FootprintsintheWind.com

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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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1274

Bring as much vision and depth to the conversation as you can muster.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1273

I’d like to see a “debate” more true to life. Sit the candidates together and have them work with each other to create any way forward. In this we’d see their true mettle—for use with other countries, with business and labor, with politicians, with us.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1272

A pair of little white butterflies
In bluest sky, chasing each other
Higher and higher, spiraling me

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1271

We don’t have to say it all, hinting’s enough.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1270

This is immortality, family style: To start a relation that can never end. When we meet grandchild or grandparent and see into and with their being, when we see the future and the past as one thread—our thread, when we meet another and demonstrate how they may meet in their turn, we have started such a relation. When we share this breath, as insubstantial as it is, we have twisted another strand into the immortal thread of family. This thread neither belongs to us nor can it exist without us.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1269

Early to bed
Up at the crack
Only makes you
One of the pack

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1268

To be as large or as small in this world as I am
—If that is my task
To be of an illimitably large reality, a small but essential part, inseparable, of the weave of flavors
—If that is my task
To share this realization with as few and as many as I am given
—If that is my task
What shape does it take with my family?
What form with my clients & friends?
In what wholeness does it hold my practice?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1267

Polarity is the problem we need to tackle in this country, in this world. If we cannot get along together, we will not get along. “If we do not hang together…” is wisdom that applies to our world, today.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1266

If we can’t laugh, what sanity is there?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1265

Say to your friend
—We’re all friends, yes?—
You’ve something good to share!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1264

We pay in this country for getting defined tasks done. We think these tasks move us along. But maybe all they do is turn the wheel within which we are running endlessly. They put food in our stomachs to have it go out in natural course, they entertain us till we need entertaining again. But do we grow as people, as a people? Do we become more loving? Do we engage each other better, deeper, for more good? Do we make ourselves more whole?

This is hard to say, harder to do. Yet is it not imperative that we invent ways to grow more loving, more whole-making, more complete?

This means we grow together. We have explored about as far as we can go the powers of the rugged individual. It is time we come together and see what powers are between and among.

What are these powers but powers of imagination, imagination to the power of imagination, and much more than that, love to the power of love?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1263

The pain in Spain
stays mainly with the plain;
and those who gain
yet gain and gain
and ne’er explain

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1262

Justice is in danger
whenever we seek a profit
Equity, fair play, loving-kindness
are at stake
when we squeeze through a tight opening
across two lanes to our exit
whether or not we hear horns of protest
Our grandchildren suffer every time
we waste water or electricity
or fill the land with something
we could have recycled
By littles, by days, by minutes
Justice is endangered
whenever we think
we are more than others

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1261

I stretch people. This is good…and disorienting. When I present options the task is just begun; I must help them through their now jumbled world to see how to arrange the pieces into a new picture. Often the paper on which we draw is continually moving, giving us little time to perfect our picture, yet there is hope we are perfecting our art. Seeing this, indeed just seeing and hearing, helps us keep our brush moving, our lives stretching…toward one another. This may be the reorienting: toward one another.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1260

When did we transform ourselves from seeking to be the world’s freest nation to its richest?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1259

Here is our complexity. We are woven together. Our roots are in this ball of earth, our wavy ends extend up and out and across and entangle with each other. We are individuals and yet there is this entangling going on: we need each other. What is that all about? More importantly, how do we make that work? In little and big ways: in families, in social, religious and work settings: how do we live together? How can we understand these things tugging apart and together at once, and how do we make that life-giving?

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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