FootprintsintheWind.com

Work with your story: What surprise might it give next? Ask it what is its work? Ask your 300 year grandchild elder what its work is. Wrestle, contend with its effects on your hearers and you.

:- Doug.

What do you wish for your grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren? This we work on.

:- Doug.

At 17 or so, how did you imagine your life would be? Write the story of that imagined life by stages or ages or themes. 10 minutes. Now write the parallel story of how it worked out. What do the 11th generation grandchildren make of this tale of two lives?

:- Doug.

There was a time when you loved me
that time I think is a long now
includes it does this now
just this week you were on a trip
you called me every day
we didn’t know what to say
or I was the one who didn’t
you told me what you did that day
you were light and bright
and happy to talk with me
and I loved you for it

:- Doug.

Storytelling is a 300-year quest for the spirit of humanity.

:- Doug.

I know what I’m doing. I know my direction. I don’t know where I will end, nor what value it will be. I go. We meet. Message enough.

:- Doug.

You are deep in a forest. You can walk to the right or left of each tree you meet. How many paths?

:- Doug.

Our great quest is to find our story that is not our story.

:- Doug.

We start from meeting. We progress through dying. Dying as story, dying as message, dying as bettering humanicity. We meet again. We ask the next question. We ask How? We name the person. We ask for our own message. We write and tell stories. We meet and ask and seek.

:- Doug.

Progress this morning. A few strong fresh insights. It all is telling me that there is a message here that is important. It is telling me I do not need to know what that message is, only search. Go one more step. Perhaps we don’t need to find it ever. Perhaps we are opening the trail head for others. And they further along some path doing the same. Or perhaps we are blazing the wrong trail, and that too is message. Unknowing going to unknowing storying.

:- Doug.

Beyond whether the message ever gets through, there is a study for us to conduct, a message for us to find for us. There is deeper, further. Its thread starts here. Should we find the message, find our coeur, this is valuable. Should we not, this is valuable.

:- Doug.

Would you put children in cages? Would you provoke the brink of war with a small country to distract from your impeachment? Would you release convicted criminals? Does all this speak to the better side of America? Does this come from love? Or fear? Does it call forth from you love or fear?

:- Doug.

All I have is
what I give away

:- Doug.

Deeper may be further

:- Doug.

We are looking for something in our stories. Admit it. We are exploring. So explore. Create another story and another. Somehow we are testing our muddle. How we get from beginning to end. What at least a part of “it all” may mean. This too is a how.

:- Doug.

Hear beyond listening the stories we are telling about generations of generations: follow each story to its root: what does it tell of us? Of what we believe, unknowing?

:- Doug.

The path
a threshold is
crossed by
grandparent
today’s tomorrow’s

:- Doug.

People already look up to you. Fear not to lead from your truing.

:- Doug.

Poet disappear
you, like they
are evaporating

:- Doug.

Although I must
pay the price
for this message
I do not know
what is the message

:- Doug.

Compost nurtures
heaped here
our failures
rinds of successes
husks of many ho-hum days
working, worked, heating, breaking down
this is how life nourishes

:- Doug.

The task
O storyteller
move past your story

:- Doug.

Although we are connected on the twine of life, each knot, each group of knots, is peculiar.

:- Doug.