“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof.”
― Barbara Kingsolver
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Photo by: Beorange
What do I want badly enough to invest in pursuing it—in spite of the obstacles and competing claims on my time and attention, in spite of the risks and the guarantees of uncertainty, in spite of the risk of rejection and the possibility of failure?
I have asked this question for a couple of weeks running. I offered a few thoughts from a Barbara Kingsolver quote to get the conversation started: “elementary kindness…enough to eat, enough to go around… the possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed.
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I ended my last post with the question: What do we want badly enough to pursue it? Barbara Kingsolver gives us some ideas in Animal Dreams.
“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what to hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
All the wisdom and spiritual traditions give us beautiful things to hope for—completion, salvation, an end to suffering, a world of beauty and peace.
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I am honored to be part of a listserv called “The Gamechangers Salon,” there is brilliance and passion in it. There is also a lot of anger these days, particularly given recent events in Washington. Following is my recent contribution to the conversation, coincidentally, my colleague Cynthia Silva Parker, just wrapped up her blog series on Power & Privilege with a post on Pursuing – something in the air at IISC! Here is my post:
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A couple of weeks ago I was an enthusiastic participant in our sister organization Interaction Associate’s most recent offering in their LeaderLens webinar series. The featured presenter was Erik Gregory, a specialist in positive psychology. With roots in the theories and practices of Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Erich Fromm, positive psychology focuses on the study of human strength and virtue, rather than pathology. This includes looking at what explains resiliency, courage, optimism, and hope, even in the most daunting of circumstances. Read More
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HOPE
Either we have hope within us or we do not.
It is a dimension of the soul and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world.
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We at IISC are big fans of the work of John McKnight and Peter Block, some of us even have some bones to pick with them – but that’s the best sign of admiration! In this blog post, originally appearing in the Huffington Post they bring a very different and appreciated perspective.
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Talk of tending to our “interior condition” has been in the air and very active on this blog the past couple of weeks (see “What Love Looks Like in Action,” “Between Hope and a Hard Place,” and “Meditation for the Love of It”). In all of these posts there is a thread that makes the point that focusing on our inner selves, expressions of empathy, and cultivating mindfulness and deep connection to self and other(s) are vital to the work of transformational social change. In line with all of this, I’ve been re-reading a wonderful book that speaks about why and how we should make considerations of our individual and collective interiors central to our work.
In Inside-Out: Stories and Methods for Generating Collective Will to Create the Future We Want, Tracy Huston, coach, consultant, and founder of the Menlo Lab, speaks openly about her initial skepticism about and evolving embrace of focusing on the self. Huston enumerates the following five practical reasons why tending to our interior conditions makes sense (I have added some of my own editorial comments): Read More
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In her keynote address at Boston’s Martin Luther King, Jr. breakfast, Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry invited us to consider the meaning of Dr. King’s 1967 book, Where do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community (excerpt here) at in this political moment. She reminded us what was going on in 1966, as Dr. King wrote. The Freedom Movement had achieved many legal and legislative victories by then, (Brown vs. Board of Education supporting school desegregation and the Voting Rights Act to name just a few). The Movement and its victories created justifiable hope that the lives of people on the margins of our society could improve. At the same time, poverty and racism still created the need for continued struggle. By 1966-67, many felt their hope was no longer justifiable in the face of violent backlash and intractable injustices. In the face of withering criticism including charges of cowardice, Dr. King continued to urge the country toward community rather than chaos, without shrinking back from the justice issues before him. Read More
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Another school year begins and with it we students of life are filled with excitement and perhaps some nervousness about what will be asked of us. For me, I look forward to work that will keep me deeply aligned with purpose and, yes, challenged. No doubt there will be moments when my outlook will be buffeted. I will admit to being someone who in the genetic cortical lottery was not bestowed the rose colored glasses. It’s not that I didn’t get a winning ticket, I just have to work for my earnings.
And as I have blogged about in the past, I am aware and research shows that keeping a net positive outlook can be critical to heightening collaborative outcomes and staying engaged in the tough times. So what are some steps for staying on point without veering towards disconnected or disconnecting pessimism? Read More
Leave a comment“The seeds of Reunion are sprouting everywhere. That which was hidden for millennia is coming to light. Soon, fertilized by the detritus of our decaying civilization, the sprouts will mature, bloom, and bear fruit. Our job is first to receive them, then to spread them everywhere and to guard and foster them with every ounce of our love.”
– “Three Seeds” by Charles Eisenstein
It’s awfully hard to read the news these days, especially if one is tuned in to the scientific and environmental communities:
“Northern Hemisphere Temperatures Shatter July Record”
“Declining Phytoplankton Another Sign of Climate Catastrophe”
“Climate Change and Illegal Logging Could Wipe Out Rainforest Wildlife by 2100” Read More
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