FootprintsintheWind.com

Let us be intentional about our language, speaking of the gentle dialogue and conversing, rather than the violent discussion.

:- Doug.

It’s not important what we say, just that we meet.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1864

After I left our meeting, I had a call for an emergency appointment. The person arrived a few minutes after I got back to my office. Her husband of 40+ years was in the hospital, unconscious. The doctors said he was dying. They were doing no treatment. She wanted to take him home and care for him there with TLC and strong prayer. Let’s grant that prayer changes things. Was the husband wrong? Was his body wrong? Was the trajectory of his living towards dying wrong?

Please pass it on.

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God on our level.

:- Doug.

I wonder: How to help the grandchildren.

:- Doug.

Eldering as spiritual quest, as gift you bestow

:- Doug.

So the lesson today is to write my quest to keep going into spirit. Spirit is perhaps a stream, and there is no way to find the source and the basin draws us. Where does it go? What is useful? It goes where it goes; where it goes is good; it goes on; from there. It is useful by making us useful. It is useful by opening us.

Why and why again. Why is vulnerable opening useful? It makes us bigger, more whole. Whole becoming more.

Can I go from there? I think I can, but it is work, it is pain, it is loss.

The loss of loved ones tears us open with a dull blade. It allows torn flesh to heal to torn flesh. Individuals becoming larger by little, by heaps. Whole becoming more.

:- Doug.

In service to the grandchildren.

:- Doug.

Paddle! Muscle! Rest! Follow the main course around the outside edge of the stream—the straight line only takes your canoe to shallow slow water. Stay to the deep and swift.

:- Doug.

This course will kill you (fire or rust: choose your spiritual oxidation).

:- Doug.

My name
if I grasp it
your name too
grace
temporary grace for

:- Doug.

Your course
temporary grace
renewable daily
permission begets permission
to receive, to give
enter quest
live sacred

:- Doug.

Your course
will teach you
if accepted

:- Doug.

What permissions do you offer grandchildren?

:- Doug.

Responsible to
community
an elder is
and we are
all elders

:- Doug.

Create spaces
pregnant
for holy to fill

:- Doug.

You do not enter
this course
for yourself
see now this course
enters you
set forth for what
the grandchildren carry

:- Doug.

What have I been doing
all these years?
What or who
out that window
will tell me?

:- Doug.

Absorb
the holy
you are among

:- Doug.

Give us your presence in our daily food, your presence in our freedom from debt, your presence in our converse whole.

:- Doug.

Friend, open with me.

:- Doug.

So the divine is buzzing among us. Jesus also said this. We tune into this among, this relating-going-on, and we say things are holy, sacred, numinous, God-with-us. This is the lesson of both the old and new testaments. The divine might arise from us, or might arise with us. The divine is here. The divine here. The divine be here.

So when we circle (have been browsing again in Christina Baldwin’s Calling the Circle), we at least tune into among. We meet.

So converse is way and there is only way. Only among. Only meeting. Only opening. Only vulnerability. Only holy other.

:- Doug.

Just because death comes after age does not mean one causes the other.

:- Doug.