FootprintsintheWind.com

Eldering is more nuanced than mentoring.

:- Doug.

My looking ripens people
My hearing especially
They come toward me

:- Doug.

What a difference a decade makes
and too often does not

:- Doug.

It’s not water, it is sound.

:- Doug.

Roots, fish, fire. No clear better.

:- Doug.

Answers, questions, reflection.
Earth, air, wind.
Babbling: people, water, birds.
Wallet, hands, spirit.
Night, day, butterfly.

:- Doug.

People turn on the choices we had unknown. Health changes, love engages, new panoramas present. Do we respond as a falcon, a storm, or a great song?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1702

You cannot change the world
& you must change the world
& you will change the world
you are too small
small is precisely what is needful
a word, a gesture
to enter hearts one at a time
day by day for thousands
and thousands of days
millions and millions of hearts
will little by little move
& softness and kindness will prevail
for our grandchildren

Please pass it on.

© c 2017, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

We elder each other
We’re all we have or need
Choices we had unknown

:- Doug.

None of us consistently sees the larger
So elders in colors and flavors aplenty

:- Doug.

Choice the third
Is not the noble middle
Must be equal in beauty and ruthlessness

:- Doug.

Most of the intensity is between
my eyes
I must take care not to cross them

:- Doug.

Hold one another in the light
Can be done embracing tearfully
Under the same light

:- Doug.

Lightning!
Hug
in that light
Meet
in the storm

:- Doug.

You are part of the being
Of the whole
So you can be wholly there

:- Doug.

Mistakes mix up things for us, show us more possibilities.

:- Doug.

Don’t leave something on the table
Give of your substance freely to another

:- Doug.

This can be said of the elder
This is a human who has become whole
More truly is every day becoming whole
So this one not intruding on the world
Begins for us to break the spell of separation

:- Doug.

It’s not simply a larger view: there’s something larger going on.

:- Doug.

The biggest thing we can do—and it may in doing seem a small thing—is the whole-making thing not yet done.

:- Doug.

Our task is to hallow our
—big our—for we are part—
meetings with the grandchildren’s world

:- doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1701

More I don’t know
Some moments that is good
More I don’t know

Please pass it on.

© c 2017, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

I go to continuing education to lift my eyes, to see a larger view. Yesterday was good.

:- Doug.