FootprintsintheWind.com

Talk your dreams true.

:- Doug.

Die to nouns, live as verb
(Careful! Verb is a noun)
We cannot be, only act!
We are not served to become part of the dance:
simply dance.

:- Doug.

For years I have sought to understand myself
in a word or phrase
Now I see I am complicated, complex
and in that
and in me
I can relax and drink.

:- Doug.

What needs to be celebrated that never has been?

:- Doug.

To what are we afraid to give voice?

:- Doug.

Is it true we live in a participatory universe?

Will you take my hand and go with me to see?

:- Doug.

To our good friends–

It is true that we live in a participatory universe: birds and animals and we and plants and the inanimates all together, affecting one another, changing the world as we go. Changing G-d as we go. The notion that there is a cheap G-d who will solve all our problems without our participation is just that: cheap. It is not real to talk about G-d at work as if we were doing nothing, expected to do nothing. It is a danger. It is an untruth. It can hurt us, stunt us, keep us from participating with, meeting with, G-d. Participation is another word for meeting.

Yet we are afraid to meet. It is our right to meet, our highest and best act to meet. We need to be encouraging each other with: To meet!

For years I have been trying to define myself, to capture and hold me in one word or short phrase. Now I see that I am incredibly complex, not just difficult to pin down, but impossible of being pinned. So acceptance is more important, expectation of surprise, looking at continual unfolding. Be in verb, not be a noun. Action not words, act, dance, move. Be in leaping between the quanta. There is no be only do. G-d perhaps is the only be, and the only do.

Lord, if I cannot put myself in a word, how much less you? We can only meet, and in the hug, I can only touch your face, but I can go in infinitely deep. This is love in a sinking in and falling and being embraced, bouncing sort of way. No struggle, relax, let go, and still strive to be adult, to participate, to meet. We need to work against our desire to capture in a word, to make slogans. Fresh dancing, new steps, every step.

:- Doug.

We are created each moment
and exploded out in all directions,
flung out to the center from the center
to embrace more and more!

You are the center;
you are the start and the finish
…and the trajectory as well.

Our task is to embrace, to shade, to nurture, to reach out, to invite, to welcome, to open, to attend, to receive, to offer, to accompany, to witness, to call into being,
to embrace, embrace, embrace,
to engrace, engrace, engrace.
Our task is also to be embraced, shaded, nurtured and all the
rest.

There is no difference, no distinction.

We are immersed in love
we are to extend love.

:- Doug.

Faith is not for developing trust–that is too weak; rather it is to bring you to meet G-d, to smell G-d’s breath on your face.

:- Doug.

I am not special: the glimpses and insights I get, others get as well. We must encourage each other to honor the good we receive and are. By the same token, I am special, and so is everyone. Honor.

:- Doug.

I must not dwell on any pain, but move on to what is possible, what good can be made. All things work together for good for those who are willing to work toward the good.

This is a way of saying that I am feeling free, since reading Funk’s Honest to Jesus, to say, as Jesus said, You have heard it said of old…but I say to you…. We do need to shake up our thinking, just to shake it up occasionally, so that we make sure we are seeing what is.

Lord, we cannot shake up you in doing so. We can ourselves be shaken and when done by you that is good, no matter how it might feel. You are not angered by such, but loving. We may provoke your love, but your wrath is not at all likely. You want us to know what is, because what is is you.

:- Doug.

One of the people here is having a weird telephone conversation. She just got off it, somebody trying to give her a “grant,” asking her for her bank and routing number and similar things. The person on the other side knew her home address. How people prey upon others, thinking they are getting ahead of “the game.”

They cannot get ahead, they are only putting themselves behind. Crime carries its own punishment, somehow. If only in a vague unclean feeling, or in dealing with shadowy people who will not have honor among thieves. Too bad for this lady on the other side. Lord, help them.

G-d it seems to me you are much more home-spun than we have made you out to be. The punishment is built in to the crime, the love into the suffering. It does not all even out, but goes upward: there is the hope of improvement, there is the built in desire to have each other do better. Some people have missed the import, or subverted it, but that is bound to happen, and gives the vast numbers of the peoples something to work on. G-d is a doting grandmother, unable to keep her grandchildren from the scrapes and bruises of growing up and out into the world, but there to kiss and hug and encourage in the bigger things.

:- Doug.

Could we enact living dramas to challenge our own smugness?

:- Doug.

Who are you G-d? Who are you beyond what people say of you? Who are you face to my face?

:- Doug.

Who are you? Who are you beyond your job, your titles, your achievements? Who are you even beyond your life’s work?

:- Doug.

When we separate ourselves from others, we separate ourselves from ourselves.

:- Doug.

The task of conversation can be seen as a task of exploring each other, getting interested in the person in front of us, really and deeply.

:- Doug.

What if we held each other in
contemplative conversation?
What if we sat
with silence, gathered,
our attention toward a
common periphery round us?
Wait
to be
together.

:- Doug.

Let us seek beyond being tutored by one or two wise persons in our lifetime. Let us seek the mentoring of the whole wise tribe in which we find ourselves enfleshed.

:- Doug.

Can you live your life in one day
fulfill your purpose in one act
love once
and in that once ripen?
It must be so for
there is hope.

:- Doug.

G-d meets.

:- Doug.

Conversation is the air we breathe, the fluid we swim in, the interruption that irritates us, the seven-intercourse meal we crave. It nourishes us, and gets in our face. It soothes our soul and comforts us. It whips us up to good and ill, to sacred and evil. All real living is dancing.

:- Doug.

I am in the conversation business; we are all in the conversation business. What can that mean? How can we get intentional about the business of conversation? Can we make it better? What could better mean?

:- Doug.