FootprintsintheWind.com

Where is your spirit today? Where do you want it to be? What new insights have you gained in your play with death?

:- Doug.

If I get agitated by some event, then change my attention, deliberately look elsewhere and more widely. Look beyond my own shrinking. The agitation is amorphous, a virus blob, closing in: so breathe, lift your eyes. Work on something else. Help somebody.

:- Doug.

We do not need many elderlings: just a few who mediate between the spirit of the times and the grandchildren, and we renew.

:- Doug.

The spirit of the times is tending toward separation, isolation, and hate. This spirit infects our public and private dialogue. Yet two years ago, the spirit was more opening, helping, loving. We are in this spirit. Every word, prayer, and even thought we allow to carry us affects this spirit of the times, effects it. So in a world where local and global are right here, in us, we can set wholeness in motion. Gathering, and also loosening: wholeness, all parts need to be heard, accepted as part of us. Us.

:- Doug.

Awareness is key to wisdom. Awareness might be the only wisdom.

:- Doug.

We can develop from dying
to ourselves
This is the antidote to annihilation
of humanity

:- Doug.

In the invited free community….

:- Doug.

Comes in
faith through ears
community through stomachs
food
is sacred

:- Doug.

Ahh there is around us more we know of people than we think. The Celtic music talents, the beautiful cross stitchings, the art, the knowledge—all of these but surfaces—of a depth that comes out and meets us in many daily ways. It is then for us to attend.

In written dialogue of the imagination you can touch something of which this person touched you.

:- Doug.

Words give us a false sense of having a leash on events. Words are measuring sticks, and all measure is approximate: let the puppy gambol.

:- Doug.

Certainty is routinely false.

:- Doug.

For elders as newborns the world can be fresh and new.

:- Doug.

To learn, you must open to what you don’t know.

:- Doug.

What’s eldering about? I don’t know. Precisely opening space for larger worlds. As the bubble of knowing expands, our surface touches more and more we do not know.

:- Doug.

We plow, the grandchildren plant and tend.

:- Doug.

Let us perceive together.

:- Doug.

But we don’t know anything, so how can that be wisdom? And yet in this very uncertainty is where humanity grows. Choose to go here. (And might growth be more important than wisdom?)

:- Doug.

Use our counselor role to direct grandchildren’s thinking into fertile territory.

:- Doug.

We won’t know if we are up to the challenge of eldering. Until we try.

:- Doug.

Elder: introduce the generations to unexpected aspects of reality.

:- Doug.

Is there a goal? No! There are people who need what elders can give. How will we know when we have gotten there? We will not and cannot: we will however know that we worked for the grandchildren.

:- Doug.

The fire
The flow
The Tao?

:- Doug.

Kill one person, that’s murder and guilt
Kill one thousand, that’s a battle and expected
Kill one million, that’s war and a shrug

:- Doug.