FootprintsintheWind.com

Here is a double blind spot we have in end of life care: we ask each other what our goals are. Double blind because first we assume that we know what end we want to experience; and second we do not want to look beyond this person’s death: we cut short our caring. But life and pain and good go on. What effects of a painful or peaceful death are there on family and immediate caregivers? What effects on our society and how we do this to and for ourselves when most helpless? Goals, end points to our thinking, can do us harm.

:- Doug.

Everyone dies. This we cannot cure. So then how are we to treat us?

:- Doug.

Everyone dies. What sort of treatment are we entitled to as we die? Could this become the standard for all treatment of others?

:- Doug.

There are three stages of our health in later years: Healthful years with few big issues; Years when bigger things start narrowing our possible issues; Frail times when we are in decline. Lawyers can help folks think generally and without pressure in the healthful years, think about what is important to us to guide our families. In the Years of Challenges, we can help people become more specific in their thinking and their conversing with their families. In frail years and beyond, we can help folks and families keep their resolve and refine it more, live fully to the end, and keep the family together in loving, and help their families reduce and deal with their grief.

How else might we make things better?

:- Doug.

What is the role for the lawyer in end of life times? How can we get more active for our clients?

:- Doug.

This is my poem of poems
& all this is
Your poem of poems

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1311

The case of Lorraine Bayless is a perfect example: an 87 year old for whom no CPR was given holds a mirror up for us of the complexity of our end of life. We have a 75% idea about CPR (the real number is closer to 17%—for a healthy person.) Why do doctors do more for patients than they do for themselves? Because they might be sued? Why? Because in our society we think everyone can be saved and should be? Why? Always ask Why again. Because we cannot accept death? Because we cannot let go? Because we want someone to blame? Because we are angry? There are probably 101 reasons, all interwoven and tangled. This is the definition of complex. But hear this quite clearly: we do it to ourselves. We are the ones driving this. There is no one else. If we have a lot of bad deaths in our society, it’s up to us to fix it.

Please pass it on.

© c 2013, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/311-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Our pain, our pain for what is going on in the world—the elder tied to a wheel chair and left for hours to sit unfriended, the child bullied by the school system—this, this is God in action.

:- Doug.

People do things that don’t benefit themselves—even put their lives at risk. This, this is God in action.

:- Doug.

With an imageless God what new ways do we pray?

:- Doug.

The sparking snow is God. The slushy muddy snow is God. Our life is God. Our movement and our stillness. God is this. God is. We are. All this is true and not true, reality and not reality. It is true and reality in the large sense, but not when we try to concretize it, make it ever this way and no other way. There is no place you can look and not see God, and no place you can look and see God.

:- Doug.

Light and similar qualitative terms are at least laden with, if not essentially consisting of, our own meaning making.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1310

When our eyes meet—
When our ears meet—
Passes between us humanity
& here might be our highest value

Please pass it on.

© c 2013, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/311-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Perhaps spirit is something in this one story world that is observable and verifiable. It is akin to Jung’s collective unconscious, or common history, or species memory. It is a common experience of mystery.

:- Doug.

Knock on that door: what you and I see as a solid piece of wood, touchable, movable and knowable, the physicist standing by us sees as a swirling mass of electrons, atoms, and quarks—indeed a mere probability of coming to this shape and these dimensions. Thich Nhat Hanh standing next to the physicist sees a congregation of clouds—raining down, feeding seedlings and trees—and the work of many hands. Reality is us seeing and instantly making stories in our heads to explain to ourselves what we thought we saw. We are ever trying to convince others (and ourselves) to accept our stories.

:- Doug.

What is an origin of us? A sperm and an egg? Life itself? Upon what are we grounded?

:- Doug.

A bird has caught hold of the suet cage with its feet, and is trying to stabilize himself (herself?) with one wing. The cage just keeps spinning: the food is always just out of reach. Eventually she gave up and flew away. This is what we do so often with beating one wing of our minds trying to figure out reality and life and God. Maybe if we let loose and let it come to us….

:- Doug.

Let us listen to
Life open
Us

:- Doug.

Spiritual is mystery, pulling me beyond what I thought I knew. Mystery pushes me out of my self, making me want to be larger.

:- Doug.

Jesus the stock—what is the flavor of the kettle? Holy wars, crusades, witch hunts, inquisitions, inhumanity. Great organization of a church and alliances with governments and despots. Great art and literature, soaring thought. Humane acts and mundane ethics. Gathering of the masses around their good and guilt. Much good and much evil. The aroma tells what’s in the pot.

:- Doug.

See the good to make the good.

:- Doug.

Life moves
everything is always in motion
our highest achievement today
is forgotten tomorrow
on we go

:- Doug.

There is something more
Larger than any one of us
Life Love & Conversation
These have an intent for good
An intimate inclination towards us
& an engagement with us
One

:- Doug.