FootprintsintheWind.com

I do not know all of which I teach
its edges only
need your help, friend, to explore deeper in

:- Doug.

The ancients said the three enduring things are Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. What are our forms of this? Perhaps truth is our ever ongoing growth, beauty is the ever-widening panoramas, and goodness is the ever-deepening intimacy and conversation with all.

:- Doug.

So I want to strongly encourage messages to be recorded and sent in many ways. Whomever hears carries on these traces.

:- Doug.

Can we communicate with the 300 year grandchildren-elders, back and forth? Who knows if we can, so let’s try! Write letters, record stories and messages. Send thoughts. Pretend it can be. Play with it! If our thought to them left traces they can read, wonderful! If not, we made our moments better. So what of it? If we receive their echoing whispers, we might do better. If it is “only” our imagination and we do better, what of that?

:- Doug.

It is up to us to be the critical mass for deeper community, higher justice, wider generativity.

:- Doug.

Who are your elder-exemplars? Might you take their names to your heart to carry forward to another generation of elders?

:- Doug.

The monk or nun in a cell, the guru in the mountain cave: these holding the world to its axis are then a model for the elder: we can hold a world in the palm of our heart….

:- Doug.

The rain does not so much cool the air: incoming cool air meets the warm humid air, calling forth rains. A useful metaphor for ancestors and grandchildren?

:- Doug.

An ancestor reminds me of a chambered nautilus: ever growing, spiraling, without muscular involvement; ever of value for the grandchildren.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1804

The smell of baking cookies, the touch of a gentle person, someone lying next to you, the kiss of your dog, the feel of a gentle breeze, beauty in spring flowers or a melting snowflake. At end of life what’s most meaningful is what carries most life—it often revolves around creature comforts. Which of the senses do you most crave?

Please pass it on.

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Our work for the generations spirals us around It, Thou, Us, Poetry, Collaboration. We hold and hear you, grandchild, and together we spiral.

:- Doug.

The task of the elder is in part holding the grandchildren, similar to how a Quaker might say holding you in the light, or others hold you in their hearts, and somehow more immediate and intimate. The elder hears you, hears what is in your essence. The elder welcomes and takes into the elder’s very being who you are, what you are saying.

:- Doug.

“Successful” seems inapropos of elders; there is here no goal, no reaching, only in higher moments a thrust of the heart For the Grandchildren.

:- Doug.

Traditional cultures respected elders in part for what the elders did for the family and tribe: inform of good hunting grounds; share their accumulated agricultural lands; know the signs of the seasons and weather; guide through the spirit worlds. Many of these things seem irrelevant in our rapidly changing world. If we are to help the generations we must cut closer to the bone, go for the lasting and the growing.

:- Doug.

The grandchildren cannot afford for us to be concerned with respect for the elders—we must be for the generations.

:- Doug.

Remembering forward: it is an enigma that puts me off balance. Can we remember for the 300 years grandchild-elder? Can we remember from them to us? More: do we need to converse with them, or enliven them, send love swirling toward them? The latter sounds like a small easy thing, when it requires much thought and more spiritual effort.

:- Doug.

Life favors life
Love favors love
Which is primary?

:- Doug.

Let us remember forward.

:- Doug.

Humans are a culture valuing production; we are not so far from fear that our food will run out.

:- Doug.

One writer’s work enlivens, another’s is barren. Heed, ancestor.

:- Doug.

Still I wonder about communicating, conversing, across the generations. Are there subtle paths? We can at least communicate toward them with letters and writings and recordings. Perhaps longer lasting things like plays and literature and poetry that might get preserved.

Might they converse with us? Well then, do we seek to converse with our ancestors of 300 years ago, in the 1700s? What things did they leave for us to find? Are they listening even now to the opening of some wormhole through time? Have we made the effort?

And what if this effort resulted in us leaping ahead in our sleep tonight?

:- Doug.

I don’t have a lot of energy for this page right now. Perhaps that shows that this journaling takes some energy.

:- Doug.

We owe respect and care to those going ahead of us—whether elders who are dependent on us physically or mentally or those of the 300 year grandchildren generation of elders. Allow them the freedom to go ahead and to explore worlds and paths unknown to us, maybe even to communicate with us surprisingly.

:- Doug.