How does an artistic stance toward life, seeing beauty and wonder, fit with the asking arts? Simply there: asking, trusting. Perhaps this is Heaven: trusting beauty and wonder to appear: loving first. Give first, remembering that asking is giving. It is showing others what they need and want, getting it for them as well as for me; it is giving to others by showing them they have something valuable, they are valuable…and holy.
:- Doug.
When we hear another—see another—we are in the act of taking them in giving away our selves—& this is of great value: great value to each of us & great value to the larger us. This is love—a reuniting of the separated, and as well power—realizing our individual and collective possibilities.
:- Doug.
In conversation I am giving myself away asking for a bit of you leaving you free to make the gift.
:- Doug.
When it comes to family, we need to do things right. Do it yourself legal documents or treating yourself for serious medical conditions will not do. Love one another. Put yourself out for one another.
:- Doug.
There is always power. There are always limits to power. Look for both. We often overlook our variegated powers; look for these too.
:- Doug.
Standing behind your fences yelling at one another gets no work done. For that you must come beyond your gates and meet one another and commit to doing the hard work. We all want Congress to do the hard work. Have you forgotten when the gates are?
:- Doug.
Here is a double blind spot we have in end of life care: we ask each other what our goals are. Double blind because first we assume that we know what end we want to experience; and second we do not want to look beyond this person’s death: we cut short our caring. But life and pain and good go on. What effects of a painful or peaceful death are there on family and immediate caregivers? What effects on our society and how we do this to and for ourselves when most helpless? Goals, end points to our thinking, can do us harm.
:- Doug.
Everyone dies. What sort of treatment are we entitled to as we die? Could this become the standard for all treatment of others?
:- Doug.
There are three stages of our health in later years: Healthful years with few big issues; Years when bigger things start narrowing our possible issues; Frail times when we are in decline. Lawyers can help folks think generally and without pressure in the healthful years, think about what is important to us to guide our families. In the Years of Challenges, we can help people become more specific in their thinking and their conversing with their families. In frail years and beyond, we can help folks and families keep their resolve and refine it more, live fully to the end, and keep the family together in loving, and help their families reduce and deal with their grief.
How else might we make things better?
:- Doug.
What is the role for the lawyer in end of life times? How can we get more active for our clients?
:- Doug.
Our pain, our pain for what is going on in the world—the elder tied to a wheel chair and left for hours to sit unfriended, the child bullied by the school system—this, this is God in action.
:- Doug.
People do things that don’t benefit themselves—even put their lives at risk. This, this is God in action.
:- Doug.
The sparking snow is God. The slushy muddy snow is God. Our life is God. Our movement and our stillness. God is this. God is. We are. All this is true and not true, reality and not reality. It is true and reality in the large sense, but not when we try to concretize it, make it ever this way and no other way. There is no place you can look and not see God, and no place you can look and see God.
:- Doug.
Light and similar qualitative terms are at least laden with, if not essentially consisting of, our own meaning making.
:- Doug.
Perhaps spirit is something in this one story world that is observable and verifiable. It is akin to Jung’s collective unconscious, or common history, or species memory. It is a common experience of mystery.
:- Doug.
Knock on that door: what you and I see as a solid piece of wood, touchable, movable and knowable, the physicist standing by us sees as a swirling mass of electrons, atoms, and quarks—indeed a mere probability of coming to this shape and these dimensions. Thich Nhat Hanh standing next to the physicist sees a congregation of clouds—raining down, feeding seedlings and trees—and the work of many hands. Reality is us seeing and instantly making stories in our heads to explain to ourselves what we thought we saw. We are ever trying to convince others (and ourselves) to accept our stories.
:- Doug.
What is an origin of us? A sperm and an egg? Life itself? Upon what are we grounded?
:- Doug.
A bird has caught hold of the suet cage with its feet, and is trying to stabilize himself (herself?) with one wing. The cage just keeps spinning: the food is always just out of reach. Eventually she gave up and flew away. This is what we do so often with beating one wing of our minds trying to figure out reality and life and God. Maybe if we let loose and let it come to us….
:- Doug.
Spiritual is mystery, pulling me beyond what I thought I knew. Mystery pushes me out of my self, making me want to be larger.
:- Doug.
Powered by WordPress
| RSS 2.0
| Comments RSS 2.0
| Based on Quentin
© Copyright 2026, Learning Works, Incorporated 