FootprintsintheWind.com

Holy humanity is centered in putting love into play.

:- Doug.

What can I do right now for the good of others, for the good of the whole?

:- Doug.

What makes you think you can tell us how it’s going to be?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1463

Please don’t promise me
to never put me in a nursing home
Instead, take me to visit my old home
bring from there my favorite things
But do not kill yourself
cleaning after me, picking up my weight,
cajoling me to take my meds:
I’d rather have your love
and give you mine
than see you stooped and wrung out
I put myself out for your
excited stories and ouchies
and puppy loves
counting it all blessing
now what I most want
most want to give you is
your hand gentle in mine

Please pass it on.

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The test of caring is the love we put into play.

:- Doug.

Sacred humanity is about more than thinking. It leans toward action. Action is love. Love grows us.

:- Doug.

To converse intimately, deeply:
1. Hear other
2. Hear self
3. Hear both
4. Hear whole

        ____ * ____
      /             \
     *  ←→   *  ←→   *

:- Doug.

the squirrel sniffs past
the shepherd’s crook
holding a bird feeder
must climb
if only because it’s there

:- Doug.

there is less true
and more true
out there than
our minds hold:
less because we
have created stuff
we must jettison
more because we
yet must create stuff
and find the
unknown

:- Doug.

who takes you seriously
you love

:- Doug.

believers don’t bring wars
and other stupidities
so much as literalists
the walking mummified those
who have their own eyes put out

:- Doug.

frost saw fire or ice
christians apocalypse
an end is warning
against icarus and sun tzu
time-bound our minds must also
tell a story of how we started, once
still, fly we must to live

:- Doug.

1. We were a part
2. We saw
3. We thought
4. We rearranged what we saw
5. We came together
6. We rearranged more
7. We thought about our thought
8. We thought about our thought together
9. We rearranged ourselves
10. We create
11. We bring us together

:- Doug.

see movement
drop words
closer holy
~~~
…

:- Doug.

Conversation is not soft so much as subtle.

:- Doug.

Boredom arises from many things but at its root is we are not engaging our creativity.

:- Doug.

Are nursing homes boring? Do they cause people to be bored? Are they arranged for boredom? Do some people who refuse to be bored get labeled as “acting out,” “non compliant,” and get medicated for it? Is this boring arrangement conscious, or simply a failure of our imagination?

:- Doug.

Life, the world,
The all there is
Is my friend

:- Doug.

Give us conversations whole engendering….

:- Doug.

Conversing’s a sun and a prevailing wind curving thinking into a trajectory to serve humanity.

:- Doug.

How might we restore life to those in the nursing home? Do we see folks in nursing homes as dead men and women walking?

We need to assign blame in this to ourselves, and not to society in general: what do we do every day to counter this picture?

Do we speak of “senior moments” as code for memory lapses—or for playing with grandkids? Do we avoid visiting people in assisted living facilities—the modern form of shunning? Do we say “ouch” when someone says something negative about people who have a few years on us, but who are living? Do we find ways to foster their creativity?

:- Doug.

I was wondering the other night about how Bohm’s concentration on thought, and mine on conversation complement each other, fit together. Of course, that is thought at work: saying they have to fit!

:- Doug.

Bohm says thought does something and then says I did not do it. Long ago we recorded messages in our brains, messages which tell us barns are red, and then we treat “barns must be red” as a fact, and don’t see what is really there. We don’t even see we can change red barns back to green. Or into something else entirely, like an invitation.

:- Doug.