Author Archives: dgermann
Questions which last
Leo Tolstoy writes in Confession “the thing you call your life will come to an end and with it all your questions.” Might there be questions which last? Questions which query the 300-year grandchildren-elders? Can we offer them these questions … Continue reading
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This grandchild’s art
Make your art to highlight another grandchild’s generative power and art. :- Doug.
Posted in Eldering, Family
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This poem
This poem has come my way up to you now to carry on it and me handing it over to she who will carry us all further still :- Doug.
Posted in Eldering, Poetry
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Questions we cannot answer
If we find the questions we cannot answer, well then! We have found a valuable gift, one to leave to the generations. :- Doug.
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Three enduring things
The ancients said the three enduring things are Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. What are our forms of this? Perhaps truth is our ever ongoing growth, beauty is the ever-widening panoramas, and goodness is the ever-deepening intimacy and conversation with all. … Continue reading
Posted in Conversation, Eldering
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Hears carries traces
So I want to strongly encourage messages to be recorded and sent in many ways. Whomever hears carries on these traces. :- Doug.
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Echoing whispers
Can we communicate with the 300 year grandchildren-elders, back and forth? Who knows if we can, so let’s try! Write letters, record stories and messages. Send thoughts. Pretend it can be. Play with it! If our thought to them left … Continue reading
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Our wider generativity
It is up to us to be the critical mass for deeper community, higher justice, wider generativity. :- Doug.
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Names to your heart
Who are your elder-exemplars? Might you take their names to your heart to carry forward to another generation of elders? :- Doug.
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A model for the elder
The monk or nun in a cell, the guru in the mountain cave: these holding the world to its axis are then a model for the elder: we can hold a world in the palm of our heart…. :- Doug.
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Calls forth rains
The rain does not so much cool the air: incoming cool air meets the warm humid air, calling forth rains. A useful metaphor for ancestors and grandchildren? :- Doug.
Posted in Eldering, Family
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Ever of value
An ancestor reminds me of a chambered nautilus: ever growing, spiraling, without muscular involvement; ever of value for the grandchildren. :- Doug.
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5-level spiral
Our work for the generations spirals us around It, Thou, Us, Poetry, Collaboration. We hold and hear you, grandchild, and together we spiral. :- Doug.
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Hears intimately
The task of the elder is in part holding the grandchildren, similar to how a Quaker might say holding you in the light, or others hold you in their hearts, and somehow more immediate and intimate. The elder hears you, … Continue reading
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“Successful” inapropos
“Successful” seems inapropos of elders; there is here no goal, no reaching, only in higher moments a thrust of the heart For the Grandchildren. :- Doug.
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Elder respect irrelevant
Traditional cultures respected elders in part for what the elders did for the family and tribe: inform of good hunting grounds; share their accumulated agricultural lands; know the signs of the seasons and weather; guide through the spirit worlds. Many … Continue reading
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Grandchildren cannot afford
The grandchildren cannot afford for us to be concerned with respect for the elders—we must be for the generations. :- Doug.
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