Hold nothing back
Hold nothing back
Give all your seeing
Give all your hearing
Give to all your conversing
:- Doug.
Archive for March, 2011
Give all to life
Give all to life
So life can give all to you
To seeing where you can help
So seeing can give all to you
To hearing another’s pain
So hearing can give all to you
To conversing into existence a new community
So conversing can give all to life
:- Doug.
Giving to the wind
Giving myself away
To the wind
Not as a leaf blown
But as a swimmer within
This gossamer fluid throwing in every last bit
(There never is a choice, all is demanded of each)
Throwing in to life
:- Doug.
Weaving tears and laughter
When I said community disorganizer, you laughed; there is also a side where we notice others’ tears and try to weave those tears and that laughter into a better now.
:- Doug.
One…one, one, one…one
The beating of the drums
The music of the spheres
Rhythm, rhythm
Thrumming of our veins
Melodiously
Calling us to be
One…one, one, one…one
:- Doug.
Weaving what we need
I ask
How can we
weave
what we have
into
what we need?
Weave
who we are
into
community?
:- Doug.
We cannot manufacture entrepreneurs:
We cannot manufacturing entrepreneurs, we can only grow them. We’re throwing on fertilizer and water, but the seeds are given.
:- Doug.
Striking flint and steel brings sparks
Striking flint and steel brings sparks; if anything happens from our meeting it is in the betweens. More and richer results come from more and richer betweens.
:- Doug.
Presenters bring to entrepreneurs only the tip;
We as presenters are to these budding entrepreneurs only the tip; they are bringing the larger part of the berg: the heart certainly, but also experience, the street smarts and the skills. What they will create requires them, not us; we are superfluous. If they are dedicated enough they will find the information they need without us.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 1139–the highest intelligence.
Footprints in the Windsm # 1139
Compassion is the highest intelligence.
Please pass it on.
© c 2011, 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
Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com
Perhaps the root problem of goal-setting
Perhaps the root problem of goal-setting is that we think we can control whether we attain something or not; moreover that we know going in what is the best outcome.
:- Doug.
helping entrepreneurs become more of whom they are
In our entrepreneurial program, are we creating entrepreneurs or assisting people to become more of whom they already are?
:- Doug.
Making a Will is not a math problem
Making a Will is not a math problem: it is a blood, sinew and brain question: How Will I love you?
:- Doug.
Boomers, it’s up to us:
Boomers: It’s up to us, as it has always been up to us. What are we going to do with our elder years? What good can we work upon the earth while we yet have strength? What can we teach? What can we, the peoples of this planet, learn? Are the divisions and hate and wars what we want to leave behind?
We have a song to sing, to ring out all over this earth.
:- Doug.
If we had a voice to raise
If we had a voice to raise
If we had ears to hear
We’d sing out the old song
The song about justice
The song about freedom
The song about love
Getting things done among
Our brothers and sisters
All over all lands
:- Doug.
Who are you, Friend?
Who are you, Friend?
I am him, I am her
I am coffee, I am peony
I am dachshund, I am fir
I am earth beneath your feet
I am you
:- Doug.
Meeting this whole new world takes….
It’s a whole new world we are meeting and it takes all of us.
:- Doug.
The helping goes both ways
The point of conversation in elder caring is not that you need an expert like me to navigate this getting older maze but that we need each other. Our group brain is bigger than any one of our brains. When you come to me for help, I need help too: from REAL Services, Inc. (our Area Agency on Aging), from caseworkers, from other lawyers—of course; but also from you and as many of your family as we can gather. For what you want and love and the work you want yet to do and the work you want to leave to others to complete—all of that help I need in order that we, together, do our job well. Our job? Making life whole.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 1138–When are we going to get sane?
Footprints in the Windsm # 1138
When are we going to get sane?
Oil well gushing, killing us
Nuclear reactor exploding,
Poisoning our babies and land
How much of this is necessary
And how much is hubris—
We can bend nature—so we must?
Please pass it on.
© c 2011, 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
Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com
The Hospice Holler
The Hospice Holler
This is a story of a Granddaughter trying to get her Grandmother into an nursing home. Grandmother had been in hospice care.
When the caseworker found out they were planning to give all Grandmother had away and enter the nursing home on Medicaid, he started hollerin’. “I spent all day on the paperwork! Now I’ll have to do it all over! It will delay her admission into the nursing home. She might have to go off hospice!”
And of course Granddaughter became anxious: the system seemed to be closing in on her Grandmother for no known reason, imposing unexpected and hidden rules against her.
She was battered and baffled by the Hospice Holler.
So are we all when we meet the challenges of aging. There are physical and medical challenges, social and emotional. We are working on summing up our lives, putting a capstone on our lives, many of us are doing spiritual and meaning work. Our finances change—for some to travel and avocation and callings, and for some to health and finance needs. The work of our eldering years is more complex than we expected!
:- Doug.
Wills: Matching gifts with recipients
Most folks have not thought very widely or deeply about how to make a Will—or even at all.
Look at it this way: over your life you have collected a whole lot of good stuff, and some of it even has a Dollar value. Some of who you are and what your life is, is living stuff—projects, ideas, dreams, plans, wisdom, bucket lists.
What of these and like things do you have? Ask some questions: to whom is each thing most valuable? Who could benefit most from it? Of what does each person in your life have need?
When someone dies, watch out for those dump trucks—beep!–beep!–beep! They’re backing in, ready to unload everything in one heap—toys, money, old galoshes, seeds, growing seedlings and saplings and large sequoias.
Contrast that with the person who carefully, lovingly matches gifts with recipients—those who need, those who can take the unfinished work further, those who will enjoy what she has long enjoyed, those who will get her soft joke.
:- Doug.
