FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2110

Conversation runs through sport, it runs through literature. It runs through silence and through mystery and through creativity. It is all relations. It is perhaps the essence of life. So how do we do it well? How do we do it better? It, like life, is not a tool for some purpose or goal. It is the context, larger context of life.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2109

In me this morning
the world paused

& caught wisp
of its meaning
rounding the corner

The world in us
chooses to pause

freshened,
turns again

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2108

In a meeting of the minds, the players ought not go out the same as each other, but infected by each other. Inflected. Infected is stained, tinged, dyed, colored. To inflect is to bend, flex. Not change at angles, curved.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2107

How do we choose to shape and color our world? We all shape the world, some by lying on it, plumping the pillow, some by dancing, some by shoveling.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2106

We are getting the work going. We are testing what might work. We are working on the problem of how the experimenters themselves can human better. We share methods and incomplete results. A fundamental plagues us: do humans want to get better?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2105

Muddy your path
Show them you were here

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2104

Talk with your children. Talk with your grandchildren. Invite them to hear one another. We may have only this one chance where there is an entire generation of grandmas and grandpas to invite those who come next.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2103

Tell a story so we wouldn’t be so scared in the dark.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2102

One sure stroke
hammer to bell
a clear note
lasting
my ears tease out
tones beyond number
today I choose to follow
this one
and its mysteries
getting clearer
never clear
for what would be
the fun?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2101

Host a poetry party—finish each other’s verse—with something that makes it more wonderful.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2100

The very leaning in of this work is to produce surprises.

Staring
into deep waters
accustoming
eyes to shadow light
there!
a fish flashes
turns and is
gone
was it ever
there?
dogsplash!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2099

Kind Deed
I grant to you the power and authority to do today for someone of your choosing, by surprise, a kind deed. Expires January 6, 2022.
:- Doug.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2098

Begin wider
the circle
nudge out

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2097

I am about rainbows, butterflies, and hot chocolate.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2096

We think we are particles
We are also waves
Waves of people flowing down highways
Flowing, surging, ebbing through life
Waves of humanity through history
Flowing to new places, new times
Waves of family flowing together
Meeting, meeting, meeting
Young mother and babe
Old one helping young learn
Going out here, out there
Coming back, finding friends
Finding we are who we are together
Together again
Waves have us together
Drops in the seas
Seas full of power
Seas full of life
Waves full of power
Waves full of stillness
Waves full of life
Alone is true
Together is more whole
We thought we were particles
We found we are also waves

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2095

My credo (which for me means “I give my heart to”) is in questions: What questions will most intensify life? What story can we write? Who needs our touch? What most deeply matters? Who helps? Who wants to become more whole? Who are we when we peel away all the layers? How do we touch the one? To what will we give our hearts?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2094

You, ancient of days
hold something of worth
for those who will come behind you
for those who labor beside you

You, ancient of years
don’t know what you hold
I don’t know what you hold

You, ancient of nows
must find what you hold
of worth
of worth to us
of worth to all of us living
Of worth to all of us who will live

You, ancient of thens
must invent what you hold
must invent your worth
must invent the worth of all of us living
and who will live
and who ever lived
human or beast or plant or fungal

You, ancient of theres
you know long ago to invent
meant
to find
as well as create

You, ancient of heres
invent what you hold
invent worth
invent life

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2093

At my funeral, I do not want, or think I do not want, pictures of me from graduation, wedding, birthday parties. How could we ever get a picture of me at my client conferences, or fishing with my father in law, or fighting with my wife, or especially at critical junctures of my life: when I got fired; when I had my dream the night Mom and Dad died; when I got sent to watch Johnny Carson instead of being in the delivery room when my first son was born; when I made critical decisions about my life course in the high school gym and in the lobby of a hotel in Portland, OR some fifty years later. Perhaps I should have my years of journals for people to dig into. What would show your life and quandaries and themes?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2092

Be altared by what you hear.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2091

Is it invariably so that major new thinking tracks appear all at once and with force and maybe fully formed, or might they sneak up on us like a field of fireflies as the colors of the day take their leave and we discover again the wonders of the dusk’s sky?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2090

Conversation invites reaching out
Though your hand may get
Slapped or bitten

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2089

Curious is related to cure which is about care, concern, and trouble. Yes we trouble ourselves to become curious and our very curiosity troubles us with new things found. Its own roots are also in meanings of subtle, sophisticated, eager, requiring art. Do you still want to be curious?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2088

We are here to nibble on the ear lobe of the beast. The beast is a question: Can our grandchildren mean anything to us? What can we do about humanity? This is the question we whisper into one another’s ear.

What makes this work urgent? Now we have a generation which can appreciate the long ranges and the rhythms across ages, and think about doing better. It may be only one generation has this opportunity—we are the extra generation. So do we have a responsibility?

What makes this work intriguing? It offers our species a way to its fulfilling purpose. We might have a lasting influence for good. This work is impossible to complete. This work demands of us more than we can give.

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