FootprintsintheWind.com

We are the new fourth generation.

:- Doug.

Elder us to open to
the heart of the matter

:- Doug.

Elder years offer new callings of old people.

:- Doug.

Old age might be exiled in strange lands—or it could offer a fresh and long view to those rushing they know not where.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1824

The essential sacredness of the elders is most present in the most frail. How is this true?

Please pass it on.

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In our younger elder years, we ought open our eyes to our beginning elder status. We can then work out what eldering means.

:- Doug.

Reading in Simone De Beauvoir’s Coming of Age today. It seems that old age was almost always a matter of economics: the useless mouth did not get fed. It was resented. When the older person was able to retain ownership (ownership is a new concept in the long sweep of history), then he (usually, he) was able to guarantee his food supply, and good treatment. But if not, the older person was killed or neglected to death.

But now we have the ability, in our affluence especially, to convert our long view to value for the generations. We are useful mouths/heads/dreams/spirits.

:- Doug.

Anything you can write about old age, the opposite on the color wheel is also true; and all the other hues.

:- Doug.

The soul may be relation: between body and wind; among living beings. Now we do soul; are in soul; we grow in soul with. Can we see we share soul?

:- Doug.

Hold not O elder
Give with open hand
Dream the big dream
Imagine for us pull us
Toward highest and best

:- Doug.

We are the world’s first elder generation.

:- Doug.

We cannot control the world, at our age. We now know that we never could, nobody can. We ever only can guide.

:- Doug.

Will we ever get to leaven?

:- Doug.

Enjoy your clouds and dark: the world needs blankets and rest.

:- Doug.

Instead of holding someone in the light, we might receive their light, opening a flow.

:- Doug.

Pick one turning point of your life and tell us the story of that still place upon which it turned.

:- Doug.

Tell me an elder story—a remarkable dying, a presence beyond doing.

:- Doug.

In past, aged contributed memory and experience to their community: now, we contribute imagination, too. Imagination for the longer view; imagination for a future breaking away from the present. Only the elders have this imagination.

:- Doug.

Storytelling is about generativity.

:- Doug.

A turning point is reached when in our young old age we realize there is a deeper responsibility than just having an active retirement.

:- Doug.

What is the turning point of this story?

:- Doug.

Games are stories, too!

:- Doug.

Stories live on the rim of a precipice.

:- Doug.