FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 881

We are throwing life away—in the cornstalks, in the landfills, in the food grains we are putting into ethanol—and in the way we label and shut down people. It is a matter of scale, not of essential difference: whether it is genocide or refusing to hear another. The latter is only less visible, more subtle, but it removes the good that could come from these people just as effectively.

So if we change our images to growing people and producing more with what we have and throw away, to generating more from less, to increasing what we do with what we have, to the opportunities in front of us, then we generate, then we live, then we love.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 880

What is the work that needs doing in the world?
Do that
What is the work you can do in the world?
Do that

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 879

What is life about? Ahh! It is simply loving—loving the incompleteness into wholeness. Loving toward wholeness, toward engagement, toward passion. Loving the developing, the trying, the effort. There is no do, only try (sorry, Yoda, you had it backwards).

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 878

It’s not just that we need to talk, but how we talk. We need first to hear all the voices. Of course that means to seek out those people we do not normally hear; it means also to give space to the voice of the meeting—that spirit of the group that arises with a third possibility.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 877

Our ears tie us together—what we hear of one another. Being heard I am woven with you.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 876

Invite without ceasing.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 875

My G*d cried in the garden
My G*d died
My G*d showed weakness
Vulnerability
Tears
Powerlessness
My G*d is near
People like this

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 874

People talking are people doing
People talking are taking responsibility
For our world

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 873

We can listen for G*d
In the very atmosphere
—Atmosphere beyond air’s molecules—
In which we move
If G*d is not a person
Our antennae alert
To being, living, loving
—Ours and mine and G*d’s—
Swirling, rustling so gently
By ears almost heard

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 872

People cause the world
You’re a people
Cause something

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 871

The distinction between problem solving and possibility is the distinction between fixing a broken bike and writing a symphony.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 870

What am I willing to do for which I will not be paid?

The real power in life comes not from a paycheck, but from giving beyond sacrifice.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 869

If I don’t choose I’ll just keep spinning.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 868

If we see wind and breath and spirit as understandings of one word we owe it to ourselves to keep all in mind as we apply that word. If we hear a calling to include unheard voices and marginalized peoples and another to meet our budgets, we owe it to ourselves and our grandchildren to work to include both in our response. We progress when we include more criteria for progress.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 867

I’m after bigger fish. I’m after life, that is, G*d.

This is news we can use, because when we find a hook for G*d, we have found a hook for persons, life and change.

If we are fishers of humans, we are fishers of G*d. When we hook each other, we have hooked G*d!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 866

When someone says it will not work, love them. When someone is despairing, love them. When stuck for what to say, love them.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 865

Shrill. The politicos interviewed on air seemed to think they had to make the “Other” all wrong, “Us” all right.

In their percussion, they forgot that together we have more than black and white answers—if we stop and think we see we have a whole palette of colors…and sounds and textures and tastes and fragrances….

We need conversations ponderful.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 864

Conversation is the music
That lives all around us
It’s grown thin & weak among us lately
This the Word that fed the prophets
Of our generations yet unborn
Can you hear their imaginations roaring
Showing us from inside us
What other worlds are possible?
Dance & sing!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 863

I will not explain how conversation changes things, because its means are outside our usual experience; therefore a new experience is necessary. It is not logical that conversation would have that effect, but it does. It is not logical that a babe in arms will walk. It is not logical that a tadpole will become a frog or a caterpillar a butterfly. For some things we just have to go through our fear and disbelief.

This is about a new human beginning. Something new can be afoot. We need only meet. Our resources will appear, not because some magician makes them ex nihilo, but because together we will see things we missed before. And maybe we will make things ex nihilo, after all.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 862

What makes us think poor people have no good ideas, cannot help their own condition? That if we bring together a million poor, homeless, sick people, there will not be one good idea among them? Ahh, you say, if they had the idea, they would have instituted it.

Well, how do you know? When you are really ill, do you want to get busy and organize people? What if you did not have the skills—did not even know it was possible—to organize people to make a change? What if your whole life had been met with frustration and whatever you did led you to stop trying because trying was futile? What if you were never heard?

We can hear each other. This is the essence of life. When we are heard, we are real to someone. We matter. We are real.

Our main task on this orb is to increase the heard.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 861

Turn
To face
One another

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 860

The men too are victims
Lost
To hope
Estranged
Unseeing
How will we
See their story?

A man is destined
To go out to the world
To bring back a boon
But if he be lost?
If his battle be prolonged?
Shall we join?
Shall we go to find him again?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 859

The promise and the hope of conversation: this is the place where work is needed. This idea of community as conversation is as strange as the idea of living without masters to feed us must have been to the Israelites in Egypt. This idea of we are in charge is the same idea, in fact. The setting only is different: we are chained to mortgages and jobs; they were chained to brick furnaces and tasks. We are given ineffectual work to do with materials impossible: debt as money, pulling more living out of natural resources while poisoning our air and water and food; they were given no straw for their bricks.

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