FootprintsintheWind.com

If you read books or newspapers, if you observe people, if you converse with friends, watch movies, ponder what you take in, you are conversing with your 11th generation, because you are thinking in their direction, because you are seeking to get better at being human.

:- Doug.

We’re working with our 11th generation at getting better at being human.

:- Doug.

Give it 300 years—it’s not that we can make a better humanity, but we might get better at being human. Note well that generation will need to work with generation, not just each starting over at the same place.

:- Doug.

Ultimately grandchildren remain
to us mystery
as they must
you can only converse
after you live into
this relationship
and this ever only partially

:- Doug.

My grandchild, my Muse.

:- Doug.

I will share with you my thinking on these matters; it will be your task to correct my course, and to pull me further. To that end, we will all talk. A lot.

:- Doug.

Do you have faith
in these
they incline to you

:- Doug.

you will know them by
the thoughts of their hearts
but words and images will be denied you

:- Doug.

Maybe we reach a place where we experience living in one another:

Like God in us in God
Like spouses making a marriage

In the stage following
the poetry among us sings
Beyond defines

:- Doug.

This course is lived poetry.

:- Doug.

The task of the course is discovery, not pedagogy.

:- Doug.

The thing I am learning today is that it is not impossible, if you expand your thinking around what conversing is.

:- Doug.

My pull: stir up a conversation with, or at least give our profound attention to, people of 300 years on. Our purpose: with them, become more human.

:- Doug.

Over centuries, some physical things and surroundings may change, but will souls?

:- Doug.

Being human
not a wisdom grasped
but a skill
to be developed
and lost

:- Doug.

There may be dialogue, a flow, among generations.

:- Doug.

The grandparent does not possess wisdom, instead releases it, calls it forth from dialogue.

:- Doug.

Cultivate grandparenting.

:- Doug.

Deep calls unto deep
Grandparent unto grandparent

:- Doug.

Darker sides must be met.

:- Doug.

I turn now to searching out how to get better at being human. The people with whom I wish to converse about this are elders now and of 300 years off.

:- Doug.

What some people do about prickly people.

:- Doug.

How people will finally overcome their fear of others—and themselves.

:- Doug.