FootprintsintheWind.com

Giving & receiving
Heart-speaking & -hearing
Charging & yielding:
Creating
Together

:- Doug.

On each other’s periphery
Move one center closer
Might find more than creating

:- Doug.

Con

Chaos
Confusion
Conflict

Come

Contribution
Creating

:- Doug.

The hopeful part
The exciting part
Whatever we know
The world
Billows ever more

:- Doug.

Remember 9-12: remember the day after, how people came together. Remember how we reflected on our humanity. Forget what the politicians said and did: then, for a moment, we were human.

:- Doug.

Reflectivity is a one by one thing; it is also an engaged group thing. I have seen it most often in small groups. But is this magic possible in a group of thousands or millions?

I suspect thousands is possible, but have not seen it much in our times. Certainly on September 12, 2001. Probably after some of Lincoln’s days of contrition. Maybe with Gandhi and Mandela. Those were organized efforts, except for 9/12.

:- Doug.

So my work in the world is to raise the general level of reflectivity. If I am reflective, that does it. If others accept my invitation to engage reflectively, that does it too.

:- Doug.

It is likely there is wide variability among humans in the extent to which they wish to become reflective and whole. Maybe there is a range of capability.

:- Doug.

Let me go—
gently

:- Doug.

Jenny would help Dad to the toilet
and puree his food
in between feeding her granddaughter
and getting her husband’s supper
after a day gathering eggs and snapping beans
Now Jenny has a job
or two
she could quit
go to class to learn the complexities
of care and medical equipment
rearrange her house for the hospital bed,
electronic monitors, and sling lift
go without sleep
The nursing home frees Jenny for
career, family, a life
Nursing homes are for the people
not in them

:- Doug.

But why shouldn’t people have freedom to plod through life as dully as they wish?

:- Doug.

I cannot have a handle on you
But I can camp out beside

:- Doug.

It’s not, Women:
Who can understand them?!
Nor, Men:
Who can understand them?!
It is, Life
Who can understand?
Living: moving,
Ever creating
Ever complexifying
There are no handles
Or maybe too many

:- Doug.

There’s more to hear
Than can be heard

:- Doug.

We have been tying knots
When some things are
Too stiff, too liquid, or too big,
And some are tying us
Drop your hands
Relax your fingers
We cannot know as we know

Sit down beside her
Coax Miss Muffet to stay

:- Doug.

Sit with us and work.

:- Doug.

Friend, much holy to do in your now.

:- Doug.

The enigma of conversing: how does it do the things, large and small it has done? Steel girders a hundred stories up, farms for thousands of square hectares, the love of a parent for a child?

:- Doug.

Why is there secrecy in the elder care business? I sent students to assisted living and nursing facilities to get sample admission contracts and they were refused. Is it “We know better than you, trust us?” Is it fear of being discovered?

:- Doug.

The conundrum of conversation
How it consternates!
Before it creates

:- Doug.

What are people doing dying?
Living yet (I hope)
What are people doing living?
Creating yet (new expanses to the day)

:- Doug.

What are the stories we tell each other about good and bad deaths? How might we improve our storytelling?

:- Doug.

Advance Care Planning is not primarily to capture wishes
But to coax them out of hiding
And to engender a whole litter of them

:- Doug.