Category: General Learning

Zoom has brought many things in life. Yes, non-locality for its excitements and for its challenges. We can show up in each other’s living rooms. We can ask questions together — or personal and of professional natures. We can see some facial cues that add insight. We can enjoy company.

Zoffee and Zeer are a couple of Zoom formats that I appreciate. Zoffee (Zoom + Coffee). Zeer (Zoom + Beer). Both are fun invitations. And tend to signal the desire for a good hello together.

I have a few regulars with friends that I love dearly, yet have not seen geographically for many months or many years. What Zoffee and Zeer do is bring out a playfulness together. And an intimacy. And a geography of the heart. Shared on a screen.

So often, connection is the work. And friendship. And many forms. Simple things that are big things.

I invited a friend to Zeer this week. We met 12 ish years ago. He was a client. I was a facilitator for his group. Friendship arose quickly. And connection. We’ve seen each other in person ten times or so. But it’s been a couple of years. So, Zeer it is.

Anticipation. Zanticipation.

It’s been a full week. A fun week too. I’ve hosted a few groups. I’ve felt much learning.

B & B this week was the format, Pick a Card. I used a new deck, Live Your Values. The richness of the format so often is about bringing curiosity to a life circumstance. The cards offer a lane to explore more kindly within self, and with others.

And then there was my Circle Workshop, Learn (To Be) Circle Here. Such good folk showing up. Some old friends. Some new, wishing to grow in practice and in community.

In the spirit of Start Point and End Point, I invoked (read) excerpts from a John O’Donohue’s Blessing For The Traveler. I loved connecting the blessing to the travel of learning together.

For The Traveler
John O’Donohue

Every time you leave home,
Another road take you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along.

…

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

On we go. Full.

I loved invoking this word, “murmurate” last week. With two groups. Making a noun a verb.

The above image is of Starlings. Flocking. Moving with fluidity. They are a murmuration.

In both settings, I invoked the words as a connection to some basic questions that many of us OD people ask, that many of us complex systems people ask.

How do we go well together
for and with the things and people that we most care about?

And then in my brain, this morphs to a few important sub questions:

How do we learn well?
How do we lift the relational?
How do we open ourselves to what is larger?

All of that takes me back to some early foundation learning with Meg Wheatley (thx again Meg). In the mid 90s after the release of her stellar book, Leadership And The New Science, Meg was bringing forth a game changing narrative.

Organizations are living systems (not machines).

Living systems have a way of organizing themselves (Starlings as an example — don’t seem to have a boss or a planning committee).

If we learned more about how living systems organize themselves,
what would that teach us about organizing human endeavor?

These videos of murmurations are easy to find. It’s a fun moment to get lost in them. And then wonder about such questions.

OK, off into another part of my day. Murmurating.

In 2020 I published this book above, A Cadence of Despair. It’s a collection of poems and essays from a year’s worth of recovery and learning and journalling. It offers voice to some rather difficult times. But then also, voice to the glimpses that begin to show up, that begin to shine up, and point to some integration. It’s a bit raw. A bit clunky. But also has a few really important learnings.

My friend Katharine Weinmann recently shared one of my poems from this book, on her blog. My poem is called “I Suppose”. It was / is some of my clarity on how the inner work must be done in conjunction with the outer work. It’s fun to see words picked up and shared. Thx Katharine.

For inspiration.

I Suppose

I suppose that my hope is that
this inner journey is refining me.

I suppose that my hope is that
I am daring to lean into the wound and anger
of leaving innocence and ignorance.

I suppose that my hope is that
I will find integration and wisdom.

I suppose that my hope is that
I am connected to divinity,
either approved by God, or in sync enough.

I suppose that my hope is that
I am loved and accepted.

I’m becoming aware that this only happens in the external
when it is happening in the internal.