FootprintsintheWind.com

I am inside the sun
Rays about me
Swirling
Come through me
Even come from me
As I sit or stand or move toward you
The All There Is is radiating pulsing

:- Doug.

A friend of mine, Mikk Sarv, from Estonia, while early in his own most personal grieving work, wrote “It is really so simple and easy to be close in Spirit.”

How have you experienced this?

I see it is about letting down our shields and our shoulders: letting in, letting heart open to simply be. About letting heart be open to just be with another who simply is.

:- Doug.

The trickster? Ahh, I love the notion. Where does the trickster lie in wait for us in Elder Caring Lawyering? In the elder himself, herself. In sense of humor and ways of approaching the world. In the ways we play with each other, family and friends. In the lawyer thinking What if we reverse field?

:- Doug.

What are the most health stimulating, wholeness inducing rhythms we can employ in elder caring lawyering? Slow the rhythms, open: allowing for all voices to be heard, from piccolo to bassoon, from kettle drum to marimba, from plaintive violin to incessant snare to trickster fife. Responsive, echoing, accompanying. Tender, touched.

:- Doug.

Elder Caring Lawyers are not order takers. Nor are we simply advisors, with answers to what lies around every bend, behind every door. We are more companions who have been down similar roads, who have studied the texts telling how things are designed to work, companions who will walk the road ahead alongside you.

:- Doug.

The family is absolutely necessary: if they won’t do one choice, that choice is no longer a choice.

:- Doug.

No one has ever been exactly where your family finds itself now, so you’ll have to invent your response. Together.

:- Doug.

Could it be that what we are about in elder caring lawyering is finding a rhythm? I see rhythms: those who are here for Just the facts, sir, or Write me up a trust (staccato); and those who are here as part of a family working out what works best for Mom and Dad and the family (slower, more intricately interwoven, pulsating, Mozart or Bach).

:- Doug.

Why Elder Caring Lawyering? For me, the word caring shows action and engagement of everyone touched: friends, family, the elder him or herself. Care, on the other hand makes the elder an object of attention, passive recipient: an It. The elder is my client, the one with whom I must maintain as normal a relationship as possible. That means we each give and participate.

:- Doug.

With Alzheimer’s, the call for separation and individualism is gone; our task now is to intertwine the sprouts and roots of family.

:- Doug.

The way to peace and security is to eliminate the Others. What two ways would accomplish that?

:- Doug.

My program is radical: the roots can sprout good. We do not need people to teach them or to lead them: they—we—can lead. Why don’t you see to it?

:- Doug.

Without brokers, without mediators, let us gather physically and spiritually and salt our earth.

:- Doug.

How could it help to get families engaged with their elders?

:- Doug.

Salt of the earth
Shake it out!
The streams flowing
From your heart
Season even the tongues
Who speak out against you

:- Doug.

I am here not to entertain you
Rather to engage you
To plant a family
of Do It Ourselves-ers

:- Doug.

No brokers between humans
No mediators between humans and our world
Don’t need ’em
They get in our way
Make us lazy, dependent
Till we abdicate our responsibility
For each other

:- Doug.

Meeting
How do we our
Meeting?
Gently, openly, expectantly
Here & Now
Not For

Our eyes meet
Our hands meet
Our laughter meets
Our tears too
And we
Become

Meeting is mystery
More than two
Yet single?

Meeting flows
Circles
Expands
Meeting I am
Opposite also true

Baby new
Man old
From meeting
In meeting

Hearing, Heard
Gentle Humanity
Meeting
Growing

A fresh spring stream
Meeting overflows
Goes on, goes on
Carries us where
We know not

Your hearts
Desire my ear
Meeting
For us is
Life & Breath
Meeting is miracle

:- Doug.

Whole-making is what I want to work on—seeing ourselves possible and powerful in our own lives: loving the skin we’re in, loving our families and ourselves and our places, making them all as whole as can be and continually making them whole.

:- Doug.

It is not money I am railing against, it is partiality: the notion that we are part, someone else needs to accomplish the things that we need. We are as held down as the peasants of the first century. Only we are the ones holding us down. However, I see evidence here and there that we are just now beginning to see we are possible.

:- Doug.

To accomplish good, we don’t need money.

:- Doug.

The medical doctors must treat disease, yet to treat illness and sickness we need healers. We can all be healers.

:- Doug.

We can concentrate on the pain, or we can move along to something else. We can realize that we are all in the nursing home with Mom, or deny it. We can realize that this is life and look for what we have lost, or we can live with what we have, perhaps even find what we have gained: slowing-down time, nows to be present to one another, opportune moments to discover one another and family.

:- Doug.