FootprintsintheWind.com

There is a depth to elder caring beyond simply helping get the right care and asking how we are doing with all this. It is opening to one another. That little door that opens out onto an endless field. What we can do for the grandchildren.

:- Doug.

So the course: last night I added clowning, speaking in gibberish, and talking with a stranger for 3 minutes about an important question. These really go beyond techniques and exercises, to discovering some new aspects of humanity. Clowning, the freeing mask. Strangers, the safe shovels. Gibberish, a voice for the unvoiced. These are each non-rational nonjudgmental activities.

:- Doug.

Rhythm and writing
our nonsense in June snowflakes
or playful haiku

:- Doug.

What do you want to elicit from the 17th generation?

:- Doug.

Our points of view as a culture have been narrowing. So our opinions also. The circle of beings for whom we care. How would a kinder humanity do differently?

:- Doug.

God seems to me thread running through all of life.

:- Doug.

Uncertainty is or is at the spiritual core.

:- Doug.

I understand, but I don’t want that. I don’t want fame; I am beyond wanting fortune. I want influence, but not acknowledgment: in the sense that I want to contribute to the long term betterment of the human project.

:- Doug.

Journaling, creating an artifact of, my journey is one way. I reach to touch you. Touching You touches you.

:- Doug.

With whom else might we converse, we who converse across the generations? What are the questions about which to converse? What questions would lead us to a higher humanity?

What is higher humanity? What are our highest aspects? Who are our exemplars and why do we esteem them? Lincoln, Gandhi, Jesus, Gautama, Tubman for examples. They showed us the best in ourselves. What best? Caring. Kindness. Big-heartedness. Strength in these. Vulnerability and humanness. Speaking to all of us….

So perhaps we can write biographies of human people. Or simply write why we revere these people. Pebbles in the forest, a trail to follow.

:- Doug.

So we have captured the shooters in the last two mass shootings. Here is opportunity: to learn from them the motivators for such actions, to see what we can do to make their world more calm and less hostile to them. This would do the same for the rest of us.

:- Doug.

Talk with a terrorist—and have a spiritual conversation.

:- Doug.

Why would you talk with a terrorist—unless it were for a spiritual conversation?

:- Doug.

Dialogue with the terrorist. Dialogue with the saint who reaches the terrorist.

:- Doug.

What can we do to get inside the heads of those causing violence, and pacify them?

:- Doug.

Tell your largest dreams. To the page. To friends who will keep your secret. To everyone.

:- Doug.

Bake cookies, take gifts, randomly give away a smile.

:- Doug.

Find a second to do the next step.

:- Doug.

It is not that I have a lesson to leave, but that I have one to find.

The lesson is a learning, a growing, a leading out—to an emerged explicate humanity, hopefully larger, kinder, more conversing than we are so far.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1866

Elders can take charge for our world, for the grandchildren. Take charge not control: no one is in control but all can take charge. For not of, nor over. This is an attitude shift that changes our destination.

Please pass it on.

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Name the tasks of eldering generations. This is the task I have set for myself.

:- Doug.

Meeting bad making good
warming cold touching numinous
conversing with generations

:- Doug.

We are seasoned people—people who have been touched by all 4 seasons, so we can bring seasoning to others.

:- Doug.