FootprintsintheWind.com

Jesus the stock—what is the flavor of the kettle? Holy wars, crusades, witch hunts, inquisitions, inhumanity. Great organization of a church and alliances with governments and despots. Great art and literature, soaring thought. Humane acts and mundane ethics. Gathering of the masses around their good and guilt. Much good and much evil. The aroma tells what’s in the pot.

:- Doug.

See the good to make the good.

:- Doug.

Life moves
everything is always in motion
our highest achievement today
is forgotten tomorrow
on we go

:- Doug.

There is something more
Larger than any one of us
Life Love & Conversation
These have an intent for good
An intimate inclination towards us
& an engagement with us
One

:- Doug.

All-ee, all-ee, all in free!
We have long known how to live well
Freely
All in
All our life in

:- Doug.

Jesus tells us
God is with us
God is among us
All this is divine
As it gets

:- Doug.

You are as you converse.

:- Doug.

Any story about God can be read as a story about how we might be toward each other and our world.

:- Doug.

We are finite beings with a beginning, a muddle and an end. This is perhaps our glory. We are not perfect, for that would be boring. We love one another and fear one another. We have divinity and evil within our capacities. We remember. We synthesize. We make sense and meaning. We have spirit; we are spirit.

:- Doug.

The snow is lovely coming down swirling round saying time and hurry is not our way wind gravity the temperatures make our decisions after we let go and we are content we are content.

:- Doug.

We face what life brings us as it brings us together; we are new every moment and are able to create and mold life every moment. And there is only one life.

:- Doug.

I saw a softness, a gentleness with each other in 9-11, something that was not the same in Sandy Hook—there it was grief and sadness and an emptying. In 9-11 there was a pulling together.

:- Doug.

In 9-11
There is a softness
of shared tragedy
more
of shared profundity
roots wrapped & touched

:- Doug.

Life is about life
but more than that it is about love
and even more so love is about
relatedness

:- Doug.

Preacher, teacher, sales professional:
If the only things you have to sell
are fear and guilt
I’m not buying

:- Doug.

As lawyers, and especially together as lawyers, we need to think about what matters to our clients and their families. We cannot heal an individual in isolation: and make no mistake—we are healers: whole-makers. Our clients are pulling together the meaning of their lives. Their families are already grieving their loss. Their family fabric is stretched thin, tired and stressed. All this affects what our clients will decide to let us help them do.

This is the hard work of an elder caring lawyer, the work we sometimes wish we could avoid, but the work where we can make our larger contributions. We can release people from what constrains them and it might not even be what we were trained to think is a legal issue. But we are counselors at law, not of law. We are not computers on a stick. We are humans and last time I looked, we have flesh, blood, and a heart. We are healers of the relatedness of humans. We are all related.

:- Doug.

Anticipation
of trouble
is more
trouble
than the
trouble itself

We’ll face
what comes
when it gets here

:- Doug.

I don’t feel like fighting
I don’t want to be a fighter
But sometimes we need to take a stand
& that demands of us our courage
To take a deep breath & speak our selves

:- Doug.

I am responsible though I do not control
I can create that which I will not direct
Community, relatedness, us
This is ever the way
Love demands responsibility and starting
Looks not to results
Bringing a new life into the world
This choice faces us daily

:- Doug.

I could buy a piece of software
that encapsulates someone’s learning
how to do the task I want to do
(But even here I have to study
which to buy
or possibly pay the price
of a poor purchase
—how complex)
Or I could spend the hours
& trials
to acquire the learning myself
Or I could hire someone to
do the computer work
Or I could pay someone to
do the work without computers
Or the task could
simply go undone
Whichever I choose
the learning exacts its price

:- Doug.

I wonder who planted these maple trees, and how big they were then.

:- Doug.

It looks desolate out there. Grey tree branches, wind gusting and running at the trees and buildings, bird feeders and other loose things trying to run away or hide from the wind. Clouds clamped down: there is no escaping the grey, grey everywhere. Still, all this is churning up something, creating a change that will be good, maybe creating a now that is good. We just do not see yet. Maybe we just are not here yet.

:- Doug.

Spiritual is community.

:- Doug.