FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1297

Slow me, slow me! Sometimes I want to quickly move along. Yet the best of life is always here.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1296

Today we have all these chronic diseases. So we die slowly, over weeks and months and years. We are perhaps too early in this phase to realize that dying is a human event we must work with and care about. So far all we have been doing is figuring out how to defer dying. But when it is here, we have not yet worked out a way to be present, to respond. We are just beginning to notice the suffering we are putting upon others and ourselves.

When someone is dying
There’s a land out beyond hope
Where help & despair & hope & love
& all the rest
Can meet
We can do one next right thing
Even if the right thing
Cannot be known

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1295

I seem to collect more insight after I have finished journaling than during. Journaling clears the clutter out of my way, so is necessary prologue. So don’t stretch journaling, allow it to come as it will and then be done.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1294

I want to slow down. I want to absorb more of what life is around me. I just took a cup of hot water in my hands to warm my hands in this cold room, and decided that holding it for a minute rather than 10 seconds would provide more lasting warmth, and less interruption of the writing I was making. Yes I need to be less distracted and shattered in my mind and heart.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1293

Sharing giving helpful
even loving
is how I experience the world
Enormous
doing what it wants
filled with people who help
& make it friendly
listservs for lawyers listservs for CPAs
software forums
stoplights to smooth traffic flow
court clerks supermarket checkout people
kindly older folk
surly burly road workers
delivery people
business owners
bosses employees clergy
nurses doctors butchers bakers
rains sun winds fire thunder
even if they don’t know it
helping easing
making it all work
for this there is an African word
ubuntu

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1292

“Together we are strong” read a large banner about Newtown. We can understand the sentiment, but I would rather say, Together we are weak. There are times it is good to mourn, to cry, to be powerless. The times are better when we do so together. Powering through is not what I want or need. A tragedy of such moment brings us together in a way that strength cannot.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1291

O Sandy Hook
I am on the rim
of an endless sea of tears!
each time I recall your twenty
young beautiful lively
children lying in their own blood
laughter & learning & ricochets
mingled now, echoing away
Mourn, America!
Silence! Keep silence.
Allow your tears.
Only sob.
Our children our children
are dead

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1290

Was it loose gun controls that set us up for the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy? Our addiction to violent video game? Mental illness? I don’t know. No one can know.

But we have an opportunity for a right response. Whether or not our leaders call for it, we can resolve, for the sake of generations of children to come, to do it right this time.

Let us as a people take a month, a full 30 days, away from taking action, jumping to quick decisions, even from talking about it. No preaching. No politics. No lobbying.

Let us take time for silence.

Perhaps a time for contrition. Certainly a time for reflection. Mourning. A time for prayer, meditation, contemplation.

Silence,
silence in the face
of tragedy
Our generation
can set an example
for future generations
let us take time
to not know

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1289

Just a knot
am I,
a gathering,
in the fabric
of the whole
(even the word
universe
is meaningless)
So when I awoke
this morning
at the time
I’d told myself
I wondered
was the awakening
from within
or without?
I see this is a
nonsense question

Just a gathering in the fabric of the whole. This means that a touch on the fabric elsewhere is felt anywhere, and I might feel it too. It does not matter what mistakes I might make in feeling or hearing or touching, for the whole fabric will even it out, and I like all have all within, both good and bad, excellent and stupid, and still it matters for ever that I do what I can to move it to wholeness for that is its nature, that is my nature, that is our nature.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1288

In the muddy ash
of daily tasks
my sinew wearies
In the flaming forth
my heart lives
I live half-in half-out
of the creative fire

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1287

There is something that happens to the you when You step into relation, into meeting, something beyond saying we each are different persons when we meet, and each time we meet: it says we are this particular time-space we.

We are each infinities and eternities, and when we meet, we multiply infinity by eternity, eternity by eternity, infinity by infinity: we are large and we are without length.

We fill all and go on filling.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1286

Open hand
The gift of one another
Open heart
The gift of one another
Lean into our circle
As human as you can
Offer and accept our highest
The gift of one another

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1285

There is a message
of jumping about
of not landing
no quiet refuge just now
This is the message
today I’ve received
Runny nose
car noise
mind flitting
peace in the maelstrom

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1284

Write peculiar little poems
Invite small uncomfortable conversations
Open intimate vulnerable spaces
Because
This is a big work

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1283

Honor one another
And you will see

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1282

We need some agnostic politicians: people who don’t have all the answers; listeners and especially hearers; explorers; even skeptics. Certainly we do not need people out to burn others at the stake or call to inquisition those who do not believe what the politician professes. We need people who have found the art to being lost.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1281

Did we do this to ourselves? After an historic weather event like Hurricane Sandy we must ask this of ourselves. If there is a chance our actions contributed to this, ought we get down on our knees before Mother Earth, beg forgiveness, and do everything we can to make it up to her…and to our grandchildren?

I’m not asking you to believe in global warming—be an agnostic! I’m not asking you to give up making money—I’m saying try an experiment in being prudent and thrifty.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1280

Beneath
the floor on which I walk
the solid ground
this spinning ball of dirt
the empty spaces
the sidereal song
the gossamer stretching & holding
beneath

Beneath
all there is
& all there is not
pregnant open space
beneath even this
beneath the beneath
is God
undefined beneath

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1279

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!
This day for wrapping around us!
Luxuriate in the richness of this living day!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1278

After the election which
do we want to say?
Good race
or
Good purchase

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1277

When we are born
there is a gathering
of the stuff of the all
just here
just here

So when we die
there is a loosening
just here
just for now

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1276

First, live well together; only then, see how the money parts can serve your living.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1275

People need this conversation about living well our last chapter. They need to realize that as Jerry Walthall said, some of us want to die on the boat dock watching the sun and drinking a beer with our dog. I’d add: not in a hospital ICU with beep-beep-beep.

But the family, the family, gotta love ’em: they want to hang on to the last thread. “Do something” says our society. “Do something” say our bones. “More existence is more life.” “One more breath, one more year, maybe something can be found.”

Where is the value in dying well, in living well up to our last breath?

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© c 2012, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com