FootprintsintheWind.com

Only two responses to the world
—Fear or love—
Choose

:- Doug.

Could we diagnose a conversation from different angles, a series of continua? Might this approach suggest paths through the woods?

It.....................Thou
surface................depth
generalities...........specifics
at.....................with
propound...............changed
scripted...............unexpected
formulaic..............new
avoiding...............candor
pasted-on smile........gritting the teeth
talk-talk-talk.........silence arises
feel smallness.........produces expansiveness

:- Doug.

Sometimes a hammer
Sometimes a bell
Sometimes a song
A screwdriver to turn the turner
An awl, a brace, a lance
A hoe & a spade
Some space
Build & grow
A home a conversation a people

:- Doug.

Job tells us
God is not moral nor just
But God comes face to face

:- Doug.

The world holds at its center
This holding is God

:- Doug.

Labels divide
Do you want to be split?

:- Doug.

A new conversation
might be generated by
yearning & insistence
rage & alienation
resentment & guilt
How do we risk so?

What if I answer with
destruction, anger?
or demand you do right?
Does that bring
a new conversation?
Disputing may just draw
you to me

What if I destabilize you
question your security
your place in your precarious world
your role in the life you’ve lived
up to now?

What if I change your subject
not as politicians do
but displace and marginalize
your questions because
you miss the larger?
Not dismissing but opening

I might name your ghost
name you & free you from fear
assure you, change you, help you
show you my pain caused by your absence

I could get in your face
compel you to respond
ask for your remorse
or share my own

Might I demand you
speak
hear
answer
so that I can breathe
so that we can exist
so that all can live?

Any of this will
transform our conversation
& through our conversation
our world
Will we use our spine?

:- Doug.

There’s a kind of a buzz
running through all humanity
something going on here
and there
a buzz that wants to lift all
and fly
let’s pay our attention here
for once or twice
touch cheeks and hear the buzzing
become buzzing
join, make more whole
the tune

:- Doug.

People yearn for communion, they yearn also for being able to give their best for the world. Perhaps the yearning for communion is an expression of the yearning to give our best.

:- Doug.

We become more human the more we see ourselves not as beings, but as beings-with. We only are persons when we are with another person.

:- Doug.

Destiny needs each of us. We each must act to actualize destiny, destiny which waits for us. Or rather waits in us as the yearning, the thing we most want to bring to the world as an act of our deepest love.

:- Doug.

Where in the Protestant service today is the opening for us to meet God in the way that reaches each on his or her own ground? Where in a time filled with listening to other’s words and singing other’s songs, where am I addressed, met, given space? The work of the people has become the canned work of the liturgist and we are lost.

:- Doug.

Let us invent how to voice the yearning we have for communion, for being heard and known.

:- Doug.

Each instant we can choose again. We can engage. We can take responsibility for what we love. We can serve the larger.

:- Doug.

Do we want to be one of a mass of consumers, or this person? Do we want to spend some quality time, or do we want to have quality now, with nothing else pulling us? Do we want this life of greys, or that of a cornucopia of coloring, of engaging?

:- Doug.

Point not to magic, but to the ineffable.

:- Doug.

Point not to where we are wrong but to where we might raise our sights. We can tingle our consciences: that’s OK to get our attention. Then move beyond. We often already know what’s better: let’s go there.

:- Doug.

God wants not your guilt
God wants your freedom
God, the all, incurs the shredding of flesh from your wrong-doing
Even so, risks all on you
All the all
Crying Get over it!
Crying Get on with it!

:- Doug.

A God on a throne
A God in a heaven “up there”
A God at any location
Is too small
For reality

:- Doug.

Loving is withing.

:- Doug.

Let’s not spend time with people
Let’s with them earn time

:- Doug.

Notice the transformations already on the loose.

:- Doug.

Is it not our task to boldly catch away glimpses into the heart of God and report them?

:- Doug.