How do conversations travel? Is it a matter of the in between, or perhaps more accurately, the sea in which we swim, the air in which we breathe, the field in which we exist? We have to tie bowel to bowel and yank. Conversations travel bowel to bowel.
:- Doug.
This is the beginning time. How shall we begin? How shall we make the circle to the divine beginning–ahead? How shall we see your beginning of us in the light of not some past ideal, but some future vision? A possibility?
:- Doug.
So life demands and love demands
that we laugh and grieve and hug and fight
but not to kill
only to bring more
life and love.
:- Doug.
It is important to speak together of what matters, what brings life. Do not waste the conversations and over-stay in the froth. Get to the flow. Make life happen. Of course we cannot work all the time. We need jigs and polkas and exuberance and grief as well. But we need to be complete and whole and froth does not make us entire. We blow away, we melt, we get swept where we do not choose, we get pushed to the stagnant and poisoned waters.
:- Doug.
We are really about change–and most want root-level change. Change in attitudes, goals and beginnings. You Lord are about beginnings and birthings I realized, too. So this genesis is happening now and our job is to make it happen easier–to oil the sluices, to remove the friction. So when there is resistance, remember to oil! Remember to smooth the way, however we can. Do not oppose and struggle, but oppose (if necessary) and smooth.
:- Doug.
Where is that path headed? Towards Teilhard’s Omega, Germann’s koosh ball. A breathing in and out from there, an embrace and a reaching out to embrace. It may be more path than destination, more verb than noun, more both than either. Loving is including. Loving is flowing. We need to be about loving rather than to simply be loved or love. That was not well said. I mean to say we are about flowing action not arriving. Goals focus on ends, nouns; dreams focus on the path and the direction. We never do arrive. We are only always creating the new Heaven and the new Earth.
:- Doug.
Last night was a bit of a let down after the high spirits of a meeting with OS people. We went to a dinner-theatre, which I found to be less theatre and more horsing around, about the skeleton of a story line. We sat opposite a couple from another province “on holiday,” and struggled to make conversation. Polite: I was down because we did not get to deeper conversation. Yet it was in my heart–truly–it was a lack of courage to say forth what was necessary to have a conversation. In another such situation one thing I can do is acknowledge how awkward it is, perhaps tell a little about how I feel as a result, then invite with a deeper question. Even obliquely–“I am challenged by how awkward I feel in this setting–there is a meeting we could have or we could avoid it by having small talk. Yet there is a chance for us to really get to know one another as real people, and I would sure like to get to know you. To find out what you like to read and why, what makes you tick, what it is you live for. Do you ever feel like that?” This gives them opportunity to choose their own level of depth and whatever that is, we can meet. I like that.
:- Doug.
To my good friends–
Here are my notes from the last day of the OSonOS in Halifax, Nova Scotia. They describe a remarkable process.
Yesterday was a different experience. When it came time to decide where to go for next year’s OSonOS, 2 invitations were given: Moscow and Edinburgh. I was initially not wanting Moscow, partially because of the manner in which the person inviting was approaching our group–I was annoyed. Someone said at the beginning of the 3 days to sit with your annoyance–and that was remembered out loud in this circle of all of us. It started slowly with comments about pluses and minuses and whom all we should have in mind and the work being done by OSonOS (such as helping to boost a local developing practice community) and the costs and accessibility. A couple people called the whole a process of “discernment.” The time people used walking to the center to pick up the microphone gave a pause so comments and questions could sink in. The pace gradually quickened and soon one could barely find a waiting time between them–the spaces were disappearing, the betweens were melding together. Then one Edinburgh inviter said that his heart was drawn too to Moscow, as mine was being drawn, and we all stood and gave an ovation to our decision to go to Moscow.
Amazing process, involving people from many cultures, not all Western, coming to a process that must be primal, part of our common body memory. And maybe it is an ideal we were remembering and putting to work.
:- Doug.
If you don’t like the word G*d, then think of the most real, the really real.
:- Doug.
To my good friends–
Further on the quest for a phrase to replace “Kingdom:”
Let’s talk less about G-d’s domain and more about G-d’s ordering. G-d is active, turning us. Less does he care about our clothes and cuisine, more about our ordering our living our meeting.
:- Doug.
To my good friends–
A recent morning in meditation/contemplation I saw that our parks and exhibits give sound bites and dumb down the information they give people. I suspect it is because we have this thing about writing using 6th grade level language and have confused it with the notion of writing to the 6th grade level understanding. If we stretch people in both vocabulary and concept, can we raise both the intellectual and spiritual and consciousness levels? Do we do a disservice by this dumbing down? We learned this lesson in NSAI (statewide a professional association in which I had a leadership role) and grew when we suited our program content to the growing professional rather than to the wannabe. As a society we could learn by this–and grow.
What would it mean? Our parks and museums would have exhibits with blurbs, but also more detailed scientific signs. Perhaps also printed materials that would go deeper. And then give some other aspects of understanding–ways to dance, paint, draw, sculpt the image, as well as mythic and spiritual ways to enter in. We could develop a 4 or 6 part grid showing how the material is understood from a cultural, scientific, arts, mythic, and spiritual standpoint–always drawing people up and out of smaller views to larger.
The danger is that people would see these as separate realms, some of which are higher than others. The antidote might be to draw people into a consideration of what view is large enough to include–and perhaps transcend–them all.
:- Doug.
Disney has a new ride
–have you heard?–
You can still go
inside the human body
or careen down the outside of a mountain
But this one! What ambition!
