FootprintsintheWind.com

Your Will is not for ever
—Re-read every two years
Your love is not said and done
—Repeat often

:- Doug.

What good is a heart
Until it opens?

:- Doug.

What is the great heart of humanity in you?
How do you live out the great heart of humanity?

:- Doug.

The prophetic work is not so much to cause grief, but to find and say “Grow, grow” to the great heart of the people.

But the great heart is unknown in our age. Buried, it lies deep and our culture says it lies: it cannot be true. What is true is only the physical, the greed, the evil and stupidity of the human animal.

In point of fact, it is this insistence upon our fallen nature that is the voice of the demonic in our age. What is most authentic in us is our rich goodness. A natural disaster half a world away and what do we do but send aid, go ourselves? Someone is trapped under a burning car, and seven strangers risk life to free that one. Someone says Help and we feel the tug to respond, and do. We visit the ill and the grieving. There is something large in us, and when the towers collapse, we run toward those living beings who need our help. What is needful is not to fight our evil impulse, but to give our attention to getting outside our shells of fear, to touch each other more. Find the great heart of which we are part. Create it anew each day. Put it into practice every day more than before.

This great heart is in each one you meet each day. It is not an individual thing, it is not even a quality of the race. It is a between and among thing. It exists in the threads that connect one person to another. Think you you stop at your skin? Think again. Better yet, observe. Ponder. That which passes through the eyes from babe to mother and back is real.

So inviting the great heart requires not so much finding it or even helping another find it within, but more activating what runs between you, among us all. Where is the great heart of humankind here, now? What is the uncommon common among us? Where is the thread from heart to heart, being to being?

:- Doug.

It’s not true contemplation till you find the spring in your cushion.

:- Doug.

What do you ponder? This tells the story of you better than your daily task list.

:- Doug.

Calling whole is sending forth

:- Doug.

God is riding on one of these snowflakes! Wheeeeeeee!

:- Doug.

I have so much to do! Work wants to get in my way!

:- Doug.

Take time to be human.

:- Doug.

Friend, you hold your goals so close to your chest, how much you miss! You take the surface for the river while the depths and the lives of the river flow rapidly beyond your grasping.

:- Doug.

The wind has increased and the air is now almost wholly white with snow. We see the celebration-gown of the eternal!

:- Doug.

We have noticed since Augustine, and before, humankind’s impulse to evil. We have noticed since Jefferson, and eons before, humankind can be trusted to do good. We have both capacities. But the greater of these is good.

:- Doug.

“What is to prevent them from….”
“Nothing.”
“But what is to prevent….”
“Nothing.”
“But what….”
Nothing: no prevents, no buts. Trust.”

:- Doug.

Listen! You’ve lived through 65 years. You’ve earned the right to be compassionate.

:- Doug.

I’m not that
I am here
—G*d

:- Doug.

Translate the old words afresh!

:- Doug.

A mighty clearing is our God
An opening for good
Clearing us, opening world

:- Doug.

Is that what you want to put into the world
A fog of hate
In front of your eyes
A choking
Of your heart?

:- Doug.

This confronts me. You confront me. The all there is meets us every moment.

:- Doug.

Boomers: Will your next 20 years count for something? How will you be of service?

:- Doug.

The work in the Open Space framework is not swiveling open heads and dumping in new stuff. Rather it is 1. refreshing what is already known, and 2. putting it to work in a new frame to accomplish new things.

:- Doug.

Just what is urgent about eldering? That you only have a few good years left? Yes, that is part of it. That the world needs what you have, while you have the energy? Yes, that too. That the world is falling apart now, and so needs what you have, now? Yes. That you might not have tomorrow to do the good you have in your heart to do? Yes, for sure.

:- Doug.