FootprintsintheWind.com

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.

Please pass it on.

© 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

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.

Please pass it on.

© 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

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!

Please pass it on.

© 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

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.

Please pass it on.

© 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

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.

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 861

Turn
To face
One another

Please pass it on.

© 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

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?

Please pass it on.

© 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

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.

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 858

Changing the world is a do it ourselves project.

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 857

Our theology has been looking the wrong direction: we have been looking at God, trying to define God when all along we should have been trying to see what humankind is and could be, in relation to God.

For instance, in Genesis God says to Adam—Here is the world—take charge. So tell me, in your life what have you done to take charge of the world?

At the end of the Gospel, Jesus calls us his friends—when was the last time you called him “Friend?” When have you acted as if he were your friend?

In the Ten Commandments, God told us what not to do—have you tried to noodle out what that leaves open to us?

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 856

Fall asleep with a question
To wrestle in the deeps
Question blessing you blessing question
You arise alive

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 855

It is a revolution I am seeking, not of this world of dominance, but of humanity’s soul-truth. I want people to see that they have the power and responsibility for the world they want to see. It is done in everyday things, so the everyday things we do need to change: we need to change our calendars to put in more time for meeting and striving for this change.

What do we want to see more of in the world? What less? What of that is already in our lives? Let us work on that. What of that is not in our lives? Let us work on that.

Soul-truth is the human parallel to space-time: something defining, real and transparent.

Soul-truth means the grasping of what we hold to be most real, most important, most central to being.

Get people to thinking on these things, and change has a plowed field. Compost is turned, gets to work. This is work. This takes courage, opening the heart and mouth to open others’ ears and hearts. It takes speaking my peace: my still word into a world confused and thinking it knows where it is going.

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 854

What have I not seen? Where have I not looked? To whom have I not turned? Whom have I not heard? When have I guessed when I could still ask? Who might be larger than I thought?

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 853

To stand powerless with a message
Is part of our destiny
(Take courage from the prophets)

The message for our times: Trust the people
All creativity all future is here
All action all change all work
Whatever is going to get done
Is going to get done by the people

You ask
How to engage the people
Simple: Ask for help

Trust the people: ask them for help
A better world is right here

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 852

Before it’s too soon
We need to do this
We’ve never talked like this
Sort of inside out
There are so many of us together
All that’s left is to dance
All that’s right is to dance

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 851

Now, now is our time:

1. We confront a surfeit of challenges, an abundance of persons to address them, and our problem is complex: putting them together. It will take all of us.

2. We face population compression—more of us each day on a ball constant in land area—and maybe shrinking by melting ice caps and piling up our wastes. We must converse together, work together—we have not ever tried either before—or we die.

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 850

We have tough times in front of us
We’ve made a mess of this world
All we’ve got is us—& those we’ve offended
This is our hope

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 849

I want to hear what others have to say. I want to hear it so that I hear it and not aim at bolstering my arguments. I want to hear it to connect, and to be vulnerable to changing. But I want to be open to changing others, too, to bringing my voice of the majority report into the conversation.

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 848

We are here not to convert but to converse.

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 847

Poetry asks poet—
Find words to open
Poet & Reader & Word
Shh—words
Send out word to find no word
Rhythm to find rhythm
Pull out us—each & all
Seek luscious ambiguity
Beyond ambiguity—evoke—
Sensuous spirit sinewy
Full of life rich meaty overflowing
Educing seducing enticing adjectival
Modifying each other
Only words? Persons too
Twisting winding
Life arising reaching
Out embracing bracing
Chewy juicy dab your beard
Hear we are
Heart we stand upon to see afar
Ask your words to hear
Savor, caress
Summon tides
Ring out wonder!

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 846

My job is to be present and to present my being. This is the job of each of us. Be present, present being.

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 845

A friend wrote me yesterday saying that we write, don’t we, to find out? I write not to teach, nor to simply find myself. I write to find truth and reality and mostly, to find us.

This writing is a larger work, a world work, too.

Now that is interesting. I had been thinking that the work I was doing in these inklings was primarily for me. But no, this teaches me that I am doing a work for the world when I sit to write about larger questions.

So this searching is part of my world work, too.

Someday, someone might read and make the leap. Or perhaps just having set the thought at large in the world is enough for someone to leap.

This is important stuff and important stuff is often world work.

Please pass it on.

© 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 844

When we in our projects objectify the other, make him or her an it-enemy, or even it-victim, we have done violence to ourselves and our future. We need to open doors; talk to strangers; get stranger ourselves. Yes, there are those out there who are sick and who will try to make us into their victim, but the response is not to shut out everyone, rather to open also to these, to help them with their dis-ease.

Please pass it on.

© 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