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The prophetic imagination of elders

:- Doug.

Despair and grief are not the same: we know there is, but cannot see, and do not want, a way through grief to life; we want a way out of despair but expect none. Both lead to giving up; only from grief does giving up provide a healing way through. Despair is a loss of all hope. Grief is a heaviness, a burden we think we never could carry, but somehow do.

:- Doug.

The only question of the elder is, Can you imagine better?

:- Doug.

Eldering is futuring: proposing and imagining futures.

:- Doug.

So I need to model….

:- Doug.

In some things, elders need to be unreasonable: announcing a better world for the grandchildren; playfulness; moaning inhumaneness of our ways. In some they can be reasonable: preserving the old recipes; asking people to think; welcoming all. Even so….

:- Doug.

Announce a newness of time.

:- Doug.

A mind map requires chaos in order to true, to live, to free.

:- Doug.

Elders imagine a future discontinuous with the present, a leap to over there without going through any between.

:- Doug.

Be unreasonable!

:- Doug.

Complaint is the beginning of attention, the beginning of healing.

:- Doug.

The groan of our time includes at least the subjugation of our humanity to consumerism, to Dollars and numbers.

:- Doug.

Grandparents: prophetic voices for our times.

:- Doug.

Many are called and few are choosing.

:- Doug.

I like being my age!

:- Doug.

Humanize our office hours.

:- Doug.

Protests are not to convince the others but to convince our people.

:- Doug.

Elder you are called to use the voice of prophecy, a voice you yourself have seldom heard, but which your core knows.

:- Doug.

Claims of middling society, powers, and authority cannot fulfill their promises.

:- Doug.

Elders have become un-housebroken.

:- Doug.

Elders are here to evoke perception alternative to middling society—an alternative not of degree but of quality.

:- Doug.

Elders are concerned with the future as it meddles in the now.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1738

What is the poetry of a cloudy day?
What lives in clouds
Flies in them
With them
With blue above and green below?
Do clouds encourage us to look
To the holy in each other
In the mud and the weeds
For what is possible
Just here, just now?
Birds still fly
Squirrels still get into mischief
Water still runs downhill
Into still pools
And we still have work to do
Love to make
Friends to meet
Love to make

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