FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1099

Even though you cannot make a Living Will for someone who has lost capacity, you can record now what you and others remember about what they have expressed to you in the past, their likes and dislikes, what they enjoy and value. Call it “Helping us see through Mom’s eyes.”

Please pass it on.

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What is the role of the people who do not want to help each other, who do not want to make things better? Their job perhaps is spreading and using. Those are two different things, but closely related. It takes more people to do these two things than it does to create and to bring people together.

:- Doug.

It is said that “information wants to be free.” But, what of information wants to be free? The saying may in fact be another way to say, We want to help, to communicate, to commune.

:- Doug.

Part of the job of conversation is not just creating, but also spreading what has been created. More folks are needed to spread than to create.

:- Doug.

My spiritual practice is conversation.

:- Doug.

Randomness plays a role in conversation, a role creative, juxtapositional.

:- Doug.

There is a brain emerging when we put several brains together; indeed something more than a brain: an organism: this we did not expect.

:- Doug.

If we want to go to depth efficiently and soon, we need to engage another in the exploration for between, among, poetry, and whole-making. What are the depths between us, among us (invite margins to center)? Where is there poetry that pulls us to worth (move toward worth)? Where is whole-making needed (sharing current stories)?

:- Doug.

Going to depth means connecting with each other, and looking for the betweens, the amongs, the poetry, and the whole-making. We get there faster by perhaps agreeing or allowing the exploration of these betweens and amongs, poetry and whole-making, together.

:- Doug.

Does all depth reside in our centers in other people, between and among? Well, not depth (for there are degrees), but the deepest depths? This I think is almost certainly true.

It is not a question of digging deeper within our own selves, for the depths do not exist there. The depths exist between the mountains. The light shines between the window slats.

:- Doug.

Can we find depth in ourselves? This is attractive, but I wonder. The other person is not just a tool (a sounding board), nor a depth digger (asking questions to help us), but at least a part of our depth, the part that lies between us and among us. We are not without others. If that is the case, we cannot go to depth on our own. We have not deeps without others. The same is true of Whole making: we cannot plumb our own depths if we do not go on to making others whole with us.

So I cannot help someone else find his or her own depths; I can only help us find our common depths, because there is only common depth.

:- Doug.

Our depths are layered among and between us as well as in our poetry.

:- Doug.

Maybe if you want to go to depths, direct is not the way; maybe spiraling and zig zagging are necessary.

:- Doug.

What are the contradictions in your life?

:- Doug.

If you come out of this life with the same ideas and notions you put into it, then you may well have wasted your life.

:- Doug.

My approach to emergent conversation:
1. Gather margins to center
2. Move toward worth
3. Share current stories

:- Doug.

Let the conversation begin and continue ever.

:- Doug.

What matters in the direction you’re taking this world?

:- Doug.

What are you doing that you value?

:- Doug.

Let me tell you part of the story of the universe: of your self and my self. Let us ask this story how we got to where we find ourselves today. Let us look together and see what we can find.

:- Doug.

We try to make the world more simple than it is, to make our job of navigating our time through it easier than it is. That’s not bad on our part, only an alert to watch for more richness—there is more to enjoy and open space for and care for.

:- Doug.

We see from where we stand.

:- Doug.

G*d has soft edges, is more complex than I think.

:- Doug.