FootprintsintheWind.com

There is space-time
Also spaceless-timeless
Blake’s palm-hour

:- Doug.

Buber is too much. Too fast. I pant to keep up. For more.

:- Doug.

Not a part of you
Not a part of me
Meeting takes us whole

:- Doug.

All real life is meeting. Which is to say fusion. Melding. I say too much.

:- Doug.

The center of it all is this thing I weakly call conversation. So much is packed in that one word, and so little. It is nothing you do not know and everything you cannot realize. And yet in an instant all clears. You are already there. Then in an instant it is gone and you cannot say what it was nor find your way back. Then….

:- Doug.

We must take in the being whole. Somehow lose our parts in meeting the one who to us loses all parts and is just whole. How to say it? How to do it? Only to allow it…. We only know Thou whole with our whole.

:- Doug.

Are you ready to go farther?

:- Doug.

We need to move at least to feeling, if not spirit.

:- Doug.

You are allowed to go first.

:- Doug.

In brevity truth.

:- Doug.

At the very least, we have to die to our old picture of being a productive member of society. Then we can birth a new picture of being a guardian of something larger than society, culture, even humanity.

:- Doug.

Human is wilder than we thought.

:- Doug.

Friend, meet us!

:- Doug.

What I am discovering is that it is meeting I must invite. Easily. No pushing. But doing the hard work of waiting it out of people. Waiting out his and her being. Continually inviting, but not necessarily with words: with my soft eyes. With my posture. Be. With. Model being with grandchildren.

:- Doug.

The task of the elder is to meet this Thou: here being and doing are one.

:- Doug.

Done to—or being-doing: this is the end of life question.

:- Doug.

If we see we elders are developing—or can be—toward what are we developing? Can we choose? Can we invent?

:- Doug.

I cannot push for relation—I can only open space, invite. Let my shoulders down, break open my heart. It won’t be the same each time, except for the difficulty—and ease.

:- Doug.

It takes relating: there is no question, technique, phrase.

:- Doug.

I don’t tell you how to decide. This is what I will do.

:- Doug.

So the meeting has to be being level. I will ask you. Reveal myself. I will ask you to go to why again.

:- Doug.

How are you taking responsibility for the world? We cannot clean the whole house in a moment. We must start somewhere: just this shelf, just this window.

:- Doug.

What is the conversation you want to have with the generations, both past and future? How have you contributed to where we are today—by either adding to it, or withholding yourself?

:- Doug.