FootprintsintheWind.com

How sure can we be that education is a useful thing to do, if we are after learning?

:- Doug.

We make a response and that lays down a past. Perhaps this is true.

:- Doug.

Do we still work out of “we the people?” Do we believe—do we act like we believe—that the people are wise, that in a “we” is our best course? Do we still share a dream not denominated in Dollars or beer?

:- Doug.

Let us speak of going beyond living in a “normal” (actually subdued, greyed-over) community, where everybody is marching toward the grave with as little pain as possible. Let us speak of having the pain, having the ecstasy, having the full swings of the pendulum, being part of driving the engine and of being the passenger in the party. Let us speak of experiencing the wrenching when one of us is pulled out by the roots from among us. Let us speak of knowing that the love around the death bed is of the deepest nature of being human, the pinnacle of what we might be, to be savored, allowed.

:- Doug.

G*d is not:
G*d lights
G*d loves
G*d invites
G*d frees
G*d calls

:- Doug.

Like the screen saver on your computer, everything is always in motion. A binary, right-wrong, black-white politics seeks to makes something stand still, make the world stop spinning. In this it is contrary to life, profoundly rejecting life.

:- Doug.

What are you smiling about?

Life is grand: yet how could life be more?

It is for me taking part in something more than me, not about putting money in my pocket. (So when I start trying to turn it into a money-getting thing, then is when I start losing the sparkle.) When I engage in life for life’s sake, such as end of life conversations, is precisely when I feel most alive.

So life is not in the living of it, but in life living me.

We cannot grab the gusto, because the real gusto grabs us.

Do you have life, or does life have you?

We lose our need to control, yet we are more in control than ever. We throw our life away and we have more of it than ever. We are neither particle nor wave, but that which partakes of some of these qualities and is of a different substance altogether—light.

:- Doug.

Guessing the meaning of words from their sounds does not always give a good direction. For instance: She reached out to tentatively touch his dongle, sending an electric current up and down his Ethernet.

:- Doug.

A memory box can be a way to start the conversation: here are some pictures, some ribbons, some pressed flowers; here are some documents; here is what I want….

:- Doug.

I met a man who wanted to get more Social Security money. His statement bored me. His concentration scared me. He has bought into the rich man’s You’re not worthy if you don’t have money. He has bought into the cultural imperative that if you have no money, you are no person. As if life and goodness were fenced in by money and property.

:- Doug.

What if we did not see death as for keeps, but as a chapter, a pearl on a continuing string? The family, the tribe, the story goes forward. Someone is born, and destined to change the drama. Someone dies and the drama is changed.

:- Doug.

In some settings, our highest gift seems a detour, on a side matter, as when in an envelope stuffing session we help a friend with a family crisis. Then the Work is outside the work, the project is only a setting for the real work to get done.

:- Doug.

Say you have a family with a medical crisis. Consider the scenarios that could happen here. Consider more than one. There are always more than one good choice. Open some conversation, engage them in what is possible, not just now, but for the next 30 years. How will what they do now play out over 30 years. Ask other care givers to help you noodle on it. A good first question is What’s possible now? Then, Is something else possible? What might the future hold? Is that all? Open the possibilities, open the conversations. You do not have the answers, you do not have their answers. You are here to help them find their own responses.

:- Doug.

Painter, show me a portrait of God
Such I do not have nor could I
But here a mother nursing babe
Two lovers lost in each others’ eyes
A soldier mixed with pieces of a roadside bomb
A drunk in an alley’s puddle
Here are portraits of God’s heart

:- Doug.

It all starts with opening a conversation.

:- Doug.

You are a seed, a burr, a ripple of the flow. You can bring wholeness and healing, but maybe not the healing you thought you were bringing. It is a mystery, this mix we call spirit, a mixtery. If you do not jump in they do not have your part of the whole.

:- Doug.

How can I make sure I get end of life treatment that is gentle and kind and respects my wishes?

:- Doug.

The inner work is not as you suppose, solely individual work. We’re human. We think deepest when we think together—and that spells conversation.

:- Doug.

Your special opportunity as a friend is to invite deeper conversations, to bring up the questions others are tiptoeing around, to name the elephant in the room…and then to take people to love.

:- Doug.

What’s the same for first years and last are soft food, help with walking, incontinence. Might a difference be in our rhythms? Infants are constantly going, their arms and legs and faces a continual moving picture. Oldsters seem to be learning to slow, to love, to ponder.

:- Doug.

When people are in a tizzy, you can bring a listening ear. You can raise their sights. When we are surrounded by mud, it is hard to lift our eyes and see that the sun is shining, that there are alternatives. You can bring the hope of alternatives as your act of love, as your act of service, simply by asking the question about alternatives.

:- Doug.

What is the most profound question you could ask yourself as you think about end of life? How is that an act of service?

:- Doug.

The last three days: Who is there? What is the work you are doing? Is it all about you, or are you eldering your children and grandchildren?

:- Doug.