FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1395

The skirt of the evergreen
is lovely in white and green and black
the old lady will add to her skirt in spring
and I seldom notice
save on snowy days like today
do I see when she
dances with the winds?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1394

What is white
Must come down

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1393

When you invite
ask of each something difficult—
three days of their lives, a week entire
commitment, active commitment
responsibility taken up for what they love
sacred life substance spilled—sweat…tears…blood
work, effort full work against unfavorable forces
—something hard to give
a thing of great worth

Spilt blood you need not ask every time
yet keep this symbol in your gut
if it’s worth gathering at all
ask for more than you dare
a thing of great cost
for you to ask, for them to give
This is the only thing worth inviting

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1392

The way to learn is to let in something new.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1391

Rediscover, redefine
Your living, playful path
But larger than that, remember
Your birth is your terminal condition
So rediscover, redefine
Your dying path
Fill it, empty it
Paint it with colors subtle
Dance it with steps nuanced

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1390

To criticize, to analyze
is to squint your eyes
and so your soul
to see less and less
but if we look in the direction
of what is marvelous
larger
we open ourselves
and might see
under the hide of things

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1389

Inviting ever inviting
Our spirits for growth
As our bodies food
Need diversity
Even conflict

Conflict is but a track
In the wilderness
Nearby, watching,
That great she-bear,
Complexity

And we her cubs

Screaming, anger, terrorism:
Not the birth-pangs of our new peace
But of complexity
A likely story
Inviting ever inviting

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1388

Your life is a
shining example
to others!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1387

When you visit me
in my sick bed
you are breathing life & health
upon me

When you pray for me
you are stirring the air
wisping around me

When you think of me
movement starts my way

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1386

How to write a poem:
Walk us along the
Flowered & thorny path
Then in the last line
Hand us clippers
From gravity
To cut us free

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1385

Help me speak from my dementia
Since I have trouble thinking
But I feel, I see, I exist
I want to love you
And be respected
Because I am, still
I remember, I remember
The songs, the dances,
The babies
I don’t have the words so much
Any more
But my life
and yours
Are more

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:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1384

Don’t sit down and write a goal for the new year: zero in on your life’s purpose, and live that. A goal is something you can complete, something you can put a specific date on, and then you can rest. You can check it off. Life is not like that: I will complete my life by June 1, and then I can rest in my grave.

More meaningful would be to get your real work rolling out in the world, continually living it, constantly taking up opportunities and choosing course as you go. For instance, work on getting your message to the world: write an hour a night on your book, talk to new people every week, get speaking engagements. When someone new presents a project, evaluate it on how well it serves your purpose: if it serves in a big way, jump in with both feet!

Let goals serve your larger purpose by helping with the little things along the way. Keep your eye on your true essence.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1383

Color deepens
Light suffers
Death of a loved one
Deepens our colors
What then if we die?
Oh, of course, when we die?
Goethe saw light suffering
In colors
If we deepen humanity
Is it because first
Light suffered?
A vessel deepened
Has greater capacity

Not attaining the scale
I’d like is itself
My kiln firing
To deepen
Colors & lustre

Play and dialogue:
Conflict in comfortable
Everyday clothes

Revelation: I fear conflict!
Yet seeding for new growth
Requires plowing under

Revelation two: I fear growth!
So much I keep
My mouth & pen silent

Scale up! Mouth and pen!
Enter the conflict…with self!
Deepen your colors
Speak out!
To spouse, family, world!
First, plow under, seed,
Play & dialogue,
Dance & snow
Relentlessly piling up:
But if you must, War!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1382

Two clouds, snowing
Moving towards one another
Bump not, merge
Become one another,
Intermingle, snow, create
New shapes, emerge
As two or three, or
Maybe stay in their
More than embrace
Still they snow
Still they travel
Unless we look up
We do not see
How alike our conversation
Bump not, merge

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1381

The person who brings the need is at least as valuable to the conversation as the person who brings new ideas.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1380

Conversation arises from the unknowable and indefinable totality of persons, and not from ping-ponging strings of words back and forth. The latter is taking memories, old patterns and fixity of categories and reworking them for this word battle. The former is exposing one’s vulnerable innards to new perceptions…and therefore reshaping. Conversation then is not a technology that can be learned and applied to every setting. Conversation is more an alertness for perception and reception of the new, the unknown, the surprising in the person in front of you. When two or more meet at this level, new persons are perceived…and born. But take care: there is an unceasing movement of the new toward getting mired in old tracks of thought. That’s why conversation is a practice. The watchword is vigilance: stay alert.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1379

Don’t be irritated that spouse, happenings, life interrupt you
These are the stuff of the divine
Reason you are here
Detours are your
Given path

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1378

What age would I die?

The one that is my own. Well, what can that mean? How does that help? It helps perhaps by saying we can let go of controlling it and let it come to us. It will without our efforts.

The question then is one of helping us noodle out how to live for the rest of our days. Will we be healthy? Will our mental powers stay with us? Will we remain ourselves or become somebody new—less or more? Will we be meaningful, feel meaningful, do meaningful? Will we matter?

The question also turns a mirror on the rest of our lives and asks What matters about my life? Our life together?

It also asks how we want to be treated by others: will we be respected? Remembered? Heard? Part of others?

Given that we have no permanency, what then is the purpose of our days, whether many or few? I see it is about the help we give one another, purposely, wittingly, or otherwise: love.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1377

The work set in front of you is at least the first work.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1376

A journey we make together
Dad is dying
The dialysis is not doing any good
Dad is fighting dying but getting tired
Mom and daughter try to ask “the question”
Maybe we can get the doctor
To start the conversation with Dad
And son John is so
Torn to pieces he can’t visit Dad
and son Mark says “Oh, Dad,
You’ll beat this and be stronger than ever”
Somehow this is
A journey we make together

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1375

The problem is not that the work is meaningless but that the worker is: the worker has not worked on the meaning. The worker is left without a meaning to grab onto.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1374

We meet, and then we share. Or perhaps sharing is what meeting is. What and whom do we share? Ourselves, or aspects of our selves. As well we discover and even create aspects of ourselves. These aspects become for the moment our selves whole, and yet are not all of us. We are large, we encompass universes. What and whom do we share—other than this very question?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1373

The day the tulip tree died
I heard no sound
I looked and it was down
It kindly avoided with its 90 feet
Just feet away the building in which I stood
Another day will hold the work of clearing
For this day a silent kind of mourning

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© c 2013, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/341-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com