FootprintsintheWind.com

If you’re in it
You know

:- Doug.

This is it!
This is the larger world
You only have to see it
To be it!
It’s not in New York
Paris nor Shanghai
It’s near South Bend
On Kern Road
Your meditation cushion
Your bicycle
Your committee
Your chair
It’s not doing something
Big or important
Nor shrinking from it either
You are invited
Now you must invite

:- Doug.

There is a living
something that precedes
cognition and separation
is after them
and envelops them

:- Doug.

Evidence based is a term of endearment in the medical and academic communities. It is otherwise for me. I see it as a way we avoid coming to grips with real people. It converts everyone and every story into a statistic and says we can stop here. We must not stop here. We must see larger.

:- Doug.

I tend toward anger when my heart is not received. Strange! I should tend toward compassion. Compassion for the other. Compassion for my own soul wanting to feel and express anger over the hurt. It is OK to fight, I suppose, or at least assert. But the better approach, the more human and loving approach would be invitation. You have no need to go the direction of exclusively numbers and Dollars, you can go the direction of your heart, soul, spirit, compassion, humanity.

:- Doug.

Make good!

:- Doug.

Do not compare yourself with another.

:- Doug.

What will I choose to do with the next 20 years of my life? Or, what will I do for the next 3 until I am crucified?

:- Doug.

Any elephant can hold the tail of the one ahead. If we are not leading out we are not educating. Out: from the old accustomed ways.

:- Doug.

If we can’t do something new, if we cannot offer something discontinuous with the past, we waste our time, we make the world less.

:- Doug.

What was your favorite kind of music when you were courting?

:- Doug.

Lively longer: let’s stay!

:- Doug.

Diving into Your Eyes, Friend.

:- Doug.

My long suit is long, deepening conversation.

:- Doug.

This is a work that lets me share my heart.

:- Doug.

We do not go higher for the sake of being high, but for sharing.

:- Doug.

In this shall all be found alive inside, awake—for we can awaken our liveliness.

:- Doug.

What is this about that I feel the need to consciously connect, to touch the presence each morning and from time to time during the day? I am always; I could not remove. Clues perhaps in “consciously” and “touch:” the work is upon my senses, growing my opening. Even though my lover and I are nearby, we still want to gaze into each other’s eyes.

:- Doug.

Sparks between!

:- Doug.

Started watching a video last night called “Alive Inside.” It is about music and memory, using music on ipods to awaken folks who have turned inside with dementia and Alzheimer’s. Some top people are interviewed and some science is shared, along with some startling examples—a woman leaves her walker aside to dance, an angry man smiles and sings along, the other people in the room light up when the man hearing the music becomes animated and sings. This is touching something larger than the prison-hospital model of nursing homes would authorize.

:- Doug.

The dogs and horses are chasing each other around next door. Perhaps to get warm, perhaps just in joy.

:- Doug.

NB: not “What do you think of” the current news story—that puts it too much in the left brain bulldozer. Instead, we need to find the beauty, the connection, the oneness. Time for truth later, time then for goodness perhaps in a moment.

:- Doug.

The task is bringing spirits within range. Range means seeing each other, seeing the thing about which to converse.

:- Doug.