fit?

:- Doug.

If we have a bigger picture, we can move in harmony with the real.

:- Doug.

Writing may have started by disconnecting us from the world. But perhaps only for half a time. Perhaps they were a way to draw our insides out: to go in and see the universes there; then to come back out and stitch it together in poetry and letter writing and journaling and e-mails, stitch it together with a larger world.

:- Doug.

I have brought a pad because I expect you will say something I will want to write down.

:- Doug.

This is not what G-d wants:automatons throwing aside their skills and strengths. Rather he called us friends and expects us to use our weaknesses and vulnerabilities—our strongest strengths—as well.

:- Doug.

There is something more. Every here. Every now.

:- Doug.

In conversation we are finding out who we are—creating ourselves—being created.

:- Doug.

When we do not allow ourselves to be loved for who we are, but only for fulfilling the expectations of others, we cannot develop an identity of our own. This is the tragedy of our times. We do not exist if we are not met. We are complicit in this, too. The answer? Open the lid and look inside. Let the inside out. Discover. Meet vulnerably. Pain, compassion, helplessness are among our greatest gifts. We cannot meet the expectations of others, but we can surely exceed them.

:- Doug.

Can we value ourselves for our aliveness?

:- Doug.

We are already capable of much more.

:- Doug.

It is in opening that we grow.

:- Doug.

Work has a greater value than the merely economic.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 653

Do I need to be doing something more exciting, grander than this? To help others draw upon their hearts floor plans for flying new cathedrals, for awesome communities of creatives?

For I see that grander things are possible, if I go beyond today, if I touch the spark inside and let it set off the real person within.

For I do hold back, I do not let my spark set off the real person inside. I want to fly, I want to explode! My God! What a thing to say! And yet it is my essence that has said it, this something inside that wants to set off my sparks, and sparks of others deep inside, to create grand new worlds, to create inconceivable grand new worlds! O!

Please pass it on.

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Beyond “What do you live for?” ask “What is the central question you are contending with now in your life?” There may be a whole storm of questions: How do I live my calling? Who do I make a living? What do I do about redesigning the Website? How do I get to work today now that the car is in the shop? But these swirl around a larger one, the eye of the storm: How do I serve G-d? Or, Who exactly am I, once the baggage is stripped away? These contending questions are not to be answered, nor even overcome. They wrestle you at night and give you their blessing–and a curious limp–in the morning.

But what is beyond questions? The wrestling, the blessing, the limp, the story, the conversation? The new life, the compassion, the growth, the invitation? Happiness, acceptance, service, seeding?

Questions involve a certain striving after, a certain lack thinking, an amount of analysis. Even asking What does all this mean, What are the patterns, the tunes? is taking things apart, trying to put them into categories, rather than letting them be what and who they are. It is fiddling instead of enjoying. It is putting constructs on things that may not have been there to start.

What is beyond the questions?

:- Doug.

About what do we feel deeply?

:- Doug.

What gives us cause to hope?

:- Doug.

As Alpha goes from pointed and closed to Omega’s round and open, so go we humans.

:- Doug.

G*d is touched by all of this—the animals, the greening earth, our struggles, each one of us, each star, each insect, touched, and G*d’s heart flows.

:- Doug.

This morning’s romp and glimpse about Kingdom of G*d has led me to this: What might be fun would be to ask people What the Kingdom of G-d means to them.

What would it look like to institute it on earth here and now?

Do you feel that is your duty—to make that heaven on earth now?

Why does that feel like an hypothetical question to you, and not one which is on fire for you? What would make it on fire for you?

What can we do, here and now?

What would a year of jubilee mean to our society, if we actually took it seriously?

What would it mean to seek first this kin-dom and let everything else go? What does Bucky’s 50 year experiment teach us? Can we throw down our lives for all of humanity and see? Am I willing to throw down mine? And what of the people who depend upon me? Could I convince them to come along, like Abraham had to with his entourage?

Lord, tough questions you are giving me today, dangerous and exciting. Help me to address you.

:- Doug.