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The problems of race start from conversation, more specifically non conversation: with whom will we not converse today, with whom not dance, with whom not turn over the compost heap? Perhaps some day when we grow more compressed together we will be forced to converse across these divides. Or perhaps we can, like a boy at his first dance, get up the nerve to ask this one to dance.

:- Doug.

Open beyond words.

:- Doug.

The adversarial legal profession is primarily backwards-looking: inflicting punishment, getting reparations. The caring legal profession is primarily forward-looking: promoting community, relationship, collaboration.

:- Doug.

Everyone is vulnerable
showing it takes courage
just a little

:- Doug.

We are elders-in-the-growing.

:- Doug.

Where have our elder powers gone?

:- Doug.

Nor is the world too big
Nor we too small

:- Doug.

Until now
elders got little respect
until you
until now
grandchildren fended
in a world too big
until now
we thought
ourselves
ineffectual
Until now

:- Doug.

Grandchildren are just people
wherever there are just people
love is possible

:- Doug.

What are the hidden things—say rank, privilege, pain, injustice—which may touch the grandchildren? Do we have a story we could tell to help?

:- Doug.

Spirit
you troublemaker
how you free us
how you bring our hearts
together!

:- Doug.

There is a path
leading to us
let us find it

:- Doug.

What will the grandchildren face—in 300 years?

:- Doug.

Look not: see. Listen not: hear. Read people not: guess, ask. People guessing is more fun than people watching.

:- Doug.

More times than we know it is good to keep an empty perspective.

:- Doug.

You’re going to be frustrated, and so am I. Frustrated is the mid-stage. If we can then admit our frustration and our hurt and our not knowing—in other words our humanity—we can make it to the other side. Humanity will see us through. Humanity is what we need.

:- Doug.

Studying eldering orients us. All.

:- Doug.

While it is true we as elders are developing, the question is what are we developing? How is it for the grandchildren if we are not developing something beyond ourselves? So again: What are we developing? Whom?

:- Doug.

To go to higher levels, look at each thing as It Thou Us Poetry Doing.

:- Doug.

Let’s get started with meeting with people, gathering a group of elders for the grandchildren. Now.

:- Doug.

Anecdotal evidence may actually be qualitative. We may have simply lacked the imagination we needed to measure it. If measuring is a high enough level of dignity.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1750

If it is complexity we face, it is with complexity we must meet. We cannot afford to pull apart, for that means death of our species—of our grandchildren.

Some see America as their enemy and so they think if we war with ourselves it is better for them. They see a small part of the world. If we do manage to find unity in our diversity and freedom in our complexity, all humanity will succeed to this inheritance. This will. Take work. This is. A noble calling. For the grandchildren.

Please pass it on.

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My premise: There is a process above these three (or more) facets, these four (or more) ways. We can only get there together.

:- Doug.