FootprintsintheWind.com

We cannot manufacturing entrepreneurs, we can only grow them. We’re throwing on fertilizer and water, but the seeds are given.

:- Doug.

Striking flint and steel brings sparks; if anything happens from our meeting it is in the betweens. More and richer results come from more and richer betweens.

:- Doug.

We as presenters are to these budding entrepreneurs only the tip; they are bringing the larger part of the berg: the heart certainly, but also experience, the street smarts and the skills. What they will create requires them, not us; we are superfluous. If they are dedicated enough they will find the information they need without us.

:- Doug.

Together we can think what we are unable to think alone.

:- Doug.

Perhaps the root problem of goal-setting is that we think we can control whether we attain something or not; moreover that we know going in what is the best outcome.

:- Doug.

In our entrepreneurial program, are we creating entrepreneurs or assisting people to become more of whom they already are?

:- Doug.

Making a Will is not a math problem: it is a blood, sinew and brain question: How Will I love you?

:- Doug.

Boomers: It’s up to us, as it has always been up to us. What are we going to do with our elder years? What good can we work upon the earth while we yet have strength? What can we teach? What can we, the peoples of this planet, learn? Are the divisions and hate and wars what we want to leave behind?

We have a song to sing, to ring out all over this earth.

:- Doug.

If we had a voice to raise
If we had ears to hear
We’d sing out the old song
The song about justice
The song about freedom
The song about love
Getting things done among
Our brothers and sisters
All over all lands

:- Doug.

Who are you, Friend?
I am him, I am her
I am coffee, I am peony
I am dachshund, I am fir
I am earth beneath your feet
I am you

:- Doug.

It’s a whole new world we are meeting and it takes all of us.

:- Doug.

The point of conversation in elder caring is not that you need an expert like me to navigate this getting older maze but that we need each other. Our group brain is bigger than any one of our brains. When you come to me for help, I need help too: from REAL Services, Inc. (our Area Agency on Aging), from caseworkers, from other lawyers—of course; but also from you and as many of your family as we can gather. For what you want and love and the work you want yet to do and the work you want to leave to others to complete—all of that help I need in order that we, together, do our job well. Our job? Making life whole.

:- Doug.

The Hospice Holler

This is a story of a Granddaughter trying to get her Grandmother into an nursing home. Grandmother had been in hospice care.

When the caseworker found out they were planning to give all Grandmother had away and enter the nursing home on Medicaid, he started hollerin’. “I spent all day on the paperwork! Now I’ll have to do it all over! It will delay her admission into the nursing home. She might have to go off hospice!”

And of course Granddaughter became anxious: the system seemed to be closing in on her Grandmother for no known reason, imposing unexpected and hidden rules against her.

She was battered and baffled by the Hospice Holler.

So are we all when we meet the challenges of aging. There are physical and medical challenges, social and emotional. We are working on summing up our lives, putting a capstone on our lives, many of us are doing spiritual and meaning work. Our finances change—for some to travel and avocation and callings, and for some to health and finance needs. The work of our eldering years is more complex than we expected!

:- Doug.

What, son, would you like to inherit from me?

:- Doug.

Most folks have not thought very widely or deeply about how to make a Will—or even at all.

Look at it this way: over your life you have collected a whole lot of good stuff, and some of it even has a Dollar value. Some of who you are and what your life is, is living stuff—projects, ideas, dreams, plans, wisdom, bucket lists.

What of these and like things do you have? Ask some questions: to whom is each thing most valuable? Who could benefit most from it? Of what does each person in your life have need?

When someone dies, watch out for those dump trucks—beep!–beep!–beep! They’re backing in, ready to unload everything in one heap—toys, money, old galoshes, seeds, growing seedlings and saplings and large sequoias.

Contrast that with the person who carefully, lovingly matches gifts with recipients—those who need, those who can take the unfinished work further, those who will enjoy what she has long enjoyed, those who will get her soft joke.

:- Doug.

Accidents are an opportunity to learn something new.

:- Doug.

We all have glimpses and even inklings—to get their value, we need to honor them. Attend them, ponder and work them and let them work us, and they might just grow to be insight.

:- Doug.

Opening space is akin to seeing divinity arising. It is when listening turns to hearing. When listening becomes hearing, when we hear deeper, we have the opportunity to see what’s special among us, to act upon it. Acting after all is the easiest quickest part of making something happen. Choosing the right thing, the deeply right thing, and the right time, the kairos time, is what makes our investment. Opening space is therefore opening time, allowing freedom for our minds and stories to touch our being.

:- Doug.

When you make your Will, are you making a dump cake, or a better future (for your kids, for others)? How wide do you stir?

Are you merely unloading the dump truck, or are you consciously arranging your gifts to have the most good effect?

:- Doug.

In the stream of humanity
roiling, rapids, swiftly flowing
Our paddles are our ears

:- Doug.

This is the sacred realm
The holy of holies
This human being facing, us

:- Doug.

There are miracles among us
When pain expressed is heard
When a hand takes a hand
When the poor converse up a way
When we hear or do or see

:- Doug.

The holy human being
is in our ears
awaiting us to open & hear

:- Doug.