FootprintsintheWind.com

We cannot expect that our meanings are shared by all or even most—all are creating while we are creating. But we can expect that numbers of people will share meanings with us, and we may hope that some will act upon them, to the betterment of the human project.

:- Doug.

It is clear there is much we do as humans to mold our world—to create it—and that is good. Highways and cities and gardens are human creations out of the created. And yet there is more, for there is meaning we put on things and people: Lincoln and Hitler. There is more to creation than electrons whirling through emptiness, flesh and brains and automobiles.

:- Doug.

When will we begin to see the good as the leash holding back the better? And us? While still seeing the good as good?

:- Doug.

We need to move from seeing the meaning as over across from us with created things between, to realizing we can and ought to make the meaning ourselves. This is our participation in creation. This is our higher calling. Not just making creation better, but making a better creation.

:- Doug.

The things which happen to a person and those which happen through a person are as much a part of the person as finger and foot. We are what we hear and speak as we are what we eat.

:- Doug.

You who speak of creations and creators, who speak as well of end times and eschatology, how can you not believe in evolution?

:- Doug.

This is my prayer, the way I pray now: imagining with you a more cohesive conversing human surround.

:- Doug.

So what universes would I create? I would create ones not so far from our human universe, ones in which people inspired one another, collaborated, made their worlds loving. Not so far, not so easy, not so impossible.

:- Doug.

We create our world as much in our imagination and consciousness as we simply perceive what is there. We label everything: tree, car, cloud. That is neither their nature nor what we are perceiving with eyes or touch. So knowing this, we can get conscious about what we see and what we want to see, about what our collective consciousness makes of this world. The way? Conversation. We think things together, we work them, we mold and shape and bend. We imagine, we in-gather, we invite. We invite. We invite and so we invent, in both meanings of “invent.” This is a work that we are doing, a world creation, a world direction creation.

:- Doug.

What don’t we see?

:- Doug.

By our perceptions shall we know us. What is my work? What is our work in conversation together? Creating our world.

:- Doug.

What if I created whole universes in my poetry?

:- Doug.

Friend, you are like environment and field, you are as if conscious and loving, you are indescribable. All about, in-gathering, presence pure, being, moving.

:- Doug.

Not having an image makes it harder to focus. Which might be why the breath or the mandala or the mantra is important to some forms of meditation/contemplation.

:- Doug.

Can an imageless God love me? Can I love such a one? Can we love each other? What does love mean, that is what does in mean in the prior sentences? A passion, an emotion, yes. An action too? A movement together, an attraction?

:- Doug.

This now I am experiencing God as all about me, like a milieu (whatever that might be), like a field (same wondering).

:- Doug.

Divinity is next to humanity.

:- Doug.

If we are to become conscious of our representations we can choose metaphors less and similes more. Then we at least become true to our insights and less final. Not so much God is, rather God is like…to me.

:- Doug.

If God is not to be an image we need to love one another, stranger, foe, friend, family. In this way we draw close to God.

:- Doug.

There is a movement these days toward pushing God far above and far away with a transcending praise. This is often also a pride-full We’re on the home team.

I wonder if these pastors and preachers in the praise churches are conscious of the ego and pride into which they are inviting people?

Still, there is the pull to intimate immanence, even in those churches. Let God into your life, get to know Jesus they preach and I suspect believe.

So, to move beyond this. How do I see God as transcendent? Buber was true to his Hebrew roots by conceiving God who is over against, in whose face we stand, and this God stands in ours: this comes from the no images commandment. Since I have been working on no images, I find that I less often pray as such but I do speak with you as friend. Yet that too is image. You are all about, in everything. The Hebrew I think may have seen God as unspeakable (tetragrammaton), yet surely other and apart (Moses covering his face after meeting face to face; the robe alone filling the temple).

:- Doug.

What do I want to hear, see, feel when I’m dying?

:- Doug.

Push-you pull-me is the relationship we have with God. We want to worship a God who is far and above us (push-you), but no matter how much praise and adoration we push ourselves to bestow, we have a deep-set need to come close with God (pull-me). The Priestly and the Elohist are with us still, and still at odds. But do they have to be?

:- Doug.

To participate is to impart as well as to take a division or portion.

:- Doug.