FootprintsintheWind.com

Last night, a vision: humans disrobing from the inside out, tentatively reaching out to the world round about, each layer getting them closer to touching, being touched and participating: The first layer, thick and seldom clear, is communicating; the second is discussing, a way of throwing things at one another’s screens. (If this layer becomes tattered, it is called debate.) Then follow even thinner more gossamer porous fabrics in discourse and then dialogue. Finally we reach conversing, where the naked human takes to turning and dancing with the world. Here the human being is most able to alter the course of events.

It is a terrifying process, this disrobing. The compensations are friends to encourage and warm us, and knowledge that we are making good. Seeing the garments of which we have less use now, and those still in our way, can give us courage to enter the dance.

:- Doug.

For lively returns, invest your life in other people.

:- Doug.

Our work is not just conversing, but conversing to invite and free you all to come home to your true nature, to take charge for your tribe.

:- Doug.

Wills are about this: how much
life
can your last words give?

:- Doug.

To die incompletely
should this be my thrust?
That I leave something behind
that I be remembered?
Nay, I shall want outliving me
some good I set in motion
or only helped on its way

:- Doug.

We need not to be about
doing What’s Right
but meeting what’s right
& good & true
in one another

:- Doug.

Are you equal to yourself?

:- Doug.

Conversation is our humus
our breeze, our rains
Here we grow
stretching out our roots
holding our faces to the sun

:- Doug.

What is your true nature? Does it reach its highest expression in the work you are doing? Do you love your work? Does it feed your wholeness?

:- Doug.

Invite! Free! Call home!

:- Doug.

Where in your world would conversing help? Where is there doubt, floundering, conflict, screaming, avoiding, over-politeness, dismissal? Where is there unmet need, unheard voice?

:- Doug.

Maybe, “our” ideas use us to convey them from age to age, place to place, as a burr uses a fox to carry its seed miles away, as an egg uses a hen to carry it to a new place.

:- Doug.

Just as physics is subject to observer participancy and indeterminacy, and just as consciousness is subject to unconsciousness and vice versa, so we do not have life alone, we do not have ideas alone: all those who touch us participate in our lives and ideas.

:- Doug.

I cannot just now see the big work I am
doing
only its gossamer broad outlines
changing
But today I do see these hungering to be
heard

:- Doug.

Our ideas are never our own
Every time we express, the idea is changed by the words we find
Never do we find the perfect fit words
Every time we express, someone else hears with an accent, sees through their lens on the world
And we all add to what we hear & read & write
So that what goes in is not what gets ground up & what gets ground is not what goes into the casing
Our ideas are never purely ours alone
So our task is movement, stirring, starting, adding & combining
Conversation is central & every place
You are not you, I am not me, alone
Our lives are never merely ours alone

:- Doug.

In Open Space as in life (same thing I suppose)
be a bumble bee, jump into the air and buzz around
hear around
Above all else, whatever you be, hold not back,
be not a humble bee!

:- Doug.

We must now ask, with eyes open, what is the together side—of us, of each of us, of this decision, that opinion, this creativity, that destruction?

How do we open us up to look for bigger questions? Yes, we need to consciously question and develop lists of questions, but that is only a quarter fragment of what we can do. We also need to look to our unconscious, and then engage the larger conscious and unconscious reservoirs of our tribe: those around us, those we can gather, those who care.

So one of our tasks is finding a way to open ourselves to all that could meet us. In humans, in animals, in nature, in the universe: who and what might get us to better, bigger questions, better, more profound next steps?

How do we do that? Perhaps it starts with invitation. The invitation can be question, or story, or call for help. Perhaps we gather one or a few others and in our circle find inspiration.

Why gather? To hear. To hear what each has to bear upon our question, story, need: experience, thoughtfulness, attention, imagination, musings.

Invite, gather, hear: three possible next steps.

That’s my story, my question, my call for help. What do you see, hear? How can we invent more profound questions, together?

:- Doug.

We are pulling ourselves apart; those who are our leaders are tearing us apart, and we keep voting for them! What!

Our lives are being ended. We are given no choice. Cry for our children. Cry for our grandchildren. Cry maybe even for us.

Our hope is in healing, in coming together. It is not a sure thing. It might not work. But this is the only direction in which there is life.

A few of us, those who come together, will taste life.

It is not a mantra: it is life. Healing is the way, the only way.

:- Doug.

A prophet looks at all this—
riots, screaming, separation
&
broom brigades, conversing, whole-making
—gets in our face and asks us
to tell the meaning of our age
to choose

:- Doug.

Last night a news fragment that was frightening: London police are considering a crack down on smart phone use. The riots were self organized (as were the cleanup broom brigades the next morning) via cell phones, Twitter, and the like. It points up that freedom of the press and of speech and the right to bear arms have the same roots: the right to be taken seriously, the right to communicate one’s existence and pain and dreams. There is a human right to communicate, more precisely, a human right to seek fulfillment of the human need to be heard.

:- Doug.

Hear go:
Take in what we can hear
Go out to do what we can

:- Doug.

Hear + Act = Hope

:- Doug.

One tool of heroic communities was a new form of “community: meet!” Combine Open Space with small circles where each is asked to tell us your story, dreams and trouble—and heard till that one feels heard. The purpose is to build hope and action together.

:- Doug.