FootprintsintheWind.com

I had a birthday this week. Maybe that’s a joy, maybe a little sadness, or maybe that is an interweaving of life with them.

:- Doug.

Maybe the question you have does not yet have words, or even images. So butterfly!

:- Doug.

In the meeting, will anyone meet? Will life or time or space be created or found? If not, stay. If yes, go.

:- Doug.

Does God need you to protect God? With God all things are possible, yes? There are many possibilities….

:- Doug.

Are there possibilities beyond those you’ve conceived?

:- Doug.

Quakers got their start as a rebellious sort—refusing to say Sir or Ma’am, refusing to remove hats in the presence of judges, calling officials by the familiar “Thee.” Quakers are not quaint: they are quirky and disruptive.

:- Doug.

Possibility
on occasion
wears a bell
mostly she wears
grey

:- Doug.

Three strands
Interwoven
Time
Possibility
Ending of Time

:- Doug.

Does time with your family take possibility or find it? Take life or create it?

:- Doug.

Does Open Space take time or create time? Take possibility or make it?

:- Doug.

Does the meeting of a woman and a man in their child find time, create time, open possibility, or more? Or less?

:- Doug.

What is the both/and to either/or and both/and?

Both/and cannot be the end of our inquiry—it is probably only the beginning, for is there not a valid place for either/or? For something else, too?

:- Doug.

Does birth fill space and time and death end them, or are they both unrevealed potential?

:- Doug.

Maybe the world is more complex than our metaphors or labels. Even that sweet and simple rose has thorns and aphids and blood and heart and….

:- Doug.

The world is a mixture of what stands out there and what we make of it, a tangle, inseparable. It goes deeper than “a sunny day is better than a cloudy one,” or “the sun is shining on me.” We cannot have our world without our own coloring. We can never see the world except through our eyes, handle it except by our hands, and all these get filtered so subtly we mostly do not see the filters.

:- Doug.

We see things, say the earth and the sun, as separate. Maybe they are no so unconnected as we “see,” and do not have all the characteristics we attribute to them.

:- Doug.

Let’s not open space every time but once experiment with opening place. Space is empty, cold, infinite, lifeless, dark, alien and void. Place on the other hand is organic, nurturing, warm, wet, human, intelligent, alive, connective, filled with nascent meaning.

:- Doug.

I am always successful
I go on for ever
I am life
For eons you cannot know
I have moved all
For all you know
I will never end
All things work for me
And I work all things
For continuing me
I am interwoven
I pulse
I ebb and flow
Your life is mine so
Your growth I celebrate
Life is one
I am life

:- Doug.

Less do we affect one another than reflect one another.

:- Doug.

You are in horror of oneness
This our society teaches us
This we teach one another
There are others
They are different
They are not you
And to be feared
The blending of all things
The movement and churning chaos
Makes you an undifferentiated
Part of the throbbing mess
Be a rugged individual
Separate yourself above the crowd
Unity ties you down
Takes away your uniqueness
This our society teaches us
This we teach each other
This we believe
Without having thought it out
Without having observed

:- Doug.

Play the prepositional pipe upon me, Papa!

:- Doug.

Flutter, flutter leaves!
Ready to fly from your tree!
Will you carry me?

:- Doug.

I don’t want to reserve a seat in your audience, thank you. I want to do something. I want to engage with people.

:- Doug.