FootprintsintheWind.com

We are other
and we are not other
Both are true
Holy Embrace
includes more, more,
all, all!

:- Doug.

Outside my window
All the birds announce
Spring is near!
Come out and play!

:- Doug.

What are the important conversations we need to raise?

Maybe it’s not something you need to know or get; maybe it’s something you need to give: raise a disturbing question; give a challenge; and insight to share.

:- Doug.

You can’t grow the grass from the blade down.

:- Doug.

Think of how much lower gas prices could be if they didn’t have to employ a guy to change the price signs every hour.

:- Doug.

Last night while sharing hot chocolate with a friend, we came upon a new understanding of the Wherever two or three are gathered principle: creativity emerges in gatherings, bubbles up among persons. What else is humor, joke telling, memory tripping, banter? Creativity is a commonly held notion for who G*d is, what G*d does, yes? So wherever two or three are gathered, if we look at what we see, we will see divinity rising.

:- Doug.

People together do impossible things.

To my good friends–

I really need some reading that challenges me to grow. This is an interesting statement in light of what I am reading in Leonard Shlain’s The Alphabet and the Goddess: The reading is a left brain activity, but I am looking for right brain things, too: images, stories, wholes. So maybe wherever it comes in, it can go to the appropriate side, although we need to be aware of the filters at work.

So what filters are at work in reading say Rumi? Rumi is rich in images and tactile qualities. Poe is rich in onomatopoeia. Whitman is rich in action and movement. Yet Rumi says get me past these words. The mystics want to sit and touch, albeit internally. The words cannot express all of it. Words are small, holding less than all the water. Words are one at a time, holding less than all time. Words can be suggestive, which is perhaps a right brain function. But it is not words Shlain alerts us to, but alphabets and written words. Words spoken occur in a setting of all-at-once, for they leave impressions, not a record of how they were strung together: there are many ways to tell a joke or a story and make the same point, get the same laugh. So Rumi is less filtered because his poetry was spoken, then transcribed. Even so, words do not hold all the water. Much more is expressed in gesture, body language, and presence. So one of the filters at work here limits the carrying capacity. We think we have it all, when we cannot. Also, we are directed toward the abstract by the very nature of words, especially written words, and they may be actually more concrete.

So what I need is some meeting with a soul who challenges me to grow. This perhaps is the universal admonition to seek a teacher. I have this prejudice that I can get all I need from the books and the Web. It is clearly not so. Perhaps to grow more I need to meet.

And how is journaling a process for bringing up the subliminal? It is time away from time to think and concentrate on one’s self, and the words are attempts to hold up a cup of that water to the light.

:- Doug.

We are re-hearting the world. We are opening the people’s hearts. We become encrusted under a world that is money and number oriented, climbing ladders, seeking physical things: we have forgetten each other and why we are here. We can make the world better. It takes heart. This we have. With heart, all the rest comes. Without it, we have nothing of value. Re-heart. Open yours. Open a friend’s.

:- Doug.

Conversation is how we grow.

:- Doug.

We need quiet times to take things in. We also need times to get things out into the world. We are conduits.

We are more than conduits, also, for in the quiet times we are also processing, creating, sparking, mixing, being mixed.

:- Doug.

We grow most rapidly when we engage more of us.

Conversation–the in-person simultaneous variety–uses more of the brain, the eye, the senses, the body, and the being of the persons so engaged than does writing or asynchronous communication. More gifts are engaged, more are likely to be unearthed and sparked. By nature, conversation is generative.

:- Doug.

What is it about us that keeps G*d’s interest?

Do not follow me, I am lost. Meet what is more. Find G*d for yourself. Let G*d find you. Dance the lost dance with. Who is G*d for you? What do you see? What do you not see? Meet and birth.

:- Doug.

A tinkling of laughter
a sprinkle of tears
the quick-silver of awe
the updraft of a mile-high thermal
the spaciousness of clouds changing shape in a summer sky

:- Doug.

Do you see G*d’s beauty in the everyday?
You may look
but don’t say no or yes
It is better to be lost looking
spun toward vertigo
by this.

:- Doug.

Notice the wonders flowing round you
A branch that grasps soon breaks
A tree swaying is asked to dance again and again
Sparkles are ours–not to claim–
To touch, sometimes to claim us

:- Doug.

It is a real shame that what many people tell others these days is the height of Christianity is the likes of “What would Jesus do?” Instead, we need to be challenging people to grow. People need to grow in their understanding of who God is and who they are within the really real. People need to grow in their notions of what hope is and how a new Heaven and a new Earth is their responsibility. People need to be adults, not compressed back into some old molds. People need to believe a God who says, “See, I do a new thing!”

:- Doug.

What’s on your heart?

:- Doug.

Don’t stop at giving someone a piece of your mind. Give a piece of your heart.

:- Doug.

Lord come. Sit with us if you please.

:- Doug.

In conversation, we are gathering the pieces of our selves, making us one, each and all. As we gather we are finding and rearranging our formation.

:- Doug.