A Little Potpourri

A little potpourri today.

I’ll start with this Buffalo Style Drum. I’ve had it now for 15 years. I purchased it at a shop with many such drums. I made the drumstick. It’s willow from my back yard, and leather from the same shop that the drum came from. I love this photo — intersecting lines, marks on the hide, shadow. I love the symbol of drum — heartbeat so often for me. I love the invitation of the drum — simplicity, rhythm, heart, belonging through sound and through ceremony.

A little potpourri today.

I started re-reading Terry Tempest Williams last night. “Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert.” She’s a Utah person. I like it that her words bring me a little further in to my home geography. I love her invitation to story and to love.

“Beyond the junipers and pinions of this starless night, I face the deep stare of darkness. This wildness cannot be protected or preserved. There is little forgiveness here. Experience is the talisman I hold for courage. It is the desert that persuades me toward love, to step outside and defy custom one more time.” (p 208)

“Story bypasses rhetoric and pierces the heart. Story offers a wash of images and emotion that returns us to our highest and deepest selves, where we remember what it means to be human, living in place with our neighbors.” (p 3)

Yes. This is so deeply human, isn’t it, to be persuaded toward love and to live in such remembering and in such kindness.

A little potpourri today.

And then there is workshop design. I’m in some of it for two groups of people. I’m usually looking for some sweet spot with such offerings. On the one hand, I feel that my job is to meet them where they are, offering skills and orientations to do their work well, and to be in community well. On the other hand, I feel my job is to meet them where their hearts aspire and long. Through simple things. Through simple invitations. Through simple clarity.

My work can’t be void of poetic heart. This I have learned. It’s grown in my writings over the years. Yet it has roots back to the beginning. All of my work with key lineages — Berkana and living systems with Meg Wheatley, Circle with Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea, and The Art of Hosting with Toke Moeller and Monica Nissan — they have all been growing patterns that point to love and to story.

Hmm…, I suppose I say all of that now, because I feel myself at yet another passage of murkiness growing toward clarity.

A little potpourri today.

I’m glad for the drumbeat of it, even when I can’t quite find the words. I’m glad for other dear ones that know just how to jump in.

A little potpourri today.