FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1945

Is this pandemic an interruption
Or is it our generation’s main path?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1944

Withdraw your last three thousand
To spend on something very very kind
Your old ones have a seed within
Your young ones have so seldom heard
Water the seed with far-sight
Place stories in the young ones’ ears—
Upon the ancient hills
Winding among the old growth trees
Thigh-deep cross the crashing waters
Beside the crackling campfires—
Walk with them barefoot

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1943

Kids need to learn. Grandparents need to nurture. We need to meet.

We could video record ourselves reading a book for the grandkids. We could do this for our grandkids to start: take the load off their parents trying to home-school. We could post to some Web video sharing site. We could have a video conference meeting on what we could do. (I’m planning one; do you want an invite?)

What ideas do you have? Please email me with those and tell me what you will do this week.

Please pass it on.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1942

Saw a news story last night about youngsters playing music and singing on videos for oldsters. It triggered for me stories I had seen about prisoners recording bedtime stories for their children, and about grandmothers tutoring children half a world away. Our elders in isolation could do similar things, spelling parents from home schooling tasks, perhaps. Telling stories of how things were in the past (reminiscent of The Foxfire books), recounting the library that each oldster is. Recordings of these could go in the family and community archives.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1941

If it’s going to do us any good, this pandemic will have to last a good long while.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1940

The sun came up this morning
The water yet crashes over the falls
Birds to one another call today
Yes they know of our fright-filled disease
In some deeper longer knowing
~~~
There is a stream beneath that holds as one
The crashing waters and the still
~~
Like a dream our old life vanishes
Shouldn’t this crisis be slowing to a calm?
~
There is a stream
We’re of this stream

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1939

What are the real dangers of the world around us? Bullets? Diseases? Our shrinking from loving?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1938

Have faith in your doubts. I doubt we are a people as divided as we are telling one another.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1937

Four times we might just live
once in experiencing
twice in writing reflectively
thrice in rewriting for the generations
fourth when another reads the lesson we did not see

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2023

Stories that change the world, myths, and lives of great people have movement in common, the lead character comes out changed at the end. There is a crisis. They grow up. They also lead. They find a new idiosyncratic way. The cost is dear and what is purchased is unknowable. The only bid that will be accepted is to paddle over the waterfall.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1936

There is a cheap hope, a hope for results. It is cheap because it denies anything will get in the way. It is cheap because it brings fear on the other side of the coin, therein devaluing the hope. There is a dear hope, the deep “ability,” as Vaclav Havel wrote, “to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.” This deep hope is anchored not in outcomes but in work for specific people.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1935

Not our words
are we elders
to generations
of grandchildren
more a
tune in the wind
needing a practiced ear
and do we
practice giving
our ear
to our ancestors?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1934

Disease Divorce Debility Death
Fillet us, saw us open
Raggedly, display our gizzards
Here meet profundity
The curious craft of vulnerability

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1933

Here’s the fact: we are falling apart, we are evaporating. How do we use this fact to teach? Not to teach, to lead? Not to lead, to inspire? Not to inspire, to befriend? Not to befriend, to walk alongside? Not to walk alongside, to be silent together in the face of mystery?

Please pass it on.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1932

She waged an heroic battle against her disease, we say. Why give disease that much power? Can we find some stories to tell, some conversations we need with which to embrace one another?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1931

The call of the elder may just be to live life as it comes to us, thinking in our every day of the later and earlier ones and our responsibility to them, knowing our own failures and successes are all part of the wrinkles of life, of what gives the wonder to it.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1930

Inseparable threads entangled
Weft: eldering is about gratitude, despair,
being turned, going forth:
entwined we are a green thread,
a red, a brown, yellow, blue, ochre
Warp: loving, conversing always!
story, spiritual discipline:
threads, gossamer and brilliant
So what about these others:
neither warp nor woof
angling across, bringing us a chuckle?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1928

When we look
into the eye
of the one
facing us
we can find
much
to
fear
…
fear
respect
admire
love

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1927

Across the stages, elders are etherealizing: getting larger and more capacious until they are indistinguishable from the mystery.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1926

We had thought the machines might take over our world, our minds. Recent news of robots made of living cells (frogbots/xenobots) and living concrete made from bacteria, suggest something other: life might take over machines. Or some other permutation you won’t think of while pondering this.

Then ponder further: in 300 years our grandchildren will be living in such a world. How can what stories you tell this day, what you write or think deeply about, be of help to those grandchildren living in such a world?

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I’m not demented—I’m augmented!

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1925

I’m not demented—I’m augmented!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1924

In years
noticing our profound gains
choosing profound giving

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1923

Death is not a risk
It happens to us all

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