FootprintsintheWind.com

Can we make sure we are alive first
before we choose a destination?
Can we get some solid roots?
Can we nourish our tendrils
before we tell the world what to do?
Is it good we
find our heart before our feet?

:- Doug.

We cut down
some ancient trees in our yard
something in me still grieves
these weeks later
& I try to console myself
by noting the rotten parts
revealed in the stumps
but I say
& I experience
a sadness
these many weeks later
we are part of each other

:- Doug.

G*d is the great empty

:- Doug.

When we gather
when we meet
we are growing
something organic
& alive
we are emerging
a we
part of
the great we

:- Doug.

Living organisms
are vaster
than machines
Machines have goals
& come to an end
Living beings
go along together
creating infinity

:- Doug.

Nature puts down roots
seeks sun
before it finds direction
nature knows what to do
we are nature

:- Doug.

What if G*d
were the pregnant
empty
that holds all?
What if G*d?

:- Doug.

Is tells us Do

Emergency! How do you make the best decisions for your loved one in a medical emergency? You need to converse. The conversation’s words do not give a recipe for what to do; we cannot cover every possible contingency. Instead, conversing tells us who this person Is, and knowing the Is informs us what to Do in unforeseen circumstances. Is tells us Do.

But why do we do? Yes, to make life or death better for your loved one. Yes, to make your decisions easier. But that is not the point of conversing. The point is love: loving a person helps them be who they are, and helps us be who we are, and helps us both together be who we are together. Do helps us Is.

Is tells us Do
Do helps us Is

:- Doug.

Everything is enfolded
In this Now
Nature uses few words
To say much
To the all there is
Yourselves together open

:- Doug.

I want my reading to be
juicy
sweet
kind
instead of dry

:- Doug.

There is goodness and evil in the human animal. To say that those are outside us is to put us in puppet mode. To say they are both innate is to give us responsibility to choose and to grow.

Responsibility to grow.

We surely have that.

That perhaps is our highest calling: To grow, to become better than we are, more than we are: this is the human’s choice.

:- Doug.

Be here now
Is good; better is
Be together now

:- Doug.

In the scales for the earth
Every coin goes to right or left
Every coin weighs for all the earth
Better or worse
In which side do we place most
Of our coins?

:- Doug.

This is one of many things evocative for me: the opening of a mystery for exploration.

:- Doug.

Where can I see the beauty, truth and goodness in the day around me, the the mattering, exalting, connecting, holiness, meaning? In a word, the divinity?

:- Doug.

Life invites us to go as well as know. Go where we can do good.

:- Doug.

Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats, neither Tea Partiers nor Occupiers, nor any one of us has the one right answer. The world is too diverse for that. To scream at each other because the other does not adopt our solution would be laughable if it were not so sad.

What is needed is to hear one another as to our needs. We fear that if the other is in the ascendancy, then we will not get what we need, and therein lies our need to scream. For if we do not get what we need, we are at risk for dying.

Yet there are myriad solutions: many get a job, some choose to start a business, or just get to work; some cook, some tend wounds, some weld steel; some engage heart, some head, some muscle and sinew. All have dreams and a direction and a need to be heard. When we are heard, when we are able to engage our creativity and strengths, the world improves by just that much.

What we don’t need is any “side” requiring everybody to acquiesce to their program. There are many ways. Let’s allow others.

:- Doug.

Politicians are fundamentally at odds with us—because they think there is only one answer, one way. Business people as well, because they reduce life to Dollars and numbers. Neither is true because life and the us that is the world have many ways, many values beyond. A beating heart, a child’s laugh, the sheer immensity of the cosmos: all of this testifies to a cornucopia of responses, ways, answers, questions, stories, lives.

:- Doug.

Attend to the holiness—the wholeness, the interwoven character—of our world, to the end that all work together for one outcome: the fulfilling of each and all.

:- Doug.

I’m not old enough to be 65—nor do I intend to be.

:- Doug.

Consuming is our chief role in the economy and the economy, after all, is in this culture our raison d’être. We are told over and over, and from a young age, we are consumers. No wonder we are fat!

:- Doug.

Conversation forces us to become producers rather than consumers, which means we discover our own qualities and strengths, with (herein, magic!) the world.

:- Doug.

How must we appear to the ant?
Perhaps like clouds appear to us—
Something we look up to see
Dream upon
But do not notice its daily round
Here this moment gone the next
On some errand that matters not
Some day disaster might rain down on us
And we will scatter for shelter
But how little humans matter
In the grand scheme of things!

:- Doug.