FootprintsintheWind.com

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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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1258

When life is going according to plan
Perhaps you’re not paying attention young one
For life wants to throw you a curve ball and see
What can you play and who can you be?
Who and how much larger than now?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1257

Our differences are invitations.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1256

We move something larger than us not by shouldering through but by dancing with.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1255

Curiosity, connection & choosing: Curiosity is accepting the holy invitation. Connection is loving and so paradoxically giving and exercising freedom. And choosing is calling whole, home and hearth—choosing the wayfarer and the wayfarer choosing home. Curiosity, connection & choosing: one good way to live.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1254

Before we bend the world
Our way
Let’s see what shape it’s in

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1253

Mysteries open to me
Flowers in the night
Shadows glimpsed around corners
As I walk toward
They open, they close
My footsteps lay down
New mysteries
All around me
& the world is new each instant
Mysteries open mysteries close
In the sea an eye winking

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1252

To some ears “Holy, holy, holy” sounds as “Other, other, other.” Here then is what is holy: that which is most different among us. For in difference we can see possibility and possibility is what divinity is about, what is the only true saving. To see the same people and places with a hundred different pairs of eyes brings us closest to seeing it wholly, brings us closest to the holy.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1251

Poor would you have us?
Cut us off from bringers of wealth
cast out those with new ideas,
strange ways, patterns outside ours,
bar our borders to
tired poor huddled masses,
crawl into your bed, nurse
your own wounds, and die.

Let us open to mystery, wonder
to what together we might make & do.
There is within each worlds of
wisdom, experience, energy, vision &
visions, good & evil, youth &
eldering, things to speed us &
things to slow us, & with these
we can weave, O, we can weave!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1250

Lessons from the road

Life is not a race
Those other people
Are not in your way
The clock is your friend
Marking how you got through
Another hour, another day—alive!
So celebrate!

Make good of the med lights
Here meditate
Reinvigorate
On the divine, wait
Green will follow

We feel so freed
When we set out
On the open road
Walt Whitmans all
We could sing!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1249

The green of the skies
The blue of the trees
The skies shimmering in the breeze
What a flavorful day!
& we are called out to see!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1248

One of the most pernicious things we do in this society is to act as if we are separate from others, especially from our family and friends. They benefit from us, and we from them. We should not withdraw, fearing that we might be a burden to others, that we are interfering with their lives. We are part of each other’s lives. We ought to share what is going on, burdens and sorrows as well as joys and capacities. Parents take care of young children; parents should be willing to ask adult children to share lives in later years. There is much to be gained, only little things to be lost. I have a new disability, I have a need, we have a wisdom to share and a hand to help. Blessings are here and not in pulling away.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1247

The results do not
It’s engaging that matters
I did not get my way
We found ours

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1246

Already
coursing around and
through all peoples
So we need not tug
against humanity
only call it to
eddies, currents,
streams and life
of the great flowing
This sea
is for something

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1245

Slits in the bridge reveal the river
I catch the world by glimpses
as we go by each other
Many bridges I cross
unseeing

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1244

Our conversational work is 1. exchange of information; 2. exchange of fellow-feeling; 3. inventing responses; 4. inventing who-we-are-together; 5. inventing our very selves.

What I am trying to say goes beyond whatever we pay attention to, whatever we inquire into, grows. It is not simply a variation on what was already there, and stop. It is potentially something entirely new under the sun. It is making way for something to emerge. It is making room for the unexpected. It is increasing capacity. It is creating new capacity.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1243

Live as if you are on vacation: Do what you enjoy. Have days not months, not years. Be friendly with everyone. Every this does not matter. Help someone have a better day.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1242

Out of fear some people do not want to have the conversation about care of Mother or Father at end of life. What is the antidote to fear? Love. How can love step in? Firmly? Some other way? What would Mother do?

What if the reason is not fear but something else?

Can we connect with those who do not want to be connected? Can we write them, journal to them, do any good by writing to them then tearing it all up? Do they really want to turn their backs? Do we want to let them?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1241

Ask people to express their highest. Expect holiness: they will rise to meet you. Ask people everywhen to become emissaries of spirit.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1240

We may see the spaces between and among us as empty, especially empty of life. Yet I am getting glimpses of these spaces teeming with living possibility. Think of the space between flint and steel, the space static electricity leaps across (or is it from?). The attraction of earth and sun. The spinning and erotic dancers. Our betweens are alive & wherever you look are betweens!

Moreover the betweens are where we come alive. Watch mother and baby gaze into each other’s eyes. See how you are different for this person and that. Each person—each time—sparks a new something in us.

More than just being a place to hold these instances of life, more than a soup pot, I sense a livingness. There is here a continual coming into existence and disappearing of something that calls us by name. Here arises by waves one after another invitation after invitation.

Reach into the betweens
Careful!
The electricity could shock us!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1239

Invite people together as an act of service.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1238

The redbuds and the pears
The cherries and the apples
Start the spring with shouts
In the shape of flowers
Riotous flowers
The maples put forth
Seeds on the wing
The pin oaks get right
Down to business
New leaves pushing off old
Tulip trees bloom later
And Mulberries give
Sweet fruits to the birds
There are so many ways to live!
To write first chapters and last!
And no chapter is ever last
And everything cycles
And everything is moving
And everything is moving

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1237

Finite players play to win an audience; infinite players play. When we do not seek to matter is when we matter. For when we are engaged freely and fully, we are. This matters. This is love. Egos dry to dust when We rains.

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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