FootprintsintheWind.com

What are the 100 important daily things you want to do up to the moment you die? The things that make living worth going on? Last night I asked this of a group of people and got responses like Ride my motorcycle, Hug my grandkids, Kiss my spouse. Then they went deeper: Go to church, Do for others, Read the Bible, Pray.

As I think about it now, perhaps I wonder: Why is Bible and church and learning to let go important? Why is connection with your loved ones important? Why is it important that you can say “I love you?”

:- Doug.

Love like Jesus on the cross is compassion to the point of giving your all. This lives for ever in us, and resurrects us.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1142

Does compassion make time?

It is a question; it turns back and asks itself of us. It asks if the compassionate person will make time, take time, to be compassionate, but it goes into deeper waters by asking if an act of compassion creates time in the now, if it expands our now.

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

Engaging life we find wholeness
in all
in others
then, in our selves

:- Doug.

Engage life
do compassion

:- Doug.

Particle
is your can-play-dom
Wave
is your dream dreamed among us

:- Doug.

Shoes
for most of us are a choice
What if you could not afford choice
Slippers only handed on by another
Could you still have compassion?

:- Doug.

I will love in my soul
I will love in my home
I will love in my meeting
I will love in our world
& all will be whole
& all will be found to be holy

:- Doug.

Now
Children are free to make noise
& we to make silence

:- Doug.

Wholeness has a place for us

:- Doug.

Today, think of God as
—the holy dimension among us

:- Doug.

• Converse • Make whole • Do compassion •

:- Doug.

Compassion is
our response to
wholeness
&
wholeness’
response to
Us

:- Doug.

Wholeness
a step on the way to
compassion
a step on the way to
wholeness

:- Doug.

Anyone can do compassion in an instant
yet to do it wholly takes a lifetime

:- Doug.

The whole
of wholeness
is compassion

:- Doug.

Conversation
is a path to
compassion

Compassion
is the path to
conversation

:- Doug.

If we are to become whole we must we must get out beyond ourselves.

:- Doug.

Could we be living in a period of great darkness? Could it be our task to give light?

:- Doug.

My work seems to be to go into deeper waters.

:- Doug.

When is it too late to ask Mom or Dad? You can still have a conversation about future medical care with your loved one, even if they are not able to speak with you coherently:

—speak with your siblings about their memories of what Mom or Dad valued

—speak with Mom or Dad about what comforts they want in their days and moments—there can be clues if you listen

—speak with Mom or Dad by way of journaling: have a conversation on paper with them about their wishes and loves; keep asking till you have filled at least two pages

Remember that if you could speak with your parents face to face, you might not get a full explication of their wishes, but have to tease this out over time.

What these methods of conversing are doing is moving us to a different place: a Now space where we can let the years drop away, where we can access memories and living pulses that are still echoing. So there are other ways, if we but hear this stream.

:- Doug.

You have to live your life
You have to find you own path
Through the wood, yet more—
We must become alive together
Creating life out of our Us

:- Doug.

Jesus
not the teacher
not the leader
the first to cut a fresh path
showing us we can clear our
own and be owned by life

:- Doug.