FootprintsintheWind.com

Invite people to the conversation…the conversation about love. What can love accomplish that greed cannot? Fear, thy name is greed. (The opposite of love is fear.)

:- Doug.

The difficult complex things in families are not how we write a Will or a Trust or a deed. Rather they are in getting conversations going, deciding directions, making life choices. People keep these to themselves often out of avoiding the difficult questions, or perhaps out of fear of questioning their long-held assumptions.

:- Doug.

Greed is taking to your bosom things. Love is taking to your bosom people.

So when we say we can have both a big bank account and serve people, look for which we put first.

Maybe all the money will be added to us, maybe not, but if that is why we do something, sad for us. The other is dying: Get to where we see only love, and then live.

:- Doug.

Life offers this choice: seek to stuff your bank account or to love others. You can have only one primary. The first shrivels the second expands you.

:- Doug.

Greed is stealing that cannot be justified based on need. Some stealing is out of need. Which of these two is more guilty? In our times, greed is often condoned by governments and encouraged by society, to the downfall of both.

:- Doug.

Do something scary. Something that will help so many people it seems impossible for you.

:- Doug.

Turning is hot, sweaty, heavy work. Pitchfork in to the compost, lift, let in air and moisture. Difficult too: because we are not done when we are done, but have to wait for the little people (the organisms and bugs and chemicals in the mix) to do their work. While we go on to other things, sleep and cogitate: Working together, and sometimes we see the others.

:- Doug.

We live in a money-people continuum. It is not (nothing in this world is) is so much an opposition as a stretching toward one pole or the other. And it is so entangled that one person cannot hope to untangle it, help it make sense—but all of us working on it can. That is our hope.

Opposition suggests our hope is in working together, collaboration, Bernie DeKoven‘s coliberation. Turning together.

The money-people continuum tugs each way. Provide for my family and help others. I have little enough and my heart goes out. That problem seems far away and with little effort I could help. It will take extra effort to help and I will know I helped. I don’t have the answers and I have some of the answers. Tug here, tug there. Energy spent, energy generated. Love here, love there.

:- Doug.

Don’t concentrate on looking for little things to solve, things where there might be money for yourself, things where the work is simple. Look for the complex, the things others shy away from, the things you might want to shy away from. Look not for the technical issues, but for the heart and future questions.

:- Doug.

Interview your elders: What is life about? What does it mean to be an elder to your tribe, to do the work of eldering?

:- Doug.

Conversation: what matters.

:- Doug.

In truth we cannot force people to turn; still we can entice.

:- Doug.

Law is a complex weave of possibilities, risks, costs, feelings, interests, people, and vagaries, among other threads. It is not therefore a vending machine: money in/product out.

:- Doug.

What’s the most important thing I can make happen in the world? What biggest thing can I invite into the world? What’s the most important conversation?

:- Doug.

We have laughed about meeting our enemy and finding that “he is us.” We laugh because we recognize the truth. So my work—our work—is culture change. We believe so many things that are not true we must start imagining things that seem impossible. Culture change is our work. Culture change is my work.

:- Doug.

Do just one big thing every day—something to make the world bigger, more open, more engaged, more creative. Don’t leave your plow standing at the edge—get in the field and plow! Turn over one row, or at least one clod!

:- Doug.

We hold in our society an often unstated assumption that wealth is the ultimate good. Yet another assumption is possible and possibly better, that good is the ultimate wealth.

:- Doug.

We need, we need, to see the divinity, the holiness, of each other. We need to open to each other. We need to grow. When we shrivel others, we shrivel the world, the future, our grandchildren’s future.

:- Doug.

If you would see me
You would see me differently
Said Jesus, Because your glasses are different now

:- Doug.

What is the glue that holds us together? Money?

:- Doug.

Contemplation is staring
into Love’s eyes
losing self, gaining….

:- Doug.

Nor poems of logic
Nor of persuasion
I write reality
What is there
For us all to see

:- Doug.

Two lovers lost in each other’s eyes
Worship is loving divinity
Worship is in sitting together

:- Doug.