FootprintsintheWind.com

A Good Will is an opening for an elder to make last gifts lasting.

:- Doug.

In your giving
You can find
Your self

Crafting an expanding soul
Taking moves the other way
Constricting, shrinking, shriveling

Try both directions
If you must
Then pick a brush & paint

:- Doug.

Back:
Let us bring life
from there to our days

:- Doug.

Caring is the heart freely given from one to another. Caring is not bought nor sold.

:- Doug.

What is the work of concluding a loved one’s life? Crying, burying, finding, sorting, throwing away, rearranging, finding meaning, crying some more, celebrating, forgiving, deciding not to forgive, distributing, assimilating, learning, going on.

:- Doug.

Making a Will is a sacrifice—for surely some day you will yield all. But whether you give your best to your best-loved ones is a choice. Many give only stuff. You, give the stuffing.

:- Doug.

Not every one can write the Good Will. There is much homework—one must study each person and one’s self and one’s possible gifts. One must sit with the work until it writes you. More, until you let your people write you. Blood must be spilt. You might just find yourself.

:- Doug.

What are you doing? What do you want to be doing? How can I help?

:- Doug.

Whom can I help?

:- Doug.

I am invading the really real. Law and medicine are each critical things when things get critical, yet they are side matters to every day life, and more importantly, they are side matters to living life in the really real. In business terms they are staff, not line. I am invading the line, where the work gets done. Where the work has potential to get done. Where the work is decided upon. Helping make those decisions is a staff function, too.

Saying You gotta make these decisions, it is life and death! is also a staff function. I cannot make the decisions for you. I can assist, but I get no vote. That is fine. The more who make the decision, any decision, the more crises we have. And that, in this way of thinking, is good. Very good.

:- Doug.

What questions does your daughter’s life raise?

:- Doug.

In creating your Will it may help you to ask “Who is this person? Where is their soul? From where are they coming and to where going? How can I help?”

:- Doug.

What task did you summon into this world?

:- Doug.

I’m a wonderer. Sometimes more fun than a wanderer. Can at least go farther…and faster.

:- Doug.

What was the temperature of your original face? What did you come here to do? Could bestowing a boon on someone help? Or an original word?

:- Doug.

What is your dream for us O G*d?
Your dream for trees
& wind and cloud?
For earth’s greening & greying?

:- Doug.

Blue water orcas
people screaming about
parking spaces
go away inexplicably
could they have heard
the orcas singing?

:- Doug.

What do you want for this child?

:- Doug.

A veil is a lens
to magnify the mystery
to focus light & give relief to shadow

:- Doug.

And the learnings will go on, and the work will go on. There is no one way that solves all of life. There is no avoiding the work. The way is work. The way is finding what must be done. The way is uncovering, ripping, poking, finding the way. There is always love to be done.

:- Doug.

We each and all have a contra naturam, contrary nature, bedeviling our creativity, giving it push back to take to roots and heartwood. This part breaks out worst in human cruelty, criminality, and mayhem. It can be suppressed and ignored; it can also be the flint striking our heart, setting our good fires loose in the earth.

:- Doug.

We are living an ancient story. I have been living an ancient story. I brought my hopes to the adult world and experienced failings, wounds. I experienced burial under the concerns of raising a family and making a living. Now I am seeing not just a larger picture but my original life force. Failings, dyings, reawakenings.

:- Doug.

There is no way to do this work: rather look the persons in front of us in the souls. Find the poke holes and places ripe for ripping. Ask questions. Tell stories.

We all go through failings, deaths and reawakenings. The kinds of questions and stories we can raise are the ones that look for thin places where soul and spirit are near the surface: tender ego bits; hints of hubris; masks; shynesses; secrets; slips.

:- Doug.