FootprintsintheWind.com

The everting elder

:- Doug.

Protest is not the way: neither is explanation and reason: the way to touch people is where they are already living. Anguish, despair, and grief are of the deepest. Playfulness too, as well as poetry, song, bodily movement, imagination. These two threads, being-generating filaments of DNA, can be touched to spark the humanity in the peoples.

:- Doug.

Jesus, the humiliated one

:- Doug.

Forgive the Republicans
They know not what they do
Forgive the Democrats
They know not what they do
This is a prayer
Not to God
To you, each one

:- Doug.

The edgy elders

:- Doug.

Words that make no sense
might bring us to our senses

:- Doug.

Despair and anguish, dance and dream: the works of the elders.

:- Doug.

What good
the long view
of the elders?

:- Doug.

Elder imagination presents us with
futures alternative to the
dominating culture

:- Doug.

Saved by elder imagination.

:- Doug.

A rich Republican came upon
a beaten, bleeding, barely moaning one in an alley
had compassion
carried this stranger to hospital
paid the bill
What do you see?
Could you have fellow-feeling for this Republican?

:- Doug.

First, groan the groans.

:- Doug.

The anguish of our political sundering:
We have lost the capacity to forgive one another
Why? What is deeper
Hidden to ourselves?
I forgive all of you

:- Doug.

Reclaim for them
their imagination
call them by name
drive them to
decision

:- Doug.

This new time
all is falling apart
no more solid ground
each a scout
blazing trails
new
and human

:- Doug.

These are times to ban explanations and move to song.

:- Doug.

A closed world is false.

:- Doug.

You have a community
You have a long view for your community
Now show ‘em

:- Doug.

Concern yourself not with outcomes nor followers, only with right attention.

:- Doug.

The prophetic imagination of elders

:- Doug.

Despair and grief are not the same: we know there is, but cannot see, and do not want, a way through grief to life; we want a way out of despair but expect none. Both lead to giving up; only from grief does giving up provide a healing way through. Despair is a loss of all hope. Grief is a heaviness, a burden we think we never could carry, but somehow do.

:- Doug.

The only question of the elder is, Can you imagine better?

:- Doug.

Eldering is futuring: proposing and imagining futures.

:- Doug.