FootprintsintheWind.com

Two are the ways people view their retirement. One as a well-deserved time of play. Another as a time to culminate their lives as grandparents and mentors. Elders are not seen as valuable because we have abdicated the role of elder.

:- Doug.

There is a one with a zoo in his head!

:- Doug.

Heart searching
Turning to
The way
Conversing is
For both and all

:- Doug.

Where are you?
Along your true life course, that is

:- Doug.

You are not given to repair the world; you are called to do what you can do. That is essential. It’s going to take all of us. Most in small ways, with no results visible to the person taking action.

:- Doug.

Let’s get elders to work—at something large.

:- Doug.

To converse is to sink down to the seed
perchance to the germ of the seed
that of life which opens out universes

:- Doug.

Look to the people and learn. Many old people prefer freedom to safety. Keys to the car, living at home.

:- Doug.

If you see
when talking with me
you’re talking with God
how then will you converse
with any me?

:- Doug.

Our lives start out to be spheroid. Too often we make them oblong, weighted toward using and experiencing.

:- Doug.

Elder, there is a role for you, vital. You must choose. You must lift your eyes. You must come here and become present.

:- Doug.

And unnoticed
courage often slips by softly
yesterday I,
not seeing beyond death’s wall,
walked through

:- Doug.

Yesterday I walked through death’s wall. Gentleness can serve up courage.

:- Doug.

You have a claim upon me, as I have upon you.

:- Doug.

In a moving way we say. We have movements. We touch another’s core. Motion seems central to humanity.

:- Doug.

Elders first see the world is running awry.

:- Doug.

Instruction, message, claim: works of the elders.

:- Doug.

Elders choose to be guardians.

:- Doug.

Elders draw longer circles.

:- Doug.

Eldering is grampa-ing and gramma-ing.

:- Doug.

“We drew a circle that took him in” wrote Edwin Markham. Eldering draws larger circles yet.

:- Doug.

The root of mentor suggests intent, purpose, spirit, and passion. Eldering includes mentoring and is bigger.

:- Doug.

We don’t need a new science nor a new technology, religion, metaphor, myth, and on: these are too small, too un-interwoven. We need a new people. A new people will create all these things and interweave their interweavings. A new people will create beauty and color and flavor and aroma. A new people will make a new juicy and flexible world: a new loving.

:- Doug.