The butterflies & the cars
The planets & the stars
The butterflies & the cars
If we are not here for all
The universe, then who?
:- Doug.

The planets & the stars
The butterflies & the cars
If we are not here for all
The universe, then who?
:- Doug.
Salvation is not an individual affair. It is nice to attain union with divinity, but what good does it do for the others? If you do not actively love you are only a tinkling chain. If you do not grow the realm of divinity, what good are you?
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 1253
Mysteries open to me
Flowers in the night
Shadows glimpsed around corners
As I walk toward
They open, they close
My footsteps lay down
New mysteries
All around me
& the world is new each instant
Mysteries open mysteries close
In the sea an eye winking
Please pass it on.
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There are those who see God as the absolutely known. They have “him” pinned down, circumscribed, pictured. This works for them. For me, I must be more open. I am comes forth in mystery, vulnerability, responsivity.
:- Doug.
Meditation/contemplation is time invested in the universe, in the mystery.
:- Doug.
Consider what might be a God’s-eye view of our lives and our families: a pearl upon a strand. Can we see death as a chapter, not an ending? There is one life, and it lives on.
:- Doug.
Your birth and death are each prelude to what happens next—for your family, for our tribe, for humanity.
:- Doug.
For the family, birth or death of one of its members is a chapter, an event to be marked, yet not a beginning nor ending. Something is lost and something gained: through all, the whole grows. How does your family grow by you having passed through?
:- Doug.
Conversing is whole-making. The person conversing is healing…and a healer.
:- Doug.
There are tragedies out there in health care. In a world that says it is about care, how much caring is there?
:- Doug.
Have you had the end of life conversation? If not, when? How will you begin? Whom do you love enough to have the conversation?
Whom among your clients and patients do you love enough to help get this conversation started? No, to insist they start it? To help them start it?
Why do you do anything, if not for love?
:- Doug.
Breathing together, we enact family, we enact together.
Breathing together, we learn the other person, we enter their inside, their way of thinking, being and feeling.
Breathing together, we realize that we are one, that even if we don’t think exactly the same, we are still one and we can love the other person well enough to respect their wishes.
Breathing together, we can see that our differences are not for keeps. Our alikenesses are for keeps.
:- Doug.
There is in doing much ego. Thus there are two fields of doing, the vacuous and the plenary. The vacuous derives from It, the plenary from Poetry.
:- Doug.
If everything is moving, God is the moving, without the “the.” This could be true.
:- Doug.
Life jumps, falls and stumbles; rarely does it run a straight line and never for far. Linear progress is reserved for textbooks but not life. Look to your own life: did you at 16 or 18 or 21 plot that you would be here now? Straight lines are edited in later, but not evident in our days. Life is more gathering clues along the road not knowing which are clues, constantly trying various ones to see what fits, if anything.
:- Doug.
How sure can we be that education is a useful thing to do, if we are after learning?
:- Doug.
We make a response and that lays down a past. Perhaps this is true.
:- Doug.
Do we still work out of “we the people?” Do we believe—do we act like we believe—that the people are wise, that in a “we” is our best course? Do we still share a dream not denominated in Dollars or beer?
:- Doug.
Let us speak of going beyond living in a “normal” (actually subdued, greyed-over) community, where everybody is marching toward the grave with as little pain as possible. Let us speak of having the pain, having the ecstasy, having the full swings of the pendulum, being part of driving the engine and of being the passenger in the party. Let us speak of experiencing the wrenching when one of us is pulled out by the roots from among us. Let us speak of knowing that the love around the death bed is of the deepest nature of being human, the pinnacle of what we might be, to be savored, allowed.
:- Doug.