FootprintsintheWind.com

Help me get people conversing with several another.

:- Doug.

Listen. Your body tells you that it longs to be touched in order to be made whole. This is something anyone can do for another.

:- Doug.

Be the wind…
…fuzzy edges…
be the wind…
…fuzzy edges…
be the wind…
…fuzzy edges….

:- Doug.

Please help me. Help me increase meetings between persons on something that matters. Afterwards, do what you like.

:- Doug.

What do we each need? is the way to finding each other.

:- Doug.

Aspirations are most common between peoples, even when creeds are not. Imagination breathes life into life.

:- Doug.

Meeting is the thing.

:- Doug.

Not only is homogenization of peoples not a good idea, neither is seeking peace among them, for neither is practical: the differences will always come to the top. Rightly so, for this is the value they have to give one another. But it is practical to ask them to listen one to another and to speak openly of what matters, for here is possibility.

:- Doug.

We are no better than illiterate if we will not read. We are no better than slaves if we will not use our freedom. Most people only use it to visit friends 3 times a year and go on vacation; most do not even vote.

Few choose to try to change the culture or the system or to fight city hall. Fewer still stand up at church and tell the preacher or the Bishop where change is necessary.

What did freedom mean to people like Washington, Franklin, Edison, and Merton? How did they use it? Do we use it to think? To speak out? To make good things happen? If we do not use our freedom are we free? In what ways do we use our freedom so that our lives are qualitatively different from those who lived in the old USSR, or in Baghdad under Sadam? Are we not careful of what we say, albeit for a different reason, to avoid offending others, or appearing stupid? Do we take risks?

:- Doug.

What if we set ourselves the task of evolving curiously? Does curiosity lead to evolution? Can anything else? If a scientist or a technologist has no curiosity about What would happen if we…, would there be any progress? Is there any progress except by the hope of curiosity? Can there be plodding progress? It is perhaps a matter of degrees of curiosity–from Hey, I wonder what that thing was we bumped into all the way to Let’s go out and see what we can bump into. So, given the choice, and if we want to improve, curiosity seems to be called. Curiosity about what is around us. Curiosity about who is around us, near and far, similar and dissimilar.

Can curiosity be dangerous? Of course. It is assumed to have killed a cat, exactly how is uncertain–are you not curious about that? Still, if we get so curious as to put our hand into the corn picker while it is running, we have taken too much risk, perhaps. But there are other kinds of risk, the risk of our personality and our conceptions of our selves. There is a mystery here–others are different from us, some far different, yet they manage to live and thrive–why? Is there not something we can learn? And does not learning suggest we may change?

It is this danger then that we need to seek out: the danger of changing ourselves. And of changing others. And that others might take offense at our difference which cause change in themselves. There may be wars. There may be progress and evolution. Each are equally possible. We forget that when we let fears stem our courage.

There is somehow in this the foundation that we are all different, and that is good, and that can lead to evolution. What I am seeing is a medley of notes and tunes and flavors and textures that does not seek to puree all into one sound and flavor and texture, but to allow each to shine and be honored and contribute to the good of all. Evolving curiously.

:- Doug.

Thoughtless words are to be sought. Get busy, worry not how you might offend. Holding back the good you might do is a greater sin. Going forward in love is the greater calling. Telling people to hold back is sin upon sin, because it holds them back from the good they can do. Love, hug, get busy.

:- Doug.

What is the world-wide conversation we need?

:- Doug.

Tell us about a conversation that mattered.

:- Doug.

Who are the most surprising people you have worked with?

:- Doug.

My work is conversation. My passion is conversation.

:- Doug.

To my good friends–

Please introduce me to a group who is coming alive to their possibilities.

:- Doug.

We find ourselves in our interactions with others.

:- Doug.

I need to let myself go and open to whom I might be.

:- Doug.

People come together: people grow out.

:- Doug.

Discoveries contain within themselves invitations to more discoveries. There is infinity within the atom you hold in the palm of your hand, and eternity…

There are discoveries even within discoveries, like Russian nesting dolls, except that we can go in both directions, opening out and up as well as in and smaller, except that we can go in all directions if we choose. I choose.

:- Doug.

What discoveries have you made about life?

: Doug.

What the world needs now
is not love
but a specific kind of love
–conversational love–
meeting person to person
working together
from the center of the heap
outwards
towards our evolving future

:- Doug.

People don’t see what you see–so it’s up to you to pass along the view from your observation station.

:- Doug.