FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1120

What makes it different this time around?

Have we not always been on the edge of shattering? Perhaps in small ways—within our tribe or grouping or nation. But now we have a whole world and the technology to kill not just a handful at a time, but to utterly destroy ourselves and our world. And we have the news and the connecting points to see it as it is happening. We are becoming aware of all of the inhumanity around us, and that it does not live up to our standards for humanity.

If we know something is good or bad and we do not even speak up, we are worthless, we are no better than they who do the inhumane thing.

Do we have the duty to act well? Do we take up our responsibility?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1119

I see a shattering. I see a society too busy to notice or care. The shattering comes from people not being heard. The recent shootings and killings in Tucson speak to us of assault weapons being legal, of people who have mental conditions who shut themselves off, of a society that allows and encourages people to shut themselves off from others, of a political debate where the norm is vitriol. Have we grown too populous to care for one another? Have we grown too much in the direction of Dollars and Numbers and Competition to care for one another?

Can we figure out how to meet one another? Can we bring us humanly closer in our very diversity?

I see a shattering
as of ice
can we
will we
warm enough
to one another
in time enough
to melt
our shattering?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1118

Invitation is slow: our constant desire for speed can get in our way. Moving toward worth is slow, so are stories shared. Talking like we never have before is slow and most efficient: it gets us to the pulse within.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1117

We want something that pulls us forward and up. Heart stuff, not wallet stuff.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1116

Come back with me to September 11, 2001:

What were you doing when you heard? Who told you? How many times over those days did you watch the towers collapse, one after the other? The plane go into the second tower? Did you think about the people jumping? The priest praying for people struck down as he prayed? The people walking as ghosts covered in grey ash?

How many times did you ask each other what was happening? Do you remember the stillness of the skies? Do you remember feeling closer to your countrymen? Did you put out a flag? Were you more tender to New Yorkers than ever before?

How did it end? Someone got on TV and said the way to show we are not bowed is to—what? Go shopping.

That killed the spirit of those days.

What happened was this. We were not primarily in a place of sadness, or shock, or grief. We were in a place of oneness: We were one people sharing sadness, shock and grief. I remember how people all over the world reached out to us—condolences expressed to an American couple in a restaurant in France, people in Canada putting up air passengers in private homes, emails—O! the emails!

And what did the call to the malls do? It called us back to separation, to individuality, to fragmentation! It hurt!

We might have gone through the stages of grief. We might have examined ourselves to see if we had contributed. We might have taken the hands extended to us. We might have sought understanding and to understand. We might have claimed our humanity. Now we can mourn…ourselves.

What does this have to do with conversation? Everything! September 11 is in our past—and our future. But it does not have to be our now—we can choose.

Population compression makes it inevitable that we will meet our antagonist more each year. But we can choose how we meet—in violence or in intercourse.

War, disease, oppression are in our future—unless we choose—to work the difficult work together—never assured of the outcome.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1115

At times we are called upon to speak by holding our tongues.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1114

Today I just want to sit with you
Doing turns to doing not
Being
Presence
Here

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1113

The world is still
The world keeps slow turning
Whatever swirls around me
Mostly within me
When these swirls have quieted
The world will yet be still
The world will yet keep slow turning
I can be still too

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1112

In the nursing home
open doors, don’t-want-to-look
a baby gurgle

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1111

We never really know ourselves except as others reveal us.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1110

In our daily separate rounds
Can we notice the drawing together
Reminding us of our common walk
In the face of our anger and fear
Sensing the tug of a string-work between us
Woven through customer rival & friend
In times with lover child & dog
But one life there is & this we all live?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1109

Conversation is to talk as calculus is to arithmetic, as fractals are to plane geometry. Conversation opens unlooked-for doors.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1108

Generations ago, in a land foreign to us, lived a man with his wife and three children, 2 boys and a girl. Their lives were not easy. It was difficult work planting on and gathering from their land barely enough to eat. But the man had managed, with the help of his wife and sons and daughter, to build a small house. Sparse it was and rude, but they were thankful for the shelter from the weather.

One day came a man from another land. He did not speak the first man’s language. The new man had friends like him, and they were just a little stronger of will and more in number than the man and his wife and three children. The new man pushed the family out of the house, and put them to work for him, growing his crops and tending his cows and pigs and chickens.

One by one, the three children left the land as they became old enough to see what was happening. The wife died, and the man’s heart broke open. He too died a few years later. No one knows what happened to their bones.

Seven or eight or eleven generations passed. A son of a descendant of one of the three children chanced upon a record of what happened. He went to the lands of his grandfather, but was not allowed on the land. He brought suit against the descendants of the new man, for they were still living on the land, and had built factories and shopping centers there, as well.

Who should be entitled to this land? Whose land is it? Who should be allowed to visit this land? How would you decide the lawsuit?

You, you children of Europe, you whose parents came from Spain and England and France and Germany and Ireland! Who is entitled to walk among you, to own land here and be your neighbor, to have a right to cross the borders you have established? Who was here first? Those from South of your border? Those in the reservations you have placed them on? Whose fathers and mothers have been nourished by this land, been children of it? Who are the original people?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1107

Are you seeing any patterns?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1106

Yet hear
We are not slaves
awaiting command
nor marionettes awaiting
pull on our strings
Yet hear

Every now
there is a voice
in willow
in birdsong
in person in front of us
in weave of circumstance
Yet hear

A call for help
a cry for justice
a longing for conversation
deep & rich
our plumb line
can go on for ever
Yet hear

Here we find
our next step
work coming to hand
the need
our gifts address
if we
Yet hear

This poem is
not about hearing
it is about living
& a stance facing living
facing those also living
touch the one rhythm pulsing
feel the one stirring of breath
Yet hear

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1105

To converse is to hear.

Conversing is not two people talking at each other or to each other or even with each other. It is hearing each other. It may not be agreeing with each other. It is standing in the face. Hearing is the essence of meeting.

It is active: it is taking in. Hearing is not done to the other as listening is; it is opening the walls, allowing touching. Touching does not mean that I accept your propositions, but it does mean I assimilate it, allow them to inform my own. Hearing does not figure out ways that our thoughts are different nor even the same: hearing does not analyze. Analysis might come later. Hearing is attempting to understand: understand not only the thought, but what lies beneath the thought.

To converse, hear.

To converse is to hear.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1104

Where do your fingers reach?
When do your ripples complete their run?
Did your footsteps begin before you?
Do they come to rest on another’s feet?
—Whose depths might your words, skipping, sound?
—The stream starting with your tears: who will cry?
—Say for yourself, for all of us:
I am porous; cosmoses flow through me
eons caress, give birth, call forth in my core
—Who will put muscle to our dream?
—Which generations will be moved?
—Where the end in time?
—When the reach in space?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1103

How would you die? With your family gathered around your bedside, holding hands, speaking quiet words, or with someone leaning over you compressing your chest, giving you injections and electric shocks?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1102

It’s a potluck world. We all bring what we like and share the possibilities…and burnt offerings.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1101

Every pore
of every person
a passage
between universes
freshening each
with airs of the other
opening these
universes of
can
& begin

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1100

A gentle reminder:
Life is not a game I can win
Quit trying to get ahead of it
Quit trying to outsmart it
Life is not a game I can win
Nor one I can lose

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1099

Even though you cannot make a Living Will for someone who has lost capacity, you can record now what you and others remember about what they have expressed to you in the past, their likes and dislikes, what they enjoy and value. Call it “Helping us see through Mom’s eyes.”

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1097

Our efforts might not be used. Then again, they might be. Therein lives hope. But even the ants who don’t find the picnic have contributed.

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