FootprintsintheWind.com

Dad’s getting older, maybe dying—who can we yet be together?

:- Doug.

What is the question that will create our dissonance?

:- Doug.

As we converse, we make the path.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1250

Lessons from the road

Life is not a race
Those other people
Are not in your way
The clock is your friend
Marking how you got through
Another hour, another day—alive!
So celebrate!

Make good of the med lights
Here meditate
Reinvigorate
On the divine, wait
Green will follow

We feel so freed
When we set out
On the open road
Walt Whitmans all
We could sing!

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

Chit-chat talks primarily about senses—what we can feel, see, hear. Making moves us to bending and not just presently sensed things, but those of the future. Making moves us to poetry, to touching mystery, to moving something larger than us.

:- Doug.

There is a surface attention that chit-chat brings forth; conversation engages in doing and brings out a different form of attention, one more engaged, able to take in (and go out). We assimilate the conversation and each other. We become more unitary. We act.

:- Doug.

Elastic fluid
Conversation is
A white water rapids
& a flat flowing
Quiet great river
Every time you step in
Alive
Lapping
Carrying
Stretching

:- Doug.

I want to say some profound things—not to say them but so you will carry them even closer to the bone.

:- Doug.

A mysterious thing is conversation. Sometimes we have it and sometimes it has us. Sometimes we start it, or it starts us. We birth it, or it births us. It is of the essence of life, yet what know we of life?

We help each other think through a decision. We do new things, we become new persons.

We become an entity. We making healing, wholeness, realization of being part of a larger whole—an essential, contributing part.

The world works on us; we work on the world. The conversation works on us; we work on the conversation. Mysterious.

:- Doug.

What is the best life is meant to be? How do we do and be more of that?

:- Doug.

What do we all want here?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1249

The green of the skies
The blue of the trees
The skies shimmering in the breeze
What a flavorful day!
& we are called out to see!

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

Many times we have a vending machine picture of law: put in a coin, out comes a certain result, predictably. Time by time we find we are in a flowing stream with 10,000 variables floating past, each can touch us, change us, bend the results, and become new starting places.

:- Doug.

Often, goal setting
sets us to problems
throws us into the morning fog
all we can see clearly is
we’re not adequate, we have
something in us to overcome
we miss the open skies
our best of the best
dreaming together
coming alive
sacredly creating

:- Doug.

Elder caring is like running the East Race. I do not know how it will come out. It is different each time.

:- Doug.

It is impossible to step twice
into the same
river of life

:- Doug.

Think you that
G*d cannot penetrate
This cloud cover
Over your eyes,
Thoughts and
Heart,
G*d being all of these?

:- Doug.

Daily we are stitching together many fabrics. They may then make a new pattern, tell a new story. That is the richer way of conversation. Each fabric may pull out of the others around it a new shade or texture of meaning. Their borders become openings. Their stitching allows new movements.

:- Doug.

Don’t think while in conversation—hear instead; take the person in to your being. Rattle around in there, as in an attic full of fascinating things. Create an us.

:- Doug.

G*d is living
G*d is loving
G*d is oceanic
Adjectival and verb-al
All at once

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1248

One of the most pernicious things we do in this society is to act as if we are separate from others, especially from our family and friends. They benefit from us, and we from them. We should not withdraw, fearing that we might be a burden to others, that we are interfering with their lives. We are part of each other’s lives. We ought to share what is going on, burdens and sorrows as well as joys and capacities. Parents take care of young children; parents should be willing to ask adult children to share lives in later years. There is much to be gained, only little things to be lost. I have a new disability, I have a need, we have a wisdom to share and a hand to help. Blessings are here and not in pulling away.

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

When one of us is aging our only options are to respond with love or fear. Anything not love is fear.

:- Doug.

This family can live and love into our future. Let’s get to work.

:- Doug.