Keep Dancing

June 5, 2013
by
Leave a comment
Dancing Feet

|Photo by Joanna DeSilva|http://www.flickr.com/photos/22699882@N05/3925277668/in/photolist-6YS5ib-731gRb-7xiBcx-a1ytiD-7CaEeJ-ajVWkp-98jyKZ-dpFP4y-a4Kv9w-a8mSWm-a4Kth5-c3wLoG-7UDmJg-cJkmD7-7MfYHF|

I read a quote earlier this week that I had seen before that went something like, “We need to act our way into a new way of thinking.” Indeed, increasingly what seems to be called for is the practice of prototyping and risk-taking, breaking the more linear and often drawn out process of plan-act-reflect-refine. This poem by Mary Oliver, from her book A Thousand Mornings, captures something of this spirit for me:

“Three Things to Remember”

As long as you’re dancing, you can break the rules.

Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules.

 

Sometimes there are no rules.

You might also like...

  • Networks for Change: Growing Gratitude
    “Grateful living brings in place of greed: sharing; in place of oppression: respect; in place of violence: peace. Who does not long for a world of sharing, mutual respect, and peace?” –Brother David Steindl Rast The...
  • Planning vs. Doing?
    It often emerges as a core tension in our complex multi-stakeholder change work.  It’s embodied in comments such as, “Let’s stop all this talking and start doing something!”  Or, “I’m not a big process person, I...
  • A Ritual to Hear Each Other
      The last few weeks I have recited on a number of occasions the following first stanza from William Stafford’s poem, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other” If you don’t know the kind of person...
  • Honeybees Build Consensus so Why Can’t We?
    One of the many things I appreciate about adrienne maree brown’s new book, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, are the questions she asks over and over again: what are you learning from nature? how does...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Authors