FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 904

These are big opportunities
We are called to:
Think expansively
Include everyone
Take charge
Work together
Converse deeply
Weave intricately
See each other again
Act committedly
Hear lyrically
Make time

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 903

Help Wanted: running the world. Must be ordinary, know how things are, willing to make mistakes. Apply within yourself and apply yourself with your neighbors and friends and get busy. Expect fierce opposition. Compensation, success and safe return in doubt.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 902

People generally go about as high as we invite.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 901

Hopefully in this coming century we’ll find questions to some of our big answers.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 900

My life is worth the living
Because I have children
Two sons
Poetry
Meetings
Inklings
Divinities
Invitations
Words
Hope
Attention
Love
Children who can bear children

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 899

I wish I were an autumn leaf a-fallin’
Floating up and down across the sky
And to all boys & girls I’d be a-callin’
Fall and leap and giggle dream and sigh!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 898

Why is life a problem? Why are we seeing ourselves as lacking, powerless?

What if we saw ourselves as powerful, gathering friends, making things happen? What if I saw myself as powerful, gathering friends, making things happen?

I choose to see myself that way.

So I gather friends through direct invitation, through my writing, through meditation/contemplation touching the fabric of our being—the all there is. I release my power by releasing ours—I help us see ourselves as capax universi.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 897

Do we want more warring in our world? Do we want more listening to each other? Are we ready to work together to help each other? These are the questions for our country this election time.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 896

Small Unauthorized Acts make the world better.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 895

How would I like to respond?

“What don’t you know and how will you learn it?” There is more that I don’t know than I do. The simple answer is that I will ask you, including my so-called opponent. Together. In that one word, Together, is more. The important thing is to keep asking questions, for in questions is pregnancy, is new birth, is life of our community and country. Answers stop the questioning, stop the progress. Questions open us up, questions open us out. Together we have wisdom. So I ask you to take a few moments to ask yourself, What don’t we know? What are our really big questions? I ask you now, in silence, to find the larger questions, the questions to enliven us.

Then I would shut up for the rest of my allotted time.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 894

The cloud advances imperceptibly
But look away a moment
There it is as if it had leaped!
By billows, by thinning,
By drawing moisture from beneath
By embracing, by moving on
Whether embraced or not
This cloud brings fog
Or cleansing rain
Your hands can stop it not
It moves to shade another
This cloud does its work
Cry it might or storm
Then dissipate in the wind
Surely part of its work is beauty
And setting boys and girls dreaming
Maybe you too
Arguing with it concerns it not
It does its work and moves along
Maybe you too

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 893

Know what the trees say in a windstorm? “Wheeeeeee!”

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 892

True meeting requires spontaneity, actually meeting, willingly accepting who and what is in front of you and meeting the challenge with what arises.

I saw meeting as a way of life, spontaneously seeing what emerges, curious, loving, excitedly and expectantly watching, waiting, clasping, sending heart forth to heart.

This is an easy way, like telling a child a bedtime story (which is the genesis of my thinking), and being alert for escape routes and new places to go, people and animals to meet, life to greet, flying to enjoy. Stay, play! Explore, but even bigger than explore. Beyond explore. Life is to enjoy beyond explore, to play, to see what is possible!

I am saddened when people do not want to come out and play. What can we make? Is that all? Is there more? There is always more! With people there is always more, for we are divinely creative. Yes?

Invite play.

Come out and play! Come and play! Come play! Play!

Here is a bridge, there a cloud, the shade of a tree, the lapping of water, a hole in the ground. Here is story, our story, a larger story. Here are the makings! It is safe. It is home. It is ours to create!

Wow! Life is about playing! Who woulda thunkt?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 891

We have always expanded our
Confidence
Intellect
Vision
Courage &
Reach
By gathering
With each other
How much we need to
Now

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 890

It is about calling out human divinity—what is highest and noblest in humans. You are wanted and welcome. You are needed. I want to hear what you have to say—your stories, your hopes, your inventions. You make me whole.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 889

If we’re going to color outside the lines, we need a full box of crayons.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 888

Playing with
Here is a game
You can play—
With another
Person or two—
Ask each
Other each line
See what
Comes up—
Sea?
Play
Hear
Now

Where is the wow
In your life?
In?
Out?
Hope
Whales
Skin
Stroll
Fear
Others
Trees
River
Cave
Pony
Circle
Puppy
Red
Sky
Love
Water
Baby
Storm
Creating
Us?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 887

In the woods, in conversation: listen for the subtle voices. The voice of the red among the green whispering to the bees, Here I am sweet, taste me! The voice of the small and delicate we daily walk by and do not see, breathing I am part of this world.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 886

Getting captivated by imagination is almost the whole of meeting.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 885

We are walking on the stomach of G*d: how then shall we walk?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 884

Approach with love.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 883

You’ve been in this kind of meeting. People saying ordinary things. Nothing much happening. —And then—something clicks. Maybe an offhand remark not noticed by the person speaking. Someone else picks up on it. You are sparked.

It’s not the people. It was the convergence of these people, this time, these thoughts. Something no one carried into the meeting carries you out.

You met.

Truly. And all those other “meetings” deserve the quotes, for they are pale by comparison.

What if we could meet this way on purpose?

We can. We just have to design our assemblings so we have opportunities to meet. Meet as humans with good heads…& good hearts. Meet to cause good.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 882

People have a wisdom and a love in them that is their essential. This wisdom is not fully expressed, and so they are not fully, until they have created and met the betweenings.

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© c 2008, 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