On a recorded interview for Healing Circles, Christina a Baldwin and Ann Linnea are sharing reflections and stories. The interviewer (and Co-Director, Healing Circles Global) Diana Lindsay asks Christina and Ann to talk the relationship between circle, language, and story. I’ve known Christina as friend, mentor, elder, colleague for 20+ years now. She has a gift in metaphoric imagery. She says, “If language were a human body, story would be the spinal chord.”
Yah, that’s a zinger.
Because, I so relate to so much of the work that I do with teams and groups as being connecting in our stories. It’s saying hello, over and over again. It’s coming to love and contribute to relationships, over and over again. It’s paying attention to what changes, inner and outer, over and over again. The vitalness of spinal cord in groups — invitations and contexts to share and wonder together on arising meaning and purpose. Yup, yup.
Shifting — Last week I participated in a call with several authors and contributors of the Change Library (my contribution was a co-authored piece with Chris Corrigan on The Art of Hosting). One of the leaders of that group, Dave Fearon, invited us each to speak to our “callings” as writers. Fun invitation. I spoke of my need to write as a way learning and being present, particularly through poetry.
But here’s the few phrases that emerged out of it all. “For those of us called to write, when we say yes to that nudge, we write, but also, the words write us.” Oh, so sweet. I known this feeling well. And then, couldn’t help myself…, I stretched that to, “For those of us called to offer artistry, when we say yes to that nudge, “we art,” but also, “are arted.” What a thing to give to such flow.
Zinger.
Last phrase for today. A man was sharing a simple view of life phases. He said, the first stage(s) are about acquiring information, and knowledge, and skills. And then, with age, comes the time for distilling and sharing.” It was lovely to hear. I know it was spoken genuinely. As before, I couldn’t help but belly check another layer of that, beyond acquiring and sharing. For some, with deep love of life, be become that wisdom (think Matrix and Neo becoming the Matrix), we just live the imprint, we live the energy. We are it.
OK, phrases, a few of them. Lately. They move me. They remind me of these essential practices of being — sharing and hearing story, being moved and changed by life that wants to flow with and through us, and becoming, as is so much the programming that I wish to offer, more aware and awake, inner and outer, now, and into the longer arc.
