FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1004

I’m inviting people to a larger view of the world and their role in it.

Our view of the world is consumerist: we see our role as buying and consuming things so that others might also consume things. This is the highest and best use of humans in our secular belief system in the early 21st Century. What I am inviting people to is foreign to this belief system: instead of eating up our resources and grinding up people, let us see that we are better about giving ourselves to each other. Out not in. Giving not eating.

Our task is to meet each other and get to work: get to work repairing and making whole the world. At any time, we can only be part of what we might unfold, and yet we are not even the part we could be. So let’s invite people to dive in, to give their highest and best—their imaginations and blood—to the task of engaging each other in our world, to the task of engaging the best of each of us.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1003

What’s to like? There are lots of people here who care. They are inventive. They want to help. They are kind. They want to make the world better for themselves and the seventh generation. They are passionate. They are trustworthy. Respectful, good, kind, creative, profound, adult, effective, collaborative, amazing. This I like about them. They are not to be feared, but to be invited. Invited to be who they are at their best.

That’s all we need do: Invite people to be their best.

And love them.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1002

Be not afraid to open to sadness: here life is most real. Be not quick to grasp the first hope. Find what is deepest. What is most telling?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1001

It is autumn: tell us when you see the last robin.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1000

A baby’s smile
for me
G*d is

We disappear, baby and I
leaving only the smile
G*d is

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 999

Ask not
What’s in it for me?
Ask
Who’s in it with me?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 998

How do we find the ground material of the universe in the arms of dementia? The ground material I see as life, as meeting. We then are in the place of meeting ourselves when we no longer have a brain to call our own. This is frightening for those left behind in brains, seemingly unable to follow us. Yet is there a gentle life, a gentle land out beyond the brain where we can meet? What is it like, and how do we find our way?

What does Rumi say?
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

“When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.”

We might say, Out beyond ideas and right thinking and mind there is a field. I’ll meet you there. The world is too full of talk: ideas, language, even the phrase each other, do not make sense.

Where is that field? Who are we if we do not have our accustomed mind? What does it say if we are, even without our thoughts? Who is this potentially happy person, whom can we meet? Who are we?

What is that field? We are already there. Now we only need to find ourselves here. Then we will know. We can know now.

This is tough work, incredibly painful blood-sweating labor.

So it is beyond 88th birthday parties and not fussing about scattered playing cards. It is facing the presence. Facing the absence of what we thought was presence in order to face the real presence. Who is Mom or Dad without a mind? Who am I without my mind? Who are we together? Is there a together that is more fundamental than each of us?

Here we are. We can do no other. We. Are. Love.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 997

Manure not spread just stinks.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 996

The colors of the woods
greens in many tints and shades
browns, reds, yellows
greens of spring
yellows of autumn
browns of bark
browns of death
water reflecting light through colors
blue of sky
and grey
shadows of cool spots
brightness of sun
cool in fall
sultry in summer
here we meet
life becoming sacred

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 995

If we concentrate on what people with Alzheimer’s are missing, on how their “condition” is affecting both of us, we stir up things for them, cause consternation, guilt, inferiority feelings and feelings of things not going rightly. But if we start from love, then we can go smoothly. Paddle in the direction the river is going.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 994

Let work
the process of life
rush it not
let it season
then see

Holiness turns
converses
under the silence
seeks continuing
now see

Silence is work
waiting too
these two calling you
from quickly scattering
to see

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 993

Much of what I long for in the world is summarized in the garden first example: We want and need to belong to the world. We want to be at home in the world. And to do that our buildings need to be at home in the world. So we must first find them a home, a garden, in which to sit and look over the valley and the mountains. If we try to construct a house first, it is ego-filled, and stands in front of the garden, blocking its sunlight, and then we have a garden that is sickly, and a house lacking soul, and a view we care not to see.

So what is the shape of the space we care to see?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 992

Intimacy with G*d
calls me to open
with
even when I do not want to

calls me to open
to joy
to others
with

the white crane lifts off
gently
with my eyes
a part of G*d

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 991

Meetings are sanctification. Take off your shoes; this is holy ground. This is the place of whole-making. This is what the doing is about: making living whole.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 990

How do we infuse joy and love into nursing homes? Into humanly declining abilities?

We have a distaste for seeing people losing abilities after a lifetime of being more. Perhaps it stems from fear of, and therefore a wish to put out of view, our own decline. This might frighten us more than death.

Had an email exchange last night with a friend about this question. She said “I think the letting go of who our family members are while they are still present with us may be more challenging than letting them go after death.”

She spoke of the absence of rituals for this kind of a loss. Might there be some value in developing some rituals for this?

It is a reversal of the development process of babies, and perhaps not so much a reversal but a completion of the bell shaped curve of life.

What rituals can we devise to celebrate the graduation of a fully-functioning adult into loss of those functions?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 989

The itsy-bitsy group climbed up the water spout
Down came the rains but didn’t wash them out
‘Cause they had built a series of aqueducts all round
That watered all our crops and fed the folks all ’bout

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 988

Disorganize the things which are not working.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 987

Some say
An eye for an eye
We invite
An I for a Thou

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 986

Garden first. Lives can be seen in this way. It asks us what is most important about our lives: where is your garden? What adds greenery, oxygen, involves your being entirely, connects you with life itself? Where are you heard, when do you feel whole? Make the space for this first. Then build the rest of your hours, days, and life in ways that makes that garden better and makes those hours good.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 985

Life as I’ve observed it tells me that stopping is stopping. Continue active in life and life will continue active long in you.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 984

There is a “be there” button after all: it is in our hearts. If we can accept that we are on a round ball and we are always starting, then we are always here. And here is where we can have the life we seek. Not just for us individually. But for us as a whole, as a part of The life. So we live it fully. Here. Now. Hear.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 983

Things I have learned from canoeing rivers:

The river does not care if you ride along or fall in.

The white water was a thrill—once you’ve past it. When you’re in it, it is terror.

Sometimes you think you see swift easy passage—only to find yourself lodged on the bottom in shallow water. The only thing to do is to get out and walk on the rocks. Better then if you brought shoes you can get wet.

Although you have a paddle, the river still flows where it wants.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 982

When I ask a question of one or two or three people or small groups, I am instilling just that much space, creativity or life into the world.

Just that little effort, just that much courage, repeated, will do the work.

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© c 2009, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com