FootprintsintheWind.com

We face what life brings us as it brings us together; we are new every moment and are able to create and mold life every moment. And there is only one life.

:- Doug.

I saw a softness, a gentleness with each other in 9-11, something that was not the same in Sandy Hook—there it was grief and sadness and an emptying. In 9-11 there was a pulling together.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1308

We are whole
as we sit here
Will we be enough?
This we test
if we but up and
throw ourselves in

Please pass it on.

© c 2013, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/301-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

In 9-11
There is a softness
of shared tragedy
more
of shared profundity
roots wrapped & touched

:- Doug.

Life is about life
but more than that it is about love
and even more so love is about
relatedness

:- Doug.

Preacher, teacher, sales professional:
If the only things you have to sell
are fear and guilt
I’m not buying

:- Doug.

As lawyers, and especially together as lawyers, we need to think about what matters to our clients and their families. We cannot heal an individual in isolation: and make no mistake—we are healers: whole-makers. Our clients are pulling together the meaning of their lives. Their families are already grieving their loss. Their family fabric is stretched thin, tired and stressed. All this affects what our clients will decide to let us help them do.

This is the hard work of an elder caring lawyer, the work we sometimes wish we could avoid, but the work where we can make our larger contributions. We can release people from what constrains them and it might not even be what we were trained to think is a legal issue. But we are counselors at law, not of law. We are not computers on a stick. We are humans and last time I looked, we have flesh, blood, and a heart. We are healers of the relatedness of humans. We are all related.

:- Doug.

Anticipation
of trouble
is more
trouble
than the
trouble itself

We’ll face
what comes
when it gets here

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1307

The sky invites us up & out
So for this reason is
A good place to see divinity
The ground is what holds us
& that from which we spring
& to which we return again home
So for this reason
A good place to see divinity
Our skin embraces us
So for this reason
A good place to see divinity

Please pass it on.

© c 2013, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/301-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

I don’t feel like fighting
I don’t want to be a fighter
But sometimes we need to take a stand
& that demands of us our courage
To take a deep breath & speak our selves

:- Doug.

I am responsible though I do not control
I can create that which I will not direct
Community, relatedness, us
This is ever the way
Love demands responsibility and starting
Looks not to results
Bringing a new life into the world
This choice faces us daily

:- Doug.

I could buy a piece of software
that encapsulates someone’s learning
how to do the task I want to do
(But even here I have to study
which to buy
or possibly pay the price
of a poor purchase
—how complex)
Or I could spend the hours
& trials
to acquire the learning myself
Or I could hire someone to
do the computer work
Or I could pay someone to
do the work without computers
Or the task could
simply go undone
Whichever I choose
the learning exacts its price

:- Doug.

I wonder who planted these maple trees, and how big they were then.

:- Doug.

It looks desolate out there. Grey tree branches, wind gusting and running at the trees and buildings, bird feeders and other loose things trying to run away or hide from the wind. Clouds clamped down: there is no escaping the grey, grey everywhere. Still, all this is churning up something, creating a change that will be good, maybe creating a now that is good. We just do not see yet. Maybe we just are not here yet.

:- Doug.

Spiritual is community.

:- Doug.

Spiritual is anything
allowing us to touch
more

:- Doug.

Sometimes I just walk and accept what comes past.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1306

Most problems I have found to have a beginning, a muddle and and end. As a society we seem to be in the muddle of figuring out how we live together in a densely packed pluralistic grouping. Recently we have seen political battles resolve into calcified screaming matches. Some day we will figure how to be softer, gentler, and more humane to one another. We might even dare to become vulnerable.

Please pass it on.

© c 2013, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/301-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Do you consider yourself a spiritual person? About what do you feel particularly spiritual?

:- doug.

Birth & death
—our ultimate times—
we can glimpse ultimacy
glimpse is all we need
to dissolve our other-wiseness

:- Doug.

I work on the spiritual end of life.

:- Doug.

I don’t have the answers, but we together have better questions.

:- Doug.

Listen for the tune not the notes. Hear the story not the things to note.

:- Doug.