FootprintsintheWind.com

My work is meeting people meeting people.

:- Doug.

The danger today is we have underdeveloped our humanity. This is a work of elders.

:- Doug.

Elders are about embracing the
incompleteness
of completeness

:- Doug.

The elder recognizes within persons, community, and worlds a soul, and the elder goes out to meet it.

:- Doug.

What is the spiritual tension of eldering?
To what must I die today?
The tension between being and powerlessness, among tension, relaxation, both, neither, outcomes, non-attachment
Among respiration, inspiration, expiration, and the two still points in the betweens
Among whole and part and larger, either/or/neither
Among living for others, self, play, playfulness, fullness, emptiness, largeness
The tension of holding everything and looking for what is missing

:- Doug.

Until a better elder comes along, I’m the one they’ve got.

:- Doug.

Eldering is difficult to start, however it takes a lifetime to master.

:- Doug.

I bless you with challenges insurmountable
death of ego and more at every turn
no chance of safe return

:- Doug.

Who am I to say
there are not others this instant
seeing the same insight?

:- Doug.

What the brushes
to make such strokes
upon the sky?

:- Doug.

Be. With. Be not.

:- Doug.

a thousandth of a degree
a million miles
O the difference!

:- Doug.

Do not have to think for path to divert.

:- Doug.

A breath upon a moving missile deflects it port or starboard.

:- Doug.

You shall whisper worlds will turn.

:- Doug.

Stillest whispers change world invite yours.

:- Doug.

Our culture and God both say I AM. They mean different stresses.

:- Doug.

Eldering is work, a different kind of work to be sure. It is work on yourself as much as on the world. It is losing yourself beyond grieving, beyond sacrifice, to skippingly chasing after it. It is finding a larger between, a third.

:- Doug.

There’s a meaning to eldering: What’s yours?

:- Doug.

What do you find if not the deific?

:- Doug.

Teach not: find

:- Doug.

We will not survive
the perils of living
conversations along the way
are the elder’s destination
our leap into the source

:- Doug.

Eldering is a mysticism.

:- Doug.