I’m sitting in the Minneapolis airport, on a layover on my way to La Crosse, Wisconsin. My partner, Teresa Posakony, and I are imagining some of the meeting that we will be co-hosting over the next two days. The people we are working with are women religious leaders for the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. There are 12-14 people. We are preparing for their 2013 General Assembly.
Our design is good. We will spend some of the first day checking in with each other, clarifying a next level of purpose and possibility. We’ll give some attention to what has worked before, what some of the key challenges and issues are for this community. We’ll generate a few ideas that are important. By the end of the second day we will have some sense of plan and skeleton of design for the process leading up to the Assembly.
All good.
As Teresa and I continue to talk, I can feel both of us asking the deeper purpose and intention of what we are doing. We are asking each other what is really possible in working with this group, not only these two days, but over the next year together.
One of those possibilities is about calling in our best attention. Being willing to notice what is holding our attention together. We are both thinking about the morning that we will have. The circle that we will host. Wanting to invite each of these leaders to feel comfortable sharing what has their attention. Whether that be something related to the assembly or not. If it has their attention, they will be giving it energy. I think this is one of the things I most want to build pattern around. Notice what has your attention. And notice how often, that is a gift or doorway related to the work that we are about. I think the assumption is this: “What has your attention is often an offering from the wholeness of the world so that we might just notice how the inner condition is projecting an outer reality. In so doing, we have opportunity to be in conscious relation with that.”
Looking forward to being with this gang the next two days.
