Skill to work on
Human is not something we own and do not have to maintain. It is something we work towards. It is a skill we can improve. What are you offering to those following you?
:- Doug.

Human is not something we own and do not have to maintain. It is something we work towards. It is a skill we can improve. What are you offering to those following you?
:- Doug.
Our first step is to ask what have been the wonderful things in your life? What wonderful if anything stemmed from a tragedy? The second step is to explore how those coming behind us can use those stories as a branching off place to make doing human more wonderful.
:- Doug.
What wonderful misses is the sense of conversation within the stream of ancestors. It is perhaps too momentary. Done and gone and no longer having effect. Can we do human wonderfully, and have it stick, or be a jumping off place for even more wonder? How do we get there? What tracks do we leave? What imaginations do we sparkle?
:- Doug.
By moments life happens. By moments change happens. Life changes. Life endures by its changing.
:- Doug.
Perhaps we cannot and even ought not make the whole territory of life wonderful, but we can make districts and gardens so.
:- Doug.
Old people are not the only ones with a long-range view of wonder. It more often comes in later years.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 2094
You, ancient of days
hold something of worth
for those who will come behind you
for those who labor beside youYou, ancient of years
don’t know what you hold
I don’t know what you holdYou, ancient of nows
must find what you hold
of worth
of worth to us
of worth to all of us living
Of worth to all of us who will liveYou, ancient of thens
must invent what you hold
must invent your worth
must invent the worth of all of us living
and who will live
and who ever lived
human or beast or plant or fungalYou, ancient of theres
you know long ago to invent
meant
to find
as well as createYou, ancient of heres
invent what you hold
invent worth
invent life
Please pass it on.
© c 2021, 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
Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com
Freedom is a heavy load few will shoulder for long.
This is a reflection on having closed my practice. During the practice, I had little time to do my reflective work. Now, I have the time, yet the freedom is heavy, and it is hard to push myself to concentrate on what I need and most want to do: instead it is easy to fritter away the opportunities. One person suggested that structure is freeing. Indeed. I need to structure my days around study and writing, walking and talking, chores and poiein.
Freedom is also a heavy load because it is a responsibility. To do something good in the world, better than you have done ever before.
:- Doug.
Art speaks to me of making the workaday into something with a ping, a flourish, a subtlety. Symphony speaks to an uplift of spirit. Meeting calls us to the highest service: to hear.
:- Doug.
Perhaps a story can help unearth it.
What story? What is my story? What pulls and pushes me? Perhaps my own story of having done my duty, but does not break through the soil line. I have not done what I came to do. I have failed, I have only done my duty. Cf Luke 17:10. Only done what was expected of me. This being the case, ought I not seek to push the marble a bit further up the hill? I am a different person each day, and the marble is a different marble each day, and so possible arises.
I worked for almost 48 years in the law, helping clients (those I was called upon to protect) using what knowledge and abilities I had received, and I did this well most of the times. Yet did I do more than restore people to where they were, or help them garner more income, or keep their taxes low? Did I make their lives more meaning-filled, more wonderful? Did I lift life above the mundane, pedestrian existence, to art, and symphony, and meeting?
Art, and symphony, and meeting. This is a Why.
:- Doug.