FootprintsintheWind.com

What can we find to call forth from our lives a coherent thread, a wholeness, a story line?

:- Doug.

What do we see larger than middlers see?

:- Doug.

To you, what does it mean to elder another? Can one elder another without being a full-time elder? Do full-time elders exist? Can we aspire to be more-time elders?

:- Doug.

Present-centeredness may be a key to innocence.

:- Doug.

Commas are more pregnant than periods, question marks more so, and ellipses most….

:- Doug.

Wisdom is mainly in what we don’t know, in what we let go of knowing.

:- Doug.

See the world whole.

:- Doug.

Can’t teach all nor how to elder; there are only evocative principles and questions.

:- Doug.

Intend all possible meanings.

:- Doug.

Telling our stories maybe comes after we know the power of them. Wonder what that means.

:- Doug.

Birgitt Williams writes evocatively for me: “no empty space…. space is always Sacred Space, and rich in what is contained.”

This brings to me thoughts of David Bohm’s implicate order: the whole is always enfolding, unfolding, like a mother her child. So perhaps holding space and opening space each partakes of that same image: embracing, and still opening arms to let her child run free….

:- Doug.

Life: safe return doubtful.

:- Doug.

Lean toward the threshold. It cannot be cheated; it cannot be rushed nor stormed. It demands work, perhaps pain.

:- Doug.

We need people to reflect, ponder, imagine. This is the prime work: becoming shamans, prophets, elders.

:- Doug.

Friend, into your pondering. What do you reflect?

:- Doug.

Whom you are is not just whom you have been and what has been done to you, but the work you have done on your experiences, and on your body, mind, soul, spirit, and family. It has to do with definitions and visions and relations as much as nose and toes.

:- Doug.

We are conversing—gathering our reflecting.

:- Doug.

Elderhood is more than accumulation of experiences. It encompasses reflecting on those experiences. Hard work.

:- Doug.

Interesting. The roots of “poet” are making, creating, composing, piling up, building, heaping up, piling up. So there is a sense akin to the compost heap, and reminds me that I sometimes start a poem by making a list, or by finding poems!

So a poem is a compost heap of sorts, working, being worked. Working poet. Working us.

:- Doug.

The work of eldering goes on.

:- Doug.

Eldering is the work—the poetry—the elder is doing for humanity—and that done upon the elder.

:- Doug.

As the difference between beautiful poetry and major poetry is a felt change of consciousness, so the difference between the aging and the eldering.

:- Doug.

We can live—live!—outside the grasp of the ego-centric. Humanity is not owned by the competition minded.

:- Doug.