Category: General Learning

There’s a certain category of words that are slightly out of use, yet that I find attractive. Slightly playful.

Dandy.
Groovy.
Quirky.

They are fun to insert into moments of conversation. It’s like they invite a temporary suspension of the rules of the words that should be spoken.

Hmm…. I like temporary suspensions.

“Zeal” is another. And my friend Nicola used it recently in what of her invitations (Nicola will be featured next week in the B & B Series).

Zeal — it’s a tiny bit outrageous. How’s your zeal? Where’s your zeal coming from these days?

Nicola contexted her use of zeal with “curious, engaged, and alive.”

Gonna make it a “zeal” day.

Join me? Or us next Wednesday.

Today’s Becoming & Belonging Session is “Let’s Have A Story.” We start at 10:00 MT. Online. A small group in Circle.

Our format invites this most important of practices — “finding ourselves in another’s story, so as to inform our own story, our own path, and our own life.”

I guide. And participate. I tell the story, and invite