|Photo by aldoaldoz|http://www.flickr.com/photos/aldoaldoz/2340226779|
Since February I’ve been experiencing back pain in a constant and distracting (though not quite incapacitating) way, a result of having poor posture at the computer, not taking enough breaks while sitting, lifting too many small children, and being another year older. A couple of months ago I went to a chiropractor and he did his best to wrench me back into alignment. This worked for a few days, and then things were back as they were. I enlisted the help of a “deep tissue” masseuse who went after my back muscles with steady steam rolling force. Again, for a few days I was on top of the world, and then it was back to square one. Then, about two weeks ago, I started seeing a physical therapist, who has given me some gentle stretches and postural shifts and done light massage on my left shoulder. Et voila, real progress! Small and subtle shifts have yielded major and lasting results.
There’s something about the word and notion of “sufficiency” that I love. Years ago, while living in France, I learned to enjoy the way the words “ça suffit” roll off the tongue. The term and idea resurfaced for me recently when I learned about the Third Annual Global Sufficiency Summit that was held here in Cambridge, MA in April. It has come up again while reading the newest book by Wayne Muller, whose writings were a helpful guide to me during my time in graduate school. Muller’s A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough focuses squarely on the question of how we go about determining what is sufficient in different areas of our lives. He suggests that our failure to consider or know how to address this question has contributed to putting us in individual and collective dire straits.
|Photo by Scarleth White|http://www.flickr.com/photos/iloveblue/3302032125|
Thanks to Ginny McGinn of the Center for Whole Communities for introducing me to this poem by the Chilean biologist/philosopher Humberto Maturana. We used it to launch this week’s The Masterful Trainer workshop, and it generated some wonderful reflections on the role of teaching, training, facilitation, and leadership in this day and age. Enjoy . . .
The Student’s Prayer
Don’t impose on me what you know,
I want to explore the unknown
and be the source of my own discoveries.
Let the known be my liberation, not my slavery.
The world of your truth can be my limitation;
your wisdom my negation.
Don’t instruct me; let’s walk together.
Let my riches begin where yours end.
Show me so that I can stand
on your shoulders.
Reveal yourself so that I can be
something different.
You believe that every human being
can love and create.
I understand, then, your fear
when I ask you to live according to your wisdom.
You will not know who I am
by listening to yourself.
Don’t instruct me; let me be.
|Photo by Scarleth White|http://www.flickr.com/photos/iloveblue/3302032125|
Thanks to Ginny McGinn of the Center for Whole Communities for introducing me to this poem by the Chilean biologist/philosopher Humberto Maturana. We used it to launch this week’s The Masterful Trainer workshop, and it generated some wonderful reflections on the role of teaching, training, facilitation, and leadership in this day and age. Enjoy . . .
The Student’s Prayer
Don’t impose on me what you know,
I want to explore the unknown
and be the source of my own discoveries.
Let the known be my liberation, not my slavery.
The world of your truth can be my limitation;
your wisdom my negation.
Don’t instruct me; let’s walk together.
Let my riches begin where yours end.
Show me so that I can stand
on your shoulders.
Reveal yourself so that I can be
something different.
You believe that every human being
can love and create.
I understand, then, your fear
when I ask you to live according to your wisdom.
You will not know who I am
by listening to yourself.
Don’t instruct me; let me be.
“If you bring the appropriate people together in
constructive ways with good information, they will create
authentic visions and strategies to address the shared concerns of their organization or community.”
—David Chrislip
Clearly I am no Chris Jordan. Thankfully, along with the talented and committed Mr. Jordan, there is a group of conscientious elementary school students in Grafton, VT who have taken it upon themselves to create the kind of display captured in my home movie above that conveys in a visceral what our reliance upon plastic bags means in this country. The students strung together 2,662 bags, enough to ring two large fields. This is the number of bags that Americans are calculated to dispose of each second.
“If you bring the appropriate people together in
constructive ways with good information, they will create
authentic visions and strategies to address the shared concerns of their organization or community.”
—David Chrislip
Clearly I am no Chris Jordan. Thankfully, along with the talented and committed Mr. Jordan, there is a group of conscientious elementary school students in Grafton, VT who have taken it upon themselves to create the kind of display captured in my home movie above that conveys in a visceral what our reliance upon plastic bags means in this country. The students strung together 2,662 bags, enough to ring two large fields. This is the number of bags that Americans are calculated to dispose of each second.
|Photo by DonnaGrayson|http://www.flickr.com/photos/donnagrayson/195244498|
I have been struck by how much guidance an enlightened parenting concept I recently learned offers to the work of leadership and facilitation. The concept comes from a book that a neighbor lent to my wife and me as we were beginning to think more about how best to address some our 4 year old daughter’s testing of limits.
|Photo by Kevin Krejci|http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinkrejci/4217559275|
“Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something the world didn’t know it was missing.”
-Paola Antonelli
The other day I was clearing out some file drawers at the office in advanced preparation for our impending move into Boston this summer, when I came across a 17 year old paper written by Interaction Associates founder David Straus. This paper’s date times with the founding year of the Interaction Institute for Social Change and speaks to the longer historical roots of the Interaction methods that IISC and IA share. As I read the paper, what struck me most was David’s very early recognition of the interconnections between design, thinking, and cognition.
|Photo by cat's_101|http://www.flickr.com/photos/danseprofane/4349608/|
On the heels of a very rich Whole Measures training last week, along with a beautiful weekend spent largely outdoors, I have been reminded of the power of poetry and paying attention as means of creating individual and social shifts. As part of our opening during last week’s training, we invited pairs to read a selected poem to one another, paying attention to any feeling they had in their bodies while doing so, and then speaking to their partners and then the whole group about the impressions with which they were left. The exercise was a great illustration of how we can tap into the different dimensions of social space to open people to new ways of seeing, being, and doing, and to what really matters most. So what better way to start off the week than with a little poetry that speaks to what is simultaneously obvious and often missed in our lives? Read More
|Photo by woodleywonderworks|http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/2223340202|
Last Thursday my IA colleagues Ashley Welch and Andy Atkins and I teamed up with David McConville of The Elumenati and Ned Gardiner of NOAA to take a group of cross-sectoral leaders and thinkers on a unique journey. This trip included a visit to the outer edges of our universe, passing through our solar system, galaxy, and neighboring galactic bodies. Then, out of breath, we zoomed back in to take a new look at our planet Earth through the lens and visualized overlay of data about our terrestrial home – warming trends, population density, biodiversity and traffic patterns. Welcome to the GeoDome!
|Photo by laurenatclemson|http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenmanning/2319032882/in/photostream|
A couple of weeks ago, during a training with early childhood advocates from around Connecticut, an interesting conversation ensued about vision. This was prompted by one participant’s comment that in this day and age, “There is no such thing as vision. There is no such thing as magic or miracles. People are cynical. People just don’t respond to vision anymore.” There was some immediate push back to this comment, and also some acknowledgment that vision may not be what it used to be, thinking of the old standards a la MLK and JFK.
Many of us here at IISC were taken with Peter Block’s book, Community: The Structure of Belonging, and you have no doubt heard it referenced in other posts or ensuing conversations on our blog. At this point our couple of office copies have been through many hands, bookmarked, underlined, and are readily referenced in work with partners and clients. One of the most profound parts of the book for me is where Block makes the point that we often think of the future as this far off thing, and subsequently make our meetings and community gatherings all about planning for that eventuality. What we miss is the opportunity to manifest a piece of that future now.
