FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 774

Lost touch
The elder in the nursing home
alone, craving hands
that mean him or her
instead gets efficiency
and more isolation
these years her last
to make right a babyhood
left alone
in crib or playpen
fenced off
from father’s mother’s sister’s brother’s
touch
adult years holding
the world at bay
with a handshake
being taught to fear hugs
but never quite learning
touch is what she needed
all life long
please touch me
the man of enterprise
“builds” an “organization” of souls
but fears to touch them
and more to let them touch him
until he reaches the same nursing home
and sees the potential he
left dying at his door
please touch me now

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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 # 773

What is the magic whispered into the breast of a human that lets it see beauty in the distraught woman, kindness in the heart of an angry man, creativity in the hands of a “common” laborer?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 772

We were taught by the early church, and are still taught by the modern one, that we cannot be trusted. We have no worthy direct experience of God nor ourselves. Only those with the credentials and robes can intermediate ourselves and our God for us. Beneath our veneer, we were told long ago and so still believe, we are vile, corrupt, faulty, sin-full. If we explore we will find only monsters. Lies! We explore and find beneath the robes and behind the curtain only good people like us, in all ways people like us. Some have experience with God and self and some do not. God comes to us, too. We are good because we are of God.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 771

Make use of your foresight—
Fore-see the world we want
Forth-see the world we want

Don’t be content just seeing
the way things are
See the world the way it could be

Then roll up your sleeves—
create!

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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 # 770

Jesus was here not to promote faith in himself but to give us a new worldview that we might live a more abundant life. That worldview? Us alive.

This is what Jesus was about—helping us see the world differently, see G*d closer and larger, see ourselves larger.

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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 # 769

All we have is slight changes. From here we move worlds. If you change your trajectory by one ten-billionth of a degree, you land upon a different star.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 768

Can you hear me?
We need to talk
I need you to run to the shoe store
My spouse calls to me
calls me to
the mundane
the humus
the human
my feet
where I touch and am touched
away from
my head
my imagined imagination
Can you hear me?

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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 # 767

Power is accompanied by—and needs—an equal quantity of powerlessness, or acquiescence. Seek powerlessness, or its dark sister, fear of powerlessness, first among the powerful. Power and powerlessness are both illusory. Therefore be kind.

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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 # 766

Martin Buber says life asks each of us a question every encounter, and if we are to be a person we must respond. I say our response may be a question: Can you stand such a one as I?

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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 # 765

See the filaments shooting
from node to node
you used to think we were the nodes
but now you see
the flashing threads are us
here for an instant or less
lighting up the Heavens

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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 # 764

When have you felt most alive or fulfilled?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 763

We all experience the events of our lives
the same way and differently:
We have the way of the human
We are individuals embedded in communities
within communities
Choices from the same list
lead to different paths
yet when we hear the stories
we can hear the same heart thrum
for home

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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 # 762

Are these valid principles we can use to consciously evolve us?
1. Betweens beget change.
2. Stories, pictures and questions birth hope.
3. Giving big enlivens 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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 761

When we move beyond struggle
To see our impermanence as loving us
We expand toward infinity.
All moves from solidity
To ephemera, and back, and back,
As by a larger respiration.
The question is not how safe can we get
Rather how open can we be?
Are these for you good:
Wonder and surprise?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 760

Why do we find it difficult to talk to our closest people about important heart matters? Perhaps it is as simple as stories. We stop growing together when we stop telling stories. Our need for stories is on-growing.

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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 # 759

Have you ever seen a string of cows
at the waning of the light
headed toward their stations
to be relieved of the milk their chewing
through the day has produced?

How they can remind us of humans
of the workplace queuing up at end of day
headed home to dinner and television
to rest and make ready to do it all another day
nor looking to see beyond the repeating cycles

Maybe imagination will let us see
or some offhand remark show us
—if we choose to look larger and pay attention—
all the people (voices seldom heard too)
live out our lives: of our world, creators

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 758

Who will help us consciously evolve?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 757

What if we could come up with a new image for our relationship with terrorism? Is not war the image the terrorist thrusts upon us? Do we have to accept that image? Are there perhaps images of turning, working with, teaching, or some other that might be better?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 756

Pulling the grey cloth overhead
do we choose to sleep some more?
Instead, selecting threads
we can weave with one another
a web of gossamer upon which
the lightest touch can alert
setting to the work of imagination
this whole woven body

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 755

See my dance,
hear the beat-beat-beat of the drums,
hear the beat-beat-beat of your heart,
take a deep breath, go!
Hear my song, hear my dream:
people coming together,
people of all shapes, sizes, colors,
dialects, stories,
people care,
people working,
people striving to create a new world,
if only in this corner of the room,
people coming together with others of like heart,
people seeing what they can do with what they have,
forgetting what they have not for that does not exist,
it’s us!
We are creating a new earth,
a new future, a new now.
We are solving our problems
and a few others fall with those.
We are hope
because we have heard, and
are still hearing,
and are seeking out,
your story,
but mostly you.
This dream demands performance!
You tell me about your lost child.
You tell me about your struggles with illness.
You tell me that getting your laundry clean is a too large expense.
You tell me that getting to work without a car is a challenge.
You tell me you care.
You tell me “Maybe…”
and my world starts to change.
A few short words,
a heart-light,
a mind embering.

Please pass it on.

© 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 # 754

Invite more people to become active players in the improvement of each others’ lives.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 753

When what you do helps, you are hooked.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 752

The human mind encompasses more than one brain. What could that mean to you, if you lived 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