FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1070

How should we care for our fragile elderly? Tenderly, of course. Lovingly. Provide a level of care higher than nursing homes—someone to wipe their brow, help them clean up and not feel shame if their bowels or limbs or minds are no longer in their control. Watch to see that they are not abused, and instead treated well. Not for reasons of wealth or lack of it, but for reasons of the dignity and importance of life.

But what is the meeting place of finances and the way we care? Some things take money. Some things take care. Some people get confused and think that money can replace care.

One answer might be to remove money from the equation. But turning it over to the financial side of the community, whether the government or private insurers, subjects these our most frail to the economy’s ups and downs. We must open up our hearts and our tenderness first. Then the money will work as needed. The first level of response needs to be caring for life.

Please pass it on.

© c 2010, 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

To throw in utterly our whole selves releases power. The tiny atom, when split apart releases enormous power; when fused with another releases even more. When one is used up, power; when many are dissolved more power.

We are more than we are. But the key is obsession—a totality of the soul forces available to our touch.

:- Doug.

Conversing is by G*d with G*d. G*d is each of us and the all there is; for G*d to speak there is commerce among G*d’s creatures.

So when we converse we are partaking in holy commerce, we are created anew by that holy commerce, each pass. Thus is the way also the truth and the life.

This holy commerce engenders life, a deeper, fierier life. Here we ignite, explode, no longer are but forever change what is. We touch G*d. We are holy, sacred action.

So in conversation, holy commerce, we go through the whole spiral, over and again: It, We, Us, Above, Whole-making. Not we through our struggles and efforts, but G*d through us. We are integral part of G*d, without which no such commerce.

But this is effortless effort: not concerned with finishing the work, merely with doing the day’s labor. We are not instruments rather partners. Fire! Exploding! Shattering! Used up, utterly.

:- Doug.

Unselfed!
a giant, gentle horse
part of
the herd knows
the all there is creates

:- Doug.

Framed in a new frame
our window now a larger panorama
wonders are performed
when I take my part in We
even the frame shatters open

:- Doug.

Something there is
that resides not in
beings but in Being

:- Doug.

Let us get people together for whom giving all is the point of life.

:- Doug.

Never, never power to the people
Nor yet power from the people
Rather power from within the people

:- Doug.

Obedience some say
Is what God needs of us
To my eye that seems tangential
Devotion is too washed out
What looks most true—obsession

:- Doug.

We meet God
When we sit
God is the chair

:- Doug.

You have a large ego
Yes, but what matters
Is the direction of its
Size

:- Doug.

I hear in your poetry anger
In the beat, beat, beating
You have been hurt,
I too am wounded, wounding
Wounding hurts me when I do it
Anger is good, love is bigger
Love stands in anger’s face
Anger spends itself
Love stands
Hugs are bigger than knife blades

:- Doug.

Only all together
Do we begin
To grasp—to release—
The meaning
Of one life
Or one poem
(same thing)

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1068

What confronts us is the need to jump into conversation head, heart and backside.

And yet, and yet, this is no choice, nor effort; it is release: like a two-year-old throwing himself onto a giggling pile of his siblings.

Please pass it on.

© c 2010, 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

Simply meet.

:- Doug.

Such a joyous day
I do not know why
Meeting G-d is it

:- Doug.

Rather than seeing G-d as doing this or that to me, I prefer to see G-d meeting me in this or that, him or her.

:- Doug.

God is this
God is
The whisper distracting me
The rocking of the short legged chair
The chattering of the world around
Most of all
G*d is
This
More than this
G*d is
Here met

:- Doug.

There is more to meet.

:- Doug.

There is a mystery to meeting. Meeting God.

:- Doug.

Remember we are circling, homing.

:- Doug.

There are holy beings in the world and they are you.

:- Doug.

Let us remember the only being, the one and all, the one life. We need remembering the mystery, the depths from which we come and toward which we home, the unknowing going that calls us…and sends us.

:- Doug.