FootprintsintheWind.com

It’s not that I was trying to say something, but I was searching for something that needed to be said.

:- Doug.

I don’t have to prove anything
Just say it
Others will probe it with me

:- Doug.

O, the richness of it all!

:- Doug.

Life is about survival and propagation. But that prevails only for brief periods. Step thro’ those quickly. Leave the hard shells (thunka-thunka) behind to enter the vulnerable memory-making, relation-making, story-making, conversation-making, person-making state. Persons are in relation made. So persons contain multitudes; in this very way, persons are rich. I hear the old ones saying, Give up speed, savor complexity.

:- Doug.

Memory, and some kin of it larger, resides in the place, and the trees, rocks, and generations of skittering little animals of the place. When they are chopped down, dug out, killed or their habitat destroyed to make a cornfield for your invading culture; when the face of the sacred mountain is carved into the faces of your country’s heroes; indigenous lifeways are severed from whole peoples. But the peoples, their old ones, still carry vivid images, those images still singing.

:- Doug.

Did you think you were in the winter of your life?What told you so? Your culture? Something you read once? Was that from your culture too?

:- Doug.

There is another contour to the land and the skyscape fit to it above: The longing of the persons here, the longing of the life of the cloud formations, and the longing of together. Longing: itch, inherent invitation, calling, gravity, weight, worth, rich.

:- Doug.

Plants propagate in many ways—humans in many more.

:- Doug.

There are those to whom we are related by conversation
There are those who have interlocking relations—and that’s most of us.

:- Doug.

Rich are the patterns around us, the schemes and musics we live within
These go away, return
Turn a new direction,
Turn us a new direction, the wind blowing from where to where, and whom, it will
No explanation forthcoming

:- Doug.

Generations invite emergence.

:- Doug.

What will be your, no our, acts of citizenship in this large and growing civilization?

:- Doug.

Let us develop our courtesy for the art we need to work on, let us be respectful of the artistry of it, and this the art of living. That dear lasses and lads includes a generous scoop of conversation.

:- Doug.

Our work as elders, whatever that might turn out to be, will be as important for what it does not do as what it does.

:- Doug.

What is the death of life, the death of this generation of life? What is the good seed to retain, what the good soil?

:- Doug.

Should our conversation with our elders and our next be wrestling? Life and death?

:- Doug.

What is the food of the generations now past?

:- Doug.

You hear us into life.

:- Doug.

Can we trust the generations?
Can we trust ourselves?
Can we trust humanity?
Life? Creation?
Trust them for what, to what? You might ask. To carry us one more step on the path? Can we trust
The path?
For aren’t we all making up the path by placing our next
Footfall?
& so in conversation we help one another
& the human race
Choose footfalls
For the race.
Trust assistance.

:- Doug.

Overview effect—It’s the perspective, smart one!

:- Doug.

O richness of the vacuum, the empty, the nothing!
The essence of between
The essence of thro’
The essence of conversation
The essences of all possibility
For in you & in you two arises vacuum & all the other nots
Opening, opening, opening!

:- Doug.

In dark is promise of light
In light as well there is promise of things unseen
Dark & unseeable.

:- Doug.

The world cyclopean fashion pursues wealth, power,
Ego;
All loving-kindness is turned to
Utility;
We recognize no way out, no savior to lead us to gentler, more human,
Ways:
Meanwhile, let us have a mug of hot chocolate.

:- Doug.