FootprintsintheWind.com

Who here cares how people die?

:- Doug.

What if we invited a room full of “California Daughters” to talk about end of life care for Mom and Dad?

:- Doug.

How can we collect good and bad death data from local hospitals and nursing homes?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1315

We cannot alone hope to make
the decisive move
The tragedies humans are
bringing our way
are too entangled
We can but write a word,
plant a tree,
start a conversation
We have lost the right to hope
for an outcome
Now we must hope
with a new quality

Please pass it on.

© c 2013, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/311-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

There is a swirl of name-words
A circle, a spiral
Divinity, Love, Life…
Shot through
This our one-story world

:- Doug.

How do you want to die? This goes deeper than Where and With whom? What is important about dying: fighting all the way? Not for me and I suspect for most folks. Going gently, comfortably, without violence, without strife. Here is a place for practical peace.

:- Doug.

Is how we get to die simple, complicated, or complex? So, should our response, our thinking ahead, match?

:- Doug.

Can we be prepared for any—our—death? What then to do?

:- Doug.

What’s to hope for? How does our society view death? Is death always bad?

:- Doug.

I represent dying people…to you
I represent your mother, father, sister, husband, wife
I represent the older you to you
Generations of dying people—us
To us
Asking us to consider what is a good death
& how we can get more of us there
When it is our turn

:- Doug.

Tell us a story of someone who died well…. Tell us what the people around that person did to help make it good.

:- Doug.

If life’s uncertain
we can take the chance

:- Doug.

Through you that life may flourish

:- Doug.

I need your help to identify elders who bring wisdom and a longer view to those around them and the world….

:- Doug.

I’ll tell you what is Heaven:
It is “The Music of the Night” in Phantom of the Opera
It is the caress of a lover or a mother
It is a hug around the neck by a 4-year-old
It is a tearful happy funeral
It is all around us
If we open to it

:- Doug.

We cannot fail because we refuse to commit our souls to outcomes. Instead, we work for the possibility of loving.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1314

In inviting
and freeing
and calling home
the One says
Let there be inclusivity
and dreaming big dreams
give to all sustenance
tomorrows without debt
worlds of whole-making conversing
for this is a
fertile can-do-dom
powerful loving
and glorious singing
from gathering to loosening!

Please pass it on.

© c 2013, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/311-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

* is about
our everyday
surprise & creativity
beyond picturing
loving the immeasurable
doing the unpredictable
universal deepening
nuance
calling out our madness
being weak with us
loving
observing larger
drawing out our largeness

:- Doug.

This business of theology is to come up with a picture of the logic of God. Yet, the task is impossible: God wants no image made; any picture is a construct of the variegated human mind so no final picture is possible; God is ever larger than any work. And yet this work has chosen me.

:- Doug.

We move apart
We move together
A respiration
& all this movement
in relation
this together has a name
*

:- Doug.

My job is not to make the symphony
only to play my instrument
Our job is not to make the vision happen
only to play our role

:- Doug.

* might be seen as self
a conscious stream flowing
over mountain rocks
& lowland fields
& milky surges of stars above
seeking the best for—loving—
each of its plenitude of drops
& rivulets & bursting buds
more than—and even—a collective
conversing of many currents
in dreams & visions catching dew
& grain of sand & sidereal speck
to carry us along

:- Doug.

Can we live without hope—
That is, with a
Different kind of hope?

:- Doug.