Archive for May, 2012

Your special opportunity as a friend

Your special opportunity as a friend is to invite deeper conversations, to bring up the questions others are tiptoeing around, to name the elephant in the room…and then to take people to love.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 31st, 2012 | No Comments »

First years, last years

What’s the same for first years and last are soft food, help with walking, incontinence. Might a difference be in our rhythms? Infants are constantly going, their arms and legs and faces a continual moving picture. Oldsters seem to be learning to slow, to love, to ponder.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 31st, 2012 | No Comments »

You can bring hope

When people are in a tizzy, you can bring a listening ear. You can raise their sights. When we are surrounded by mud, it is hard to lift our eyes and see that the sun is shining, that there are alternatives. You can bring the hope of alternatives as your act of love, as your act of service, simply by asking the question about alternatives.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 31st, 2012 | No Comments »

Your most profound question as an act of service

What is the most profound question you could ask yourself as you think about end of life? How is that an act of service?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 30th, 2012 | No Comments »

The last three days:

The last three days: Who is there? What is the work you are doing? Is it all about you, or are you eldering your children and grandchildren?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 30th, 2012 | No Comments »

The question that heals:

What are your areas of discomfort? “What ails thee?” This is the question that heals.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 30th, 2012 | No Comments »

“They know what I want.”

You cannot know what you want until you meet it in conversation. Here you discover and form. “They know what I want” can be avoidance of the questions.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 29th, 2012 | No Comments »

Introduce people to their anomolies

My work is to introduce to people their anomalies. Once identified they can remove the burr or make it more comfortable. Perhaps a better word is surprises, or dissonances. How do we find these anomalies? Be ever alert? Where you stumble is your gift? Hold up what I have seen they have not? By naming expectations?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 29th, 2012 | No Comments »

If you think you might die someday….

If you think you might die some day, what are you willing to do to make that better for your children and grandchildren? When?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 29th, 2012 | No Comments »

Magic and Mystery

Magic answers to the call of your voice; Mystery answers only to its own. If your religion is magic, then you call upon your god as your servant; if what is holy to you is a mystery, it is sovereign in itself.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 28th, 2012 | No Comments »

Here, dimly seen, is a larger dimension.

Here, dimly seen, is a larger dimension.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 28th, 2012 | No Comments »

With Mom: we are all in the nursing home.

With Mom: we are all in the nursing home.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 28th, 2012 | No Comments »

When we are dying, how can we help our family?

When we are dying, what can we do to help our family? What does my death teach them? My life? How profound can we be for them?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 28th, 2012 | No Comments »

What are the questions within what you know?

What are the questions within what you know?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 28th, 2012 | No Comments »

To speak of a right to die is silly

To speak of a right to die is silly—as if we were not all going to die. The right we want is the right to the kind of death we want—gentle, noticed, felt.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 27th, 2012 | No Comments »

What’s possible?

How can I die the death I want if I don’t know what’s possible?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 27th, 2012 | No Comments »

A right to our own deaths

We should have a right to our own deaths. Yet we are stealing it from one another, throwing it under our wheels, or simply not knowing how to give it to one another.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 27th, 2012 | No Comments »

Footprints in the Wind–Poor would you have us?

Footprints in the Windsm # 1251

Poor would you have us?
Cut us off from bringers of wealth
cast out those with new ideas,
strange ways, patterns outside ours,
bar our borders to
tired poor huddled masses,
crawl into your bed, nurse
your own wounds, and die.

Let us open to mystery, wonder
to what together we might make & do.
There is within each worlds of
wisdom, experience, energy, vision &
visions, good & evil, youth &
eldering, things to speed us &
things to slow us, & with these
we can weave, O, we can weave!


Please pass it on.

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Published in: FootprintsintheWind/sm | on May 27th, 2012 | No Comments »

A culture of conversation:

A culture of conversation: something our community can live on.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 27th, 2012 | No Comments »

Naked is the best armor

Naked is the best armor
Your secret parts show you’re human
Vulnerable you’re a friend all protect

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 27th, 2012 | No Comments »

Purely medical?

Are the end of life decisions purely medical?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 26th, 2012 | No Comments »

What are the markers?

What are the markers to know the end of life decisions are coming?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 26th, 2012 | No Comments »

Communication does not explain conversation

Communication does not explain all there is to know of conversation any more than moving your arms and legs explains swimming.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 26th, 2012 | No Comments »
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