This one promises to take you
–inside G-d!
You’ve got to ride this one to see
if they’ve pulled it off
There are sweeping scenes from
high vistas, and flowing down
tiny rivulets:
There are greens and blues and reds
and oranges and ochres, and chartreuses
There are birds and fish and manatees
There are 4-legged and 2-legged and 8-legged
There are winds and whirlwinds and hurricanes and breaths
There are mothers and fathers
and mountains and great seas
There are fleas and ticks and no-seeums
amoebae and tarantulas
and hugs and kisses
and muddy snow and sunsets and
rainbows
There are tsunamis and floods and
clouds and drear
There are worlds upon worlds
galaxies upon galaxies
universes upon universes
Too big to hold in your mind
Too little too
What? you say, This is just like the
world we know!
:- Doug.
Even the fish in the sky,
the birds in the sea,
have heard rumors of
air and water.
:- Doug.
To my good friends–
Last night these words came to me: It’s not out there; it’s here. Seek not what you already have. Instead, meet.
I hear in them echoes of Jesus’ gospel: this is the stuff of G?d. I want to explore these more deeply. People seek for the future; they seek even apocalypse. Yet Jesus was standing on firm ground and wanted others to touch it too. This is the ground of history, of creation, of the beginning, of the stream of G?d running from the birthing to the birthing. It was already present, among us. Even closer than a parallel universe. Within the horizon he saw the now and here and over the horizon was more of G-d: more abundance, celebration, diversity. We have what we need. We have an imminent G*d. So don’t seek for “it,” meet. Head on, openly.
When we think we have things figured out, when we think we have G?d figured out, we do not have: we only have our figuring. When we meet, when we let things and others and G?d be a puzzle to us, then we have them. When we let us be a puzzle to them, even to G-d, then we are had. We live in the mystery and the open, expanding, wonder of each other.
When we leave things unsaid, when we shed the shells to allow ourselves to be a mystery to us, when we drop our pretenses and our wishes for the future, then we are had, then we are held, then we are. Real: that is what is necessary: to be real. When we live in the future or in the past we are unreal: we do not exist. When we turn our eyes and our hearts to who and what meets us, then we exist, they exist, the One exist, and real life begins. Life abundant, no thought for the morrow, of those times only the One knows, the first last and the last first: all these and much more wrapped in these. What else is there?
G?d is not out there but here. G-d seeks you as a father after a lost child: turn your face and meet, truly meet. Do you think you know your father or mother? Do you think you know yourself? You cannot know, for there is no fathom line that drops deep enough. Meet and meet again.
The problem of the hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis: the sun and the rains come upon each equally. Is G?d absent, not holding them back? There may be good to come of it, yet that is not the reason for the tragedy. They are however opportunities for us to meet, in all pain to meet. To meet our lives and life, to tear the crust off the top and find the flesh of life. To understand this mystery deeper, we are not given. We can meet.
What of evolution? Is it hubris to think we can influence it, can help choose its direction? Is it living in the future? It may be living in beginnings and birthings that are still going on, of leavings home for homecomings. Of embraces left to be met again. Of turnings to what is real. Of embraces including more. Embraces within embraces. Wider horizons. Birthings!
:- Doug.
Do I want to be known? Why would it be important? Why would it be better to just be…and consequently do what’s needed here?
:- Doug
We are to engage freely, openly, fully. No preconceptions. No holding back. No safety lines. Face to face. Truth to truth. As adults. Not as de-entrailed children. Be real. G-d wants independent beings, ones who can stand on their own 2 or 4 feet.
:- Doug.
Who has moved a continent with his tongue? Columbus. Who has moved a civilization with his tongue? Jesus. Who has moved a people with her tongue? Joan D’Arc.
:- Doug.
We live our lives in talk, fish unaware of the water. When we choose to converse, we see we change conversation and conversation changes us. We are exhilarated.
:- Doug.
A young man was called by business into the big city and was working late. His heart kept going to his wife and 2 small children at home, wishing he were there rather than here cranking out work. A couple of hours later he felt a good tired as he turned off the lights and headed out into the night. He went down into the subway station to go to his hotel. He noticed a lot of graffiti, and several lights were out. The shadows seemed to loom. There was nobody here at this late hour, nobody he could see.
From behind, unheard, he felt a crashing on his head and all grew dark. He awoke, half choking on a warm liquid. He tried to get up but slumped back in unbelievable pain. He could not make his mouth work. He could feel his clothes were torn, he ached in every place he had a place. It took all his effort to breathe.
From under his swollen eyelid he could see one well-dressed woman come down the steps, hesitate as she walked toward him, then turn the other way. What seemed hours later, a man with a briefcase did the same.
Finally, a tall, strangely-dressed man came up to him. He seemed familiar, but the young man was too tired to try to get his brain to work. This tall man seemed to have genuine concern on his face. Then recognition hit him: this was Osama bin Laden! He tried to pull away, tried to shout “Leave me be!” but he had no strength to resist the kindness.
Osama tore some pieces from his own clothes, got some water and washed the young man’s wounds. He took some salve out of his backpack and applied it to the wounds. He gently picked him up and carried him back up the steps to a cab, gave directions that somehow did not enter into the young man’s brain, and took him to a house where there were many people dressed like Osama. People scurried about to tend to the young man. Osama left, giving orders to a young Arab-looking woman to care well for the young man, to nurse him to health.
:- Doug.
What we need to do is find a way for anybody to start conversations and find the joy in it.
:- Doug.
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