FootprintsintheWind.com

Retaliation makes us less free.

:- Doug.

And?

:- Doug.

Ancestors are called upon to let go of their messages, nay, required. Elders have a story to be told, a story to leave behind. Both carry the story, groundlessly.

:- Doug.

Beyond eldering
to ancestoring

:- Doug.

Your verse will be lost
the melody lasts

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1951

There is no safety
Safety is a lie
Told as if true
Living is mystery
Turning in your hand

Please pass it on.

© c 2020, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Bring humanity more in touch with itself.

:- Doug.

You cannot say it all. Nor can you grasp it all. Only listen to see, look to catch scent, touch to savor, taste to hear.

:- Doug.

Many of us are old; some few of us might become elders.

:- Doug.

I feel I have reached peace, equanimity, with this insight. I can now describe the course: We have an extra 30 years, those of us in this generation. We have a responsibility to the community of the generations to do what we can to bend the arc of humanicity.

:- Doug.

Meet the grandchildren; meet our death and loss; meet our responsibility; muddle around with the message and what gets in the way; come back to Campbell and community; restate the perennial problem of bending the arc of humanicity; it is about community: conversation.

:- Doug.

So the course can be gently guiding us to the realization that 1. We have a responsibility to 2. share the message that 3. we only dimly (if at all) see ourselves. But therein is the message to us: if we do not share our part, we slow the development of the story.

We are in fact in the midst of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, going through the bottom arc, sometimes in one threshold or the other, going through the tests, fleeing, sometimes stealing the elixir. It helps, perhaps, to know that the community of the generations surrounds us, aids us.

Does this end our quest? No, I suspect it sustains it. Humanity is on this quest, humanity may be the quest.

:- Doug.

We cannot find the message but only be a part of the messaging of the community of generations.

:- Doug.

The community of the generations
holds the story
you blindly help to tell

:- Doug.

Rely on the community
of the generations
for we only tell
a part of the story
and this blindly

:- Doug.

Calling forth through story a higher humanity.

:- Doug.

You can fight the pain. You can befriend it. You can give in to it. Or you can meet it without giving it a hat of any color.

:- Doug.

Work with your story: What surprise might it give next? Ask it what is its work? Ask your 300 year grandchild elder what its work is. Wrestle, contend with its effects on your hearers and you.

:- Doug.

What do you wish for your grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren? This we work on.

:- Doug.

At 17 or so, how did you imagine your life would be? Write the story of that imagined life by stages or ages or themes. 10 minutes. Now write the parallel story of how it worked out. What do the 11th generation grandchildren make of this tale of two lives?

:- Doug.

There was a time when you loved me
that time I think is a long now
includes it does this now
just this week you were on a trip
you called me every day
we didn’t know what to say
or I was the one who didn’t
you told me what you did that day
you were light and bright
and happy to talk with me
and I loved you for it

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1950

We have in covid time a season for our minds to lie fallow.

Please pass it on.

© c 2020, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Storytelling is a 300-year quest for the spirit of humanity.

:- Doug.