FootprintsintheWind.com

A bubble of spirit
bring with you
we can dive into refreshing

:- Doug.

Are you going to allow him to make you hate? Or will you find instead a very good way to love?

:- Doug.

Scenarios can be a game to play with our grandchildren.

:- Doug.

Which future for our grandchildren do we most fear? Which do we want to open?

:- Doug.

Do elders need things beyond knowledge? Like intuition, inspiration, peripheral vision, hearing, imagination, and love? How do we bring these to bear, cultivate them?

:- Doug.

What research might you have to do to elder someone well?

:- Doug.

What is the need grandchildren will have that you can fill? What do you see that the middlers don’t see?

:- Doug.

Don’t choose. Open. I set before you life and death. Open to both. And what’s beyond.

:- Doug.

We are the pioneers. People will learn from us what eldering is. Even the Quakers who have such a word do not see in it what I see in it—something akin to grandmothering and grandfathering. Only larger.

How is it bigger than grandmothering? We have a larger focus: not simply a stash of cookies, or tutoring in Spanish, but development of the person, the soul, the people, or maybe larger still.

:- Doug.

Why would we want to elder another? Do we seek to transform them? Us? Some purpose larger than that?

:- Doug.

Be real.

:- Doug.

Did you think when you married him you could tame his ego?

:- Doug.

Slow down and savor.

:- Doug.

Maybe the highest calling of the elder is to elder someone dying.

:- Doug.

There is a depth beyond which we seldom go. Let us screw up our courage…and our imagination.

:- Doug.

What are the mysteries of life? Do they dismay you or lift you or something else?

:- Doug.

Have you had a good funeral experience? A meaningful loss? Even deeper: a loss that you have survived? Deeper still: something that was either negative or positive, perhaps even meaningless, that is still a mystery to you? What’s there, for which to be grateful?

:- Doug.

What’s a sadness that was profound growth for you?

:- Doug.

Openings for growth I will make, if you will go through with me.

:- Doug.

We need to tell the truth, even if no one else does. Our truth. Especially hear. Hear this truth.

:- Doug.

You don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to pump up your ego, or make us fear you. Share some of yourself so we can love you. Love to overcome your fear. You don’t have to be afraid. Anymore.

:- Doug.

Throw in something good now.

:- Doug.

Eldering is a state of mind, a stage of life, something you do, and someone you are.

:- Doug.