FootprintsintheWind.com

Whom you are is not just whom you have been and what has been done to you, but the work you have done on your experiences, and on your body, mind, soul, spirit, and family. It has to do with definitions and visions and relations as much as nose and toes.

:- Doug.

We are conversing—gathering our reflecting.

:- Doug.

Elderhood is more than accumulation of experiences. It encompasses reflecting on those experiences. Hard work.

:- Doug.

Interesting. The roots of “poet” are making, creating, composing, piling up, building, heaping up, piling up. So there is a sense akin to the compost heap, and reminds me that I sometimes start a poem by making a list, or by finding poems!

So a poem is a compost heap of sorts, working, being worked. Working poet. Working us.

:- Doug.

The work of eldering goes on.

:- Doug.

Eldering is the work—the poetry—the elder is doing for humanity—and that done upon the elder.

:- Doug.

As the difference between beautiful poetry and major poetry is a felt change of consciousness, so the difference between the aging and the eldering.

:- Doug.

We can live—live!—outside the grasp of the ego-centric. Humanity is not owned by the competition minded.

:- Doug.

The world of the elder is holocentric, inventive, conversation-based, just, compassionate, sustaining.

:- Doug.

O that when younger I had seen what I now can see! (Of what use would it have been to me then?)

:- Doug.

I am coming to understand that we cannot call ourselves wise or elders, yet we can lean our path in that direction and get as far along as we get. It is not a place to attain. It is simply a chance to grow. We are coming to eldering.

:- Doug.

What else does an elder do?

:- Doug.

You need not figure out what is your prime message as an elder, once and for all time. What’s your message today?

:- Doug.

There is much pain in this room. For what good is this pain?

:- Doug.

For what might the fading of our bodies and brains make room?

:- Doug.

What do we fear of age? What can be its boons?

:- Doug.

Do you want to be the same as you have been?

:- Doug.

Where does nature’s influence come through our human trappings? Go there.

:- Doug.

Eldering is not about having arrived, rather intentionally crossing thresholds.

:- Doug.

We cannot know for ourselves how wise nor how conscious we are: we can only walk daily in that direction, allow ourselves to be touched, hear the whispered call.

:- Doug.

I can indeed make an age at this difference.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1657

When we are whole
we hold all gently,
we receive all fully,
within,
we have space to receive
to grow,
we are open.
So if we want to see if we are whole
look first to see if we are empty.

Please pass it on.

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We thought our last important passages were into adulthood and into whatever death offered. We had not thought there might be something between.

:- Doug.