I was thinking today about a book by one of my teachers, David Reynolds, “Water Bears No Scars.” It’s a beautiful metaphor for the reality of flow that, on any scale, holds onto no scars from past wounds. As luck would have it, most of our physical self is water. We just need to remember that.
It’s interesting how, when we’re taking a deficiency perspective, the lens is so narrowing, it makes us literally unable to see what’s in abundance right in front of us. We miss the obvious because we lack the brain connections that exist with an appreicative lens that allow us to see the obvious we otherwise miss.
This is why in the civic space, it’s futile to keep pointing out the (appreciative) obvious to people with deficiency blindness. The only way to help them regain their vision is to keep helping them practice an appreciative lens so they can build the brain connections that allow this kind of vision in the first place.
The awareness that we are always an intrinsic part of a larger truth and beauty reminds me of a Zen koan:
How can drops of water
know themselves
to be a river?
Whether we’re talking about individual, organizational, communal, or national scales, we need to explore and discover the difference between anger and passion. One is heat without light; the other is heat and light.
Then we can notice that in the long run, fear implies more risk taking than courage.
Over the past many years, I’ve been in so many public venues where the whole group is white and there is one African-American person participating. Today, I was the single white member in the converse.
What was interesting was how many of the same experiences of parents, families, and friends we shared in 1950’s Cleveland neighborhoods fragmented into a rich mosaic of distinct ethnic neighborhoods. It reminded me of the first lesson in diversity I remember as a young child in the formative years of my social DNA.
After long 7-course, Italian Sunday meals at my grandparent’s, the adults would wax on with stories and commentaries. When they arrived at talk about people unlike us, my grandfather would chime in with one of his favorite mantras: It’s takes all kinds to make the world go ’round.
It’s like an aspen forest, where all trees are traced to the same roots.
I still do a fair number of public leadership workshops for universities who don’t always package things in a market attractive way. I suggested recently with half tongue-in-cheek that we might consider inserting sticky descriptors like “Naked” in front of program titles (”extreme” is another alternative). So we would see webrochures listing things like “Naked Supervision 101″ and “Extreme Time Management.” Now, delivering on the marketing promise creates a whole other set of pedagogical design decisions.
Some days, it’s not about passion and courage. It’s not about heroism and drama. It’s not about slaying dragons or conjuring exotic visions. Some days, it’s not about transcendence or transformation, not about being better than anyone who came before you.
Some days, it’s simply about delicious acts of doing simple things, simply.
Chatted with friend Judy tonight about my doing some photo work in Amish country here yesterday. I’m working on a collection of photos for a new book project.
She’s spent a lot of time as a never-really-accepted yet embedded Yankee in the Amish communities treating psychiatric disorders, which she says, along with epidemic proportion genetic disabilities, are rampant in the Amish community that has gene pools shrunken to high risk levels. It is a testament to the power of cultural beliefs and norms that value compliance over communal health and sustainability. Not unlike the cultural norms and beliefs that continue to fuel the global meltdown and escalating terrorism we’re currently engaged in.
I’m beginning to suspect it’s not as simple as “education.” I think it’s nothing less than a spiritual transformation, which is exactly what we all need to get busy learning how to create if we’re really committed to healthy, sustainable communities and planets.
In the line over from me yesterday at the store, a toddler sans nap was obviously struggling and failing to stay beneath his mother’s stress threshold. As his pleas started to crescendo, his mother rifled back in harsh tones, “I’m not happy with you”, sending him reeling with words barely discernable through the sobs: “But I want you to be happy with me …”
The heart,
stretched too thin, must again
find its center.
