FootprintsintheWind.com

Spiritual is anything
allowing us to touch
more

:- Doug.

Sometimes I just walk and accept what comes past.

:- Doug.

Do you consider yourself a spiritual person? About what do you feel particularly spiritual?

:- doug.

Birth & death
—our ultimate times—
we can glimpse ultimacy
glimpse is all we need
to dissolve our other-wiseness

:- Doug.

I work on the spiritual end of life.

:- Doug.

I don’t have the answers, but we together have better questions.

:- Doug.

Listen for the tune not the notes. Hear the story not the things to note.

:- Doug.

I think if I were older and unable to move around much, I would want to meet with a spiritual director and probably artists to work on my creativity and open my spirit.

:- Doug.

There is a big difference between working to end life and allowing life and death to take its course without fighting it interminably and pigheadedly. People must be allowed to die their own ways, whether violently and with invasive and intrusive measures, or comfortably and with gentle human touches. More, we must make an effort to help with things like comfort, companionship (no one should have to die alone), and advocacy.

But more than this, and underlying it, we should check at the door our own assumptions about what is a good way to die. We often do not know we have assumptions. Like the woman who made her dying aunt eat her favorite foods when the aunt’s body was shutting down and could no longer tolerate food. Or like the person who remembers the death of his mother and wants or does not want the same thing for his father. We have to have the conversation.

Twice in my life in the last few months young women fell down the steps or crashed their car, and their families were forced to decide to end life support which was not helping. By and large, these situations determine their own decisions.

But what of the chronically ill, frail 90 year old who has pneumonia? Or a gangrene leg? Or whose heart stops? Do we beat on his chest, shock her with so many volts, bring her back with brain damage to suffer seizure after seizure? Or do we let these “old folks’ friends” gently take them where they (and we) are already headed?

“Playing God” is on both sides of this path. Whether we use or do not use modern science to prolong someone’s death (and maybe suffering too), we are intervening in an otherwise natural process. When is it good? How much is good? What is good?

Maybe those are not the ultimate questions. Maybe we could ask: When is love appropriate? How much love can we give? What is loving here and now?

:- Doug.

There is intelligence and loving intention—that is, life intention—permeating the worlds. We work with these all our lives or we work against them, but always within them. The current of this intelligence and intention inexorably draw us along.

:- Doug.

Do we care well in our farewells?

:- Doug.

We are afraid of one another. We don’t even see we are afraid. Yet by nature we are soft and gentle and kind. It is safe to open ourselves to the people around us.

:- Doug.

Squirrels are good mechanical engineers. They know and understand the angles, operations and forces facing them. They can figure out how to overcome a slippery pole barely large enough for them to grasp, overcome gravity and climb to the bird feeder it holds. They can compute the wind speed and gusts and grab hold of the swaying feeder with one paw, hold on to the slippery pole with two others, and reach the fourth in to grab seed to munch. When startled, they know instantaneously where to leap and with what thrust to make their escape.

:- Doug.

Why do I journal every day? I need this journaling to help me elicit insights, to probe and find new things that I assumed were not there. Surprisingly, exploring surprises. It keeps me asking questions. It keeps me lively.

:- Doug.

I’m not often imparting new knowledge. Often I am calling attention to something we all can observe or act upon but usually miss.

:- Doug.

We make up the world as we live it. It is so habitual with us we don’t even notice. In this room there are thirty different worlds—how we relate, what the other means to us and us to them, what pains us and what lifts us up.

:- Doug.

In the theatre of my mind I see some things. You probably see others. I invite you to conspire with me to see third possibilities.

:- Doug.

We can only be human in conversation. If we do not converse, by just that much we lose our humanity.

:- Doug.

I am not a technician. I’m a human-in-conversation.

:- Doug.

Conversation requires not-knowing, uncertainty, and vulnerability.

:- Doug.

You know something I don’t. You care about things I don’t even know. You are important to me.

:- Doug.

We have always faced the risk of dying prematurely—from heart attacks, road accidents, falls, animal attacks. But now we may live too long—with too much medical treatment, too much needless suffering from CPR, respirators, being strapped and tied to beds in confusing, noisy hospitals. We face a real risk of dying not gently and naturally, of dying post-maturely.

:- Doug.

Take Flowers: A friend of mine has a secret for getting good care for her uncle at the nursing home and hospital: she takes flowers and says “Thank you” to the staff who are helping her uncle. She takes cookies every once in a while, and puts them out at the nurse’s station, with a thank you note “From the family of….”

Another friend got a birthday cake from the best local bakery, decorated with “Thanks to Mary, Suzie, Bill, Danny for getting Mom to her 92nd birthday!”

Be inventive. Find ways to recognize good caring people. Especially to their bosses.

:- Doug.