FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1233

A young man is killed
By evil Fear
& its cousin Hate
& God stands by
As it happens
& God stands by
As we grieve
& God stands by
To act, calling us
To clean up
Our own mess
& God stands by

Please pass it on.

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Conversing is
Divinity in the world
Its own good result

:- Doug.

Fear not the doctors
Nor yet at them be angry
Even, too, lawyers
They are trying to do good
To bring what’s needed
They too hampered by our culture
Turning treatment into care
And care into money
As if money were all that mattered
Yet what matters is life
And we all need reminding,
Re-hearting

:- Doug.

There is a bigger work for the doctor here. And for the lawyer. Beyond being a good technician. You in your role and I in mine can meet people and support them in what has meaning for them. We can support them in the conversing. Conversing is the way we meet life, the way we meet death. We are a social breed. We need someone to walk with us, and that means conversation. Conversation which might take the form of words, but as well might be silences, and standing beside.

:- Doug.

The end of life conversation is much bigger than medical treatment. It has to do with coming together and with people doing the work of dying and with people doing the work of living. The medical has to do with facilitating the coming together and the dying and the living that wants to happen.

:- Doug.

Seems to me that the word “care” has been taken over by the marketing people and the politicians, so that it now has a commercial character to it. My guess is that the doctors and nurses practicing in the 1950s and before probably heard something much different in the word from what today’s do: they probably heard something akin to compassion. Today we hear “system” and “profits” and “codes.” We need to grow to be complete humans, no longer walking wallets.

This is not something that any business owns, but our culture and way of thinking does. So it is something that is as easily changed as changing our minds.

But we need to see it, and we need to decide, and those two steps are what stand between us and something better.

:- Doug.