FootprintsintheWind.com

The world sees the tears sweat and blood, the world hears the screams, the world feels the concussion: our electronic devices are making our world daily more sentient.

:- Doug.

We have come here to learn from you.

:- Doug.

Not images of things, but embodied moving forces; not constructs in our minds, hardened things, but living flesh: these we meet, these we meet.

:- Doug.

The stream flowing through is a stream in which we immerse, a picture-consciousness but without a static image, without images, instead with soul-events, soul meeting soul porously.

:- Doug.

In the profession of people meeting well: I am exactly where I need to be.

:- Doug.

Meeting is event not experience.

:- Doug.

Our culture reifies human being. We like all divinity are less noun than verb. Even this says too little.

:- Doug.

Every time you enter the conversation
it is a new event
you are new
you risk newness
conversation is a new-ing

:- Doug.

Picture-consciousness
Immersing oneself
Poetry as event of soul
Increasing porosity
Daily to speak these things

:- Doug.

You can salve the human soul with your religion—or you can use your religion as weapon to beat upon another human. Gentle and kind are of divinity. Anything less calls for compassion. Anything which servers our ties is contra religion.

:- Doug.

The world is transformed by words writ large—the eternal new words. The world is transformed by invitation to truth, beauty and goodness.

:- Doug.

The world transformed—that is our task as writers—writers of the words using us for their ends. The words instill in us an ownership of them and the consequent desire to spread them.

:- Doug.

Might we enlarge love?

:- Doug.

Completing our living is peeling an onion: First we complete our work in the world, then our relationships with community, then with friends. The final layer is our relation with closest of family and here we seek to complete intimacy. We do our forgiving, thanking, saying our I love yous and goodbyes, all a giving of blessings. When this layer is complete, there is only the great open space.

:- Doug.

We cannot center solely on autonomy. Autonomy with family makes sense: both are true to life, at least in this day and age.

It comes down to this: love flows in many directions. What you want is mediated by the love you show your family. So your wishes about your time approaching death include life’s conversations within your family, a warp and woof you cannot unweave.

:- Doug.

Beauty—to round out one’s life
Truth—to receive justice, the care one wants
Goodness—to receive and give kindness with others
The classical guides can serve us in dying

:- Doug.

Why does it matter? Because it’s a way of being kind to one another.

:- Doug.

The end of life conversation is about justice—giving each one what he or she wants—about love—caring for each other—about wholeness—allowing and helping one another have the wholeness we choose.

:- Doug.

Have compassion for
This room which cannot breath
—for it has no windows
This city which has lost its heart
—For it guns down its young aborning
Have compassion in daily ways
—Witness
—Name
—Lay a flower

:- Doug.

Choosing the next place: I mourn the closing off of my discovering if we really want us to go to this place. No, it is not a choosing who can invite or choosing one inviter over another but which invitation among many to accept. Anxiety over time—of all things!— opened to explore our hearts should not keep us from our best examination not of the invitation but of our heart and purpose and love.

:- Doug.

If in doubt, open space for complexity—here there be life!

:- Doug.

When settling in to tell a story to children, ask them to give you a locale, or a symbol: circle, river, hole, woods, cave, hut, maze, spiral, village, web.

:- Doug.

An airliner is a long tube by which we travel in relative discomfort to or from a place of pleasure, respite, wedding, grief or money.

:- Doug.