FootprintsintheWind.com

A voice you seldom use
Your voice speaks your real self into the world
Unprotected, vulnerable, tentative, wanting to grow
The world needs your voice to grow
Your task today: simply notice your voice
When you have spoken with it
Help others to notice theirs

:- Doug.

My life—perhaps yours too—seeks a field of engagement.

:- Doug.

What is the highest possibility
of life?
of this life?
work here

:- Doug.

Intimacy is becoming conscious of participating in wholeness.

:- Doug.

Within seems now less true to what is real
Holiness breaks in upon us not so much
Unless we mean upon our consciousness
Already here the one among
Breathes hot in our faces one and all

:- Doug.

Perform the conversing
so often
so regularly
conversing becomes ingrained
participating in the whole becomes our way

:- Doug.

What did you say—or hear another say—that was surprising?

:- Doug.

Now the holy work: Inviting, Imagining, Engaging.

:- Doug.

Cold leftovers
Bare table
rocks a bit
Haltingly deep speaks to deep
Holy

:- Doug.

Holy now!

:- Doug.

The watchword today is Now. Future now. Holy now. Converse now.

:- Doug.

Converse now
Table now
Beloved community now

:- Doug.

If we won’t have the future now, when?

:- Doug.

Further always further we can go
the road is created by
the meeting of our feet

:- Doug.

Offer
Offer the deeper waters
Offer your hand

:- Doug.

Trees—trees live a long time
Longer than us
Some longer than our species
Flowers—flowers were around before us
Insects before them—consider the
Delicate butterfly
Their rhythms, their beats
Hear—hear their music
The beats slower, the stillnesses longer
The day and the weather matter little

:- Doug.

Good conversation has a beginning, a muddle, and a next.

:- Doug.

Going beyond the root of a question, conversation opens us to the unexpected third option. New thinking, new people, new milieus: we can see further than a room full of mes.

:- Doug.

Much of our talking together focuses on closure and completion: let’s reach a decision so we can move on. But to what? Would you place focus on closure and completion raising a child? Would you think of death and graves and life goes on? Or of a lifetime of open possibilities?

:- Doug.

We are each the stake
and humanity itself at risk
each time we roll the dice to converse

:- Doug.

Be at home
all that’s required of you
is to go while insecure

:- Doug.

Start afresh each morning
This work of conversing requires
It will not come to me
I must go out and meet
At least open my gate

:- Doug.

Sharing a table
Opens us to sharing
Your most real and mine
Food for body
For souls, healing

:- Doug.