FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 812

Just because it’s invisible doesn’t mean it’s not there.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 811

We can only measure part of something
All is immeasurable

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 810

We cannot be sure of the harvest, but we know that if we do not plant corn we will not get corn.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 809

Whomever will listen, speak with. Never mind the Reason why. Reason does not understand all Whys. We must confront one another.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 808

It is blessing not to have a retirement account
To keep one’s eyes on what we can do
For many need our help
And much there is to do
To make a world where each and all
Are heard & their gifts received
To seek retirement is self-indulgent

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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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 807

The solution to the world is not to get more money. What will we do when everyone has a Million? Whom will we get to do our bidding? Why ever would they want to help us?

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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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 806

Complexities of complexities
All of life is complexities
Interwoven interweavings
Yet we hope to untangle
With one mind one finger
Let us try to apply
Complexities to complexities
All of the minds we find
In life all tangled
Many minds many places from which to view
Many fingers some to hold some to pull
Some to figure eleven next moves
Complexities working on complexities
Worth a try it may just work
For us

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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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 805

It is about questions and listening and hearing. It is about increasing the world’s store of compassion. It is not about measuring sticks and over-filling bellies. It is about curiosity. It is about meeting.

Others are not other. Diversity is increasing the world’s circulation of imagination.

It is not about accomplishment, but about what swirls—what it swirls from and towards, and how it changes the swirlers. It is about circulation and flow and imagination and compassion and hearing and meeting and engaging. It may not even be possible, but it is necessary. It is about being responsible to the world.

It’s about doing what has to be done because it comes from our essence.

Our essence is each other.

So it is not even about the probability of success. This is what people hint at when they say it is not the destination but the journey. Our essence is each other. Imagination, diversity, curiosity, loving, meeting, doing, engaging, conversing: if there is anything excellent, work on these things.

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© c 2007, 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 # 804

It may happen for us

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© c 2007, 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

Awakening compassion is the work. Compassion is a place.

There is no other goal. If we act out our compassion, the world changes. We change.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 802

We feel a need to give compassion
We feel a need to be heard
We feel a need to hear
We feel a need to learn
We feel a need to be part of the larger
When will we come to the end of the dream?

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© c 2007, 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

To get good done invite more we.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 800

What is the most important work in the world, and how can we get on with it?

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© c 2007, 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 # 799

How can we have a complete picture if we do not include all the parts? Does everyone want a complete picture? Probably not. But when we see the results of a complete picture, then we want it.

Completing the picture completes us.

If we simply seek after our own pocketbook, we will always be seeking to fill something which cannot be filled; to be compassionate and complete takes something else: a giving out, an emptying.

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© c 2007, 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 # 798

I saw a woman trying to run an art center alone—booking the artists for shows, setting up classes, registering people, tending the website, doing press releases, buying food for a monthly pancake breakfast fund raiser, and cleaning the latrines. I saw, with less than 2 weeks notice, 26 people show up to help her re-image and re-draw the art center and take on key functions. People are whom we need.

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© c 2007, 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 # 797

This deep blue
These leaves catching
Red fire! and burnt orange
From each other
Preparing to take flight
These ask of you
What have you done
—you who are in charge—
For our world today?

This is how the earth renews itself, how life renews itself, how we all live: through giving in small ways and large, but giving in all cases our all.

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© c 2007, 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 # 796

We have all gotten distracted and have forgotten that we are in charge of the world. We have abdicated that responsibility to governments and corporations and charities. So we need to disorganize ourselves first—the comfy let George do it place where we all want to live—to find out that we, each and together, are in charge and can change what needs making better. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

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© c 2007, 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 # 795

Borders! We have expanded our borders from sea to sea and beyond. We now have the capacity to extend them even further. This time we can do it by capturing not lands but hearts and minds (people might even stop hating us!), where every one is one of us. We are here, at this choice point: roll up ourselves into a tighter and tighter ball and keep everyone else out, setting walls at our borders; or take an open stance, extending our hands and arms in welcome, expanding our borders, a growing and growing circumference: embrace.

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© c 2007, 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 # 794

We are more than enough
We have more than enough
When we put us together
We are, we have, more than that
We are, we have, all we are and have
This is a good place to start

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© c 2007, 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 # 793

Be bold—
Say it!
Own it!
We’re helping change the world!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 792

These people
—our times—
so wrapped in
themselves grasping hoarding
blink dumbly
when asked
What is your great work?

Why not? I want to ask
Why add your weight
to the burden of widows orphans?
—but I too am guilty

People are doing things
getting storing taking their leisure
only buying their charity
they could be giving themselves
receiving others
flourishing
the world needs

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 791

Now I see the ? from another side: G?d has the question for us, has “his” ear cocked for us, wants to hear us whole! So the question mark flows both ways—we are the mystery to each other, wanting to hear each other and be heard—and it flows in a spiral.

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© c 2007, 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 # 790

Is there anybody with whom you would not trade places? Then it is time to get to work. Does our world benefit everyone?

It is our job to do that work, whether we get paid for it or not (read: whether we benefit or not). We get mixed up between getting paid and being able to have what we need, as well. If we have what we need (food, clothing, shelter, transportation, communication), and others do not…the need is clear, if not the next step.

The next step? Where does it touch me, how can I help? No catch in the stomach, just meet the need: yours are already attended to. Are you doing the most you can to help?

Are you using your highest and best for the task? Seek to give your biggest effect skill and resources instead of saying Yes to slinging hash in the soup line or hanging wallboard in a home-build. But that’s no excuse if you fail to give. When you have not been asked: organize the thing!

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© c 2007, 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