FootprintsintheWind.com

Whole-Making is how I choose to practice law.

:- Doug.

What are you up to? How have you lifted your sights?

:- Doug.

What I’m up to is Whole-In-Law!

:- Doug.

We live in a society of distinction. We distinguish things and people in ways no longer visible to us. We distinguish black from white from brown from yellow. We distinguish male from female, high income from low income, safe neighborhoods from poor ones, expensive cars from old beaters, those who fail to signal (rude) and those who drive too slowly (inconsiderate) from ourselves (kind, gentle and caring). If we were to invite them all to a party and mix them together, we would be seen as crazy or even subversive. Yet this is the story Jesus told.

:- Doug.

What is the most loving way to practice Elder Care Law?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1124

Something’s at stake
a little thing done
a hurtful or kind word
& the world stumbles & falls
irretrievably
or stands & walks to run

Please pass it on.

© c 2011, 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

Together you are the salt of the earth: The world about us is icy, throw on your salt, help the melting!

:- Doug.

You’re the same age as your friends going into nursing homes. You know things about them, what they like, jokes they get, what you and they lived through: things their kids—another generation—could never understand. Share those things. Love does.

:- Doug.

How do we get to the deeper with a elder, say in an Alzheimer’s setting? What do they love, what did they love, what would make them more comfortable? Brandy on the gums, a grandchild’s hug, a song to sing, a touch on the hand. Our memory touching theirs, sparking theirs. Our moving into their world, with their world. A conversation about…what is on their heart, without shushing, with a lot of “Say more about that, Dad.” Favorite foods, especially what’s not good for them are what’s really good for them: pork chops with greasy gravy, chocolate, ice cream. A baby doll or a wiggly puppy to hold and care for. Flowering plants to tend, not cut flowers to die too soon (what can those possibly say to one in their setting?). What does love do? Do that.

:- Doug.

The people who usually jump to speak
usually do jump to speak
the quiet ones
usually remain quiet
yet we need their thinking with us too.

:- Doug.

Those who did not speak
Those who did not sing
May, if we consent,
Yet have voice through ours

:- Doug.

Eye alone sees not whole—
we look about us
far as the eye does see
the earth is flat
those stars are there now
people around us are separate
—wholeness requires imagination

:- Doug.

Wintering maple
Birds, thoughts dart in its branches
Do birds flit, or tree?

:- Doug.

Let’s help our family think together about ways to live more fully as family. Nursing homes are not storage bins; long-term care is not all or even mostly about money and disease: these are places people live, and we can live more. Here. Hear.

:- Doug.

The question of nursing homes and their cost is at base a question of relieving worries and opening the family to moving beyond money to meaning.

:- Doug.

How can you help your family be family? To live the possibilities open to you?

:- Doug.

Change heart
& vision
if you
would live

coins, numbers
too cold
life will
be hard
if you
would live

dusty, hard-
packed soil
only this
hoe to
work it
if you
would live

sweat, live
America

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1123

Remind people of their goodness.

Please pass it on.

© c 2011, 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

Lift our hearts to the dignity we give our heads.

:- Doug.

Words
Many
Too

:- Doug.

This is Heaven
This is Hell
And you choose When,
Where now to dwell

:- Doug.

Do you understand? If you have eyes, it’s plain.

:- Doug.

Circle of family
in our beginning
dysfunction? broken?
or simply our reality?
maybe the norm?
see here a rabbit hole of escape
we have supermarket thinking
maybe there is something better
on the next shelf
never can we escape our own life
we ever carry it with us
the stream of our life is one
we come out again
in the same woods we left
to find if we look in time
the light was in the woods
all along
filtered sun
and fireflies

:- Doug.