In three days I’ll be hosting a weekend event at my home. That’s my living room pictured above. Readied and rearranged a bit to accommodate eight of us for a weekend of friends in this.
It’s deep spirited work and life for which I’m grateful.
On Vision — Nuances from Spirit and Complexity
A good friend, Caitlin Frost, asks yesterday through email for ideas about teaching vision and working with vision. She’s smart on her own. She’s also smart to ask.
I respond quickly, delightfully distracted by her question, and putting aside my current todo list. Nuances of spirit, of the unseen often take me like this.
“One of the things I’m leaning into these days is the ‘arrival’ of vision, not just the ‘creating’ of it. As you say, connected to emergence. I encourage the group to ‘look away’ from some intense thinking and see what ‘sticks.’ Or give them multiple modalities. I love the way that drawing, for instance, changes the impression (true for ‘non-artists’ also). I want them to welcome it to arrive — not just work at it.”
ad
I love, and need, approaches rooted in discernment and a self-organizing premise. It’s related to, but different from tenacity. Gut feel is related to, but different than powering up for thirty more pushups. Discernment and self-organizing trusts a natural process (water runs down hill). It’s an alternative to more engineering (you can make water run uphill; it just might not be the most simple way).
ad
Chris Corrigan also responded. Chris knows as much as anyone I know about working from a complexity framework.
You can have a vision of a full bath tub of steaming hot water. You can have a vision of making your home run on rain water alone. You can have a vision of safe drinking water for all humans.
The first is simple, short term and you have all the tools and abilities to make it happen.
The second is more complicated and you require a few experts to make it happen, but with the right people and resources, you can achieve it.
The third is not up to you. It is a complex and adaptive system. You may be motivated by a desire to see safe drinking water for all humans but you are unlikely to achieve it because it is a complex problem. Intention can make a difference here and instead of working TOWARDS a tangible vision you can work FROM an intention and guide your actions against that.
Read the rest of Chris’ post here.
Nuances can make all of the difference. Often with things that are presumed that “we all know,” including words that are so common like vision.
Thanks friends. It’s good to walk the path together.
The Seed Cracked Open
A poem that I enjoy from Hafiz (Hafez), the 13th century Persian poet.
I don’t know it if is God that dwells within. Maybe.
I don’t know if it is “doing for” the world. Maybe. I relate to “doing with.”
I do relate fully to being moved by what is unseen.
asd
The Seed Cracked Open
It used to be
that when I would wake in the morning
I could with confidence say,
“What am ‘I'” going to
do?
That was before the seed
cracked open.
Now Hafiz is certain.
There are two of us housed
in this body,
doing the shopping together in the market and
tickling each other
while fixing the evening’s food.
Now when I awake
all the internal instruments play the same music:
“God, what love-mischief can ‘We’ do
for the world
today?”
Trusting Your Nature
Tomorrow starts this, a three-session series that I’m offering with my good friend Kinde Nebeker.
It is our third from the body of work that is “Inner and Outer of Evolutionary Leadership (IOEL).” I love having a deliberate attention to both the inner and the outer.
I also love the distinctions that we have created for each session, and woven together as a whole.
It is our nature (we humans) to engage and convene. Not just a desire. We are coded to do so.
It is our nature to listen deeply — I’m sooo looking forward to a day in Utah’s mountains. There are many layers to listen to and from.
It is our nature to evolve. Things change. Systems change.
Below are two resources that shape IOEL for those of you interested further, written by Kinde and me. May they stir in all of us.
A Commitment to Emergence: The Inner And Outer of Evolutionary Leadership
The Magical Wilderness Between People Together
