FootprintsintheWind.com

What questions do you have about wisdom?

:- Doug.

Is it possible for the self to be completed?

:- Doug.

What are the tasks of aging?

:- Doug.

Do the smaller thing.

:- Doug.

What have been the tragedies in your life? List 5, converse, tell the stories.

:- Doug.

There is one life: what are you adding to the progress of the centuries?

:- Doug.

What changes in recent years do you notice about yourself?

:- Doug.

Which is bigger: Completing our task in the world—or never completing it?

:- Doug.

What is difficult about wisdom? What challenges you? Are you wise?

:- Doug.

Are you enthralled by this idea of a project that takes several lifetimes to complete? There are no guarantees it will be complete, and in any event, we will never know if it is. Yet here is something we must do, cannot do otherwise. What can it mean these days to do something to the glory of God? Or to stir men’s blood? Do we even have the capacity any more to dream that big? Have we become so accustomed to large projects done in a year with large machinery that we cannot see bigger still? Been there, done that, stars’ the limit, ho-hum? Maybe we have given up the notion that anyone can be a part of something larger, only the “big” people can do that?

:- Doug.

We become next
what we attend now
if wisdom, wise

:- Doug.

Not the tool
is crucial to the art
but the art
coming the artist
through

:- Doug.

What if in each development of life, we open the doors of perception most relevant now? So in child-rearing time we see what is good for the children, good for earning keep for them. In old age we see the past and the future and the world larger, longer term. We see beyond our own noses and bellies. Not simply a bigger view, a touching of what is beyond. A mystery.

:- Doug.

The issue with a multi-generation project is that it takes away the sense of a tangible end point, now. We, these egos, will not reach the finish line. At once this kills our self and enlarges it.

And yet…. The difference between the 200 year cathedral and “Creating a better future for the seventh generation” is more than tangible-intangible or concrete-abstract. It stirs human blood. It gives us something larger than my one life’s small needs to fill. It is about a sense of moving that something forward.

:- Doug.

Goals require a time statement: We will do what by when. So what if our time horizon were stated in multiples of lifetimes? Do we have the imagination? The guts? The persistence?

:- Doug.

In loving-kindness
converse: re-think our world; shh:
unhoped, small voices

:- Doug.

When we disentangle ourselves from our plans so we can see the next object as it is, we open up Goethe’s “new organ of perception in us.” Literally, the next object and our new organ of perception create a new milieu for us both to inhabit. More neurons form, lightest touches are felt, we grow more plastic.

:- Doug.

You might come alongside and ask the person walking “Which is the better side on which to walk? Which is safer?” Later, “Which is safer for the drivers coming by?”

:- Doug.

A way to persuade is to start with something that tastes agreeable. Then go bite by bite till we’ve eaten the whole elephant.

:- Doug.

Loving conversation
re-thinking the world
raising small voices
life’s unexpected essence
our part to play

:- Doug.

Re-see the world: accept the unexpected actual.

:- Doug.

Raise ineffective voices: do the next small thing.

:- Doug.

Rethinking is seeing that what you are seeing is important.

:- Doug.