FootprintsintheWind.com

We have to think more broadly—we have to free our elders from the prisons we put them in. We need to return them to home and family—even if we have to create new forms of home and family.

:- Doug.

When someone is dying the rules of living change. How they see life, how we see each other, how we see our roles with the dying person and the rest of the family—all these change. But they can change for ill (as in when we all tiptoe around each other or pretend Mom isn’t dying) or for good (as when we meet each other where we are and as we are and especially as who we are—openly and vulnerably—and find our wholeness).

:- Doug.

For women, giving often comes first, then wondering who your original person was. For men, working often comes first, and then the same query. If we turn us right side to, we see our original person is completed by giving and working.

:- Doug.

We participate and that is the large thing: choosing to live. To live means our whole being to give.

We can choose a larger effect for our participation simply by giving this thing which we are—fully, with abandon, in a way that we choose, on purpose. Then our contribution is as large as it can be, and more than that, as large as our beloved world needs.

:- Doug.

Long-term care is not about who pays but how we choose to live.

:- Doug.

It is possible to
see life as a small thing
or a great;
to so see our part
Yet what is great?
what is small?
when is it over if ever?

:- Doug.

Life makes time,
opens space,
…

:- Doug.

Forcing someone to do our will is a failure of imagination. First, we could have invited them much more artfully. Second, engaging the imaginations of each of us together, we could have chosen something better to do.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1240

We may see the spaces between and among us as empty, especially empty of life. Yet I am getting glimpses of these spaces teeming with living possibility. Think of the space between flint and steel, the space static electricity leaps across (or is it from?). The attraction of earth and sun. The spinning and erotic dancers. Our betweens are alive & wherever you look are betweens!

Moreover the betweens are where we come alive. Watch mother and baby gaze into each other’s eyes. See how you are different for this person and that. Each person—each time—sparks a new something in us.

More than just being a place to hold these instances of life, more than a soup pot, I sense a livingness. There is here a continual coming into existence and disappearing of something that calls us by name. Here arises by waves one after another invitation after invitation.

Reach into the betweens
Careful!
The electricity could shock us!

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

Our force over someone is never as great as our strength with them.

:- Doug.

We are participating in participating
Everything is always moving
Is there any difference between great events & small?
Might we choose the greater?
Might we choose significance?

:- Doug.

Can we change things? That’s the wrong question! Things are changing, we each are affecting them—by what we do and don’t, by what we say, by who we are. The question is not if, not even whether, but do we choose, are we on purpose about it? We all tug on the rope. But which direction? With how much of our being?

:- Doug.

The betweens are those through which
Flower petals fall in spring
Colors of leaves in fall

The betweens are those through which
Our hand travels to shake another
Our whispers travel to meet another’s heart

The betweens are
Pregnant, alive with
Connections, participation, invitation

The betweens are where
The all there is
Lives

:- Doug.

I have a message for you. From your children. But they’re afraid to bring it up, are even repulsed by the very idea. It falls to you then to do something about it. Because this is how we love one another.

:- Doug.

Though I cannot cure you, I can help heal you, restore you to play.

Can those with dementia play? Do we have the love to play with them? To learn from them?

:- Doug.

The betweens are alive, dancing!

:- Doug.

In conversation something begins

:- Doug.

Joining in, inviting, facilitating, moving, betweening, togethering—these are conversation.

:- Doug.

One purpose of Family Council is to open space for inspired, workable next steps, in a setting where We is more important than Do, in a setting where the next steps are confused. Something begins.

:- Doug.

What if God were not out there but in here: in the between? Not pulling our strings but evoking and tickling our hearts? Not above but distributed? Not doing, but delighting in us doing? Not solving for us but laughing—and crying—with us? Not above us but among any two or three of us?

:- Doug.

To listen is to listen for: to have an agenda to confirm. To hear is to hear who is there. Listening is looking for limits; hearing is to notice the limits and who crosses.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1239

Invite people together as an act of service.

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

This, poet, is the way to write:
release your words
to your hearers
release your hearing as well
release both to a larger wild
to do their original work
but you, now free, must again originate

:- Doug.