FootprintsintheWind.com

All day long
Birds go about eating
Squirrels do the same
We humans, too
We call it career or job
Why do we worry
When life does not?

:- Doug.

Things to consider with my family:

• Whom do I have to hug? Whom do I have to call? Take a break now and call them. Tell them you love them; tell them you want to talk about these things with them.

• 16 Things

• When it is my time to die, where would I like to be and with whom? Who needs to know?

• Proxy Quiz

• Would you want to use hospice, and when?

• Tell us a story about a good death….

• What is the toughest question this video has raised for you?

• What does hope mean to you today? What do you think it will mean in your last three days?

• Who needs to know your wishes?

• Have you been with someone when they died? Have you heard stories of people dying?

• Should we be kept alive as long as possible, no matter what?

• What are your 100 things?

• How can we prepare for death? How can we prepare our family?

• How would you know when enough is enough in medical care?

• Is this really a taboo topic, or just one that makes us uneasy?

• What would help you feel more comfortable starting this conversation with your family and doctor? (Does a video and conversation in a workshop setting help you?)

:- Doug.

What’s going on in Syria—the bombing of innocents because someone dared to disagree—shows the clash of future with past. In spring we get storms as cold, dying winter comes up against soft warm flowering. Here we have extreme wealth and power seeing its grip being overcome by more and wider conversation spawned by new technologies in every pocket and purse. People see what’s possible—so how’re you gonna keep ’em down on the farm? The regime will change in Syria once the world sees enough to begin vomiting. How do we get beyond this sequence? May we need to help the old guard see a future and a hope for themselves.

:- Doug.

Each death informs us so
Life is a many plaited thing
No prior answer is good for now

:- Doug.

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.

© c 2012, 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

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.

There are two end of life conversations. One is the kind of conversation we have at various times while we are thinking of our end of life: do this for me, avoid doing that if you can. The second is the conversations we have with loved ones at the end of life, mending fences, hugging, crying, remembering, laughing, singing. Neither conversation is one and done, but is like love: ever renewing.

:- Doug.

Community takes us outside our accustomed paths for us to grow.

:- Doug.

It—Thou—Us—Music—Dance

:- Doug.

Dance! No one for long can dance alone! Dancing helps us all.

:- Doug.

Here is how I want to live before I die. And if I want to live this way, shall we now?

:- Doug.

Elder caring is a branch of law where it is OK to be caring. It is home.

:- Doug.

We feel betrayed by the doctor when we are told there is no more to be done to hold back the disease. But our anger stems not from the doctor, rather our culture which tells us we can buy our way out of anything. It started with not wanting to be a burden to our families, so we saved—so we could buy help in old age. We forgot we could walk a path together, and that can be one of the bright spots of life. Indeed. It might be the very center of life—this walking together.

:- Doug.

Our images of God do not really work for us. We see an old man on a throne engaged or not engaged in our lives. Maybe all we want is someone to hear us out. That might work. But if we go the next step and see Daddy Big Spender, then we might just have to admit that when we ask, we don’t always get.

We see also someone pulling the strings for all that goes on in the world. How does “he” keep all those strings straight and untangled? Well, he’s God after all, and has magic and infinite capacity to keep it all straight in his head. But how’s that working for us? Again, we don’t always get. Or maybe God is a parent deciding what’s best for us minute by minute, and saying “No” or “Wait” as might be wise for us. But is this the kind of life that is best for us, being mere children totally at the mercy of some incomprehensible wisdom? What about the gifts we have been given: a brain, a heart, hands and feet? Ought we not employ these to their utmost? Where is there room for stretching?

Or maybe we have George Burns’ God who looks at what came of creation, shrugs, and says “Who knew?” Not much assistance there, although this God is good to cry with. This “weak” God is beloved also of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Then our picture might be of an unnamed force holding the universe or of the Way of the all there is. But we want to love, we want to pray, we want to say “You.”

If we then remember that in one tradition God says “have no images,” then perhaps we get an inkling of why none of these images, nor any others, can ever satisfy. Perhaps, just perhaps, God is more.

:- Doug.

Around planning I have a strong disconnect internally. In one sense it means deciding our path knowing what there is to be known about what’s next. In another, it pretends to direct the future according to our will, something we know cannot be done.

:- Doug.

Who are you, Lord? I am all this, more. I am all that any religion has dreamed, any mystic has touched. More. Do not denigrate any of my children, my friends, those who point the way; all point to me. I am ocean, I am he, I am she, I am enlightenment, I am way, I am all, I am. More.

:- Doug.

Sometimes we just have to sit and be
We need far less noise than we get
Far less busy-making

:- Doug.

…a theme if not a thread…
…a waft if not a weft…
God is more subtle
than we want to make
more pervasive, more

:- Doug.

We humans both see the way the world can be made better and get to work. It is human to engage head & heart to imagine, and hand & foot to carry it out. One without the other is not yet alive.

:- Doug.