FootprintsintheWind.com

Do not take from me a gentle death, a fighting death, whatever death is mine. This is a human rights issue, a human issue.

:- Doug.

What life are we doing everything to keep going? The tubes and technology and drug-induced grogginess, interacting with new strangers every few hours? Or the most profound days of our lives? What can we do to make the latter?

:- Doug.

To endure the death and sufferings of patients doctors can distance themselves from names and relationships. But what if the deaths are contributed to by anonymity, what if our attitude toward persons—persons!—directly caused the suffering? Theirs and ours?

:- Doug.

Why do everything possible to keep someone alive when nature has decided a more gentle outcome?

:- Doug.

At what age do we become ineligible to be seen and treated as a person?

:- Doug.

Above us only sky
And the sky is alive
And the sky is between
And the sky is afire
And the larger is about

:- Doug.

Today’s an open day
Nows for us to open
People for me to open to
Universes to leave space for
Today’s….

:- Doug.

Life will inevitably advance
How to you want to live
Then?

:- Doug.

Someday you
will not be allowed
to decide
find out now
decide now for when

:- Doug.

Since every chapter
reframes everything before
how will you have your death
frame your life?

:- Doug.

Engaging people is enlarging.

:- Doug.

The 20-L-10 Rule: When you have the doctor for 20 minutes—take your list—devote 10 minutes to the end of life conversation.

:- Doug.

The end is in the decision
When will we be ready, ever?
Our opening is now

:- Doug.

I should do what I need to do here and now. I can do it now. There is no other or better opportunity. Meet now. Between is the Opening. The Opening is Between.

:- Doug.

Eternity has nothing to do with time, does not touch it, does not start after or before it: there is no after or before.

:- Doug.

What’s your dream of this Work?

:- Doug.

Clouds have filled the sky
We did not see them arrive
But watch a moment and see
They move quickly
As our lives traverse the between

:- Doug.

Everyday valor is in calling the person you have been avoiding calling.

:- Doug.

This morning I did not want to call a certain person. “It will take care of itself” I thought. But I forced myself to call. This conversation I need to initiate. Things will not get better if we ignore each other. Each will then take unilateral action which will be difficult to reverse. Courses get set. Together, we can help us both decide which way the rudder.

:- Doug.

Everything happens between.

:- Doug.

Meditating or shoveling snow, sleeping, eating, talking with another, or to myself: all this, all there is, is holy, is doing the Work, the Living, the Loving, the flow of the between. That is enough. That is all there is.

:- Doug.

I am seeing now that the between is the nugget, perhaps of the Big Bang—everything flung out in a burst of creating that has not stopped yet! The between creates all the nodes and foldings and unfoldings, the stars, teeming swamps, and symphonies. Ain’t nothing happens that doesn’t emerge from the between. Full and empty: pregnant, possible, birthing. Between the holy parent of all. Between iterating in our intercourse, conversing, conflict. All burgeons from between. There may be nothing else.

:- Doug.

Not that which draws us together
The between
That which casts us forth!

:- Doug.