FootprintsintheWind.com

Chief Seattle is said to have said that the love of his people actually became the sky, the grass, the surroundings. What if love has become the people, the fish, the birds over our heads? We love money and we’re surrounded by money—or the mention of it, or the wringing of hands over the lack of it. We do not see the people, the sky, the grass, our surroundings. What does that say of our love?

:- Doug.

Life is not about being good, meeting some collection of moral rules for what good folks do, but solely about caring for one another.

:- Doug.

Inviting are you, freeing are you, calling home are you: your can-play-dom be opened wide, your dream be dreamed among us. Give us for today food of life and light; give us debt-free tomorrows; and give us whole-making encounters for one another.

:- Doug.

I am fed, but do I feed?
I am in the community
and of the community,
but do I engage with?
Deeply?

:- Doug.

It’s an emergency: A nursing home administrator calls. The husband of a resident is demanding to take his wife home. The problem is that she needs 24-hour supervision because of her dementia. The problem is that the husband is soon to be disabled by major surgery, and is perhaps beside himself.

Here is an opportunity for a business (the nursing home)to do a good thing: The wife’s health is put at risk if she goes home to her husband. They can choose to ignore the new POA she signed when she had no idea what she was signing. They can choose the high road, the human road: to protect her.

It is a gut-wrenching decision for the nursing home: why get into the middle of a family feud? I do not know how they will go.

It does not have to be confrontation: What if the nursing home had someone invite him to talk about what he most deeply wants? His wife always cared for him in past illnesses and now he is facing disability: surely she will come home and tend his wounds. Only she cannot. Maybe his needs could be met in some other way. Conversation is almost always a good option.

:- Doug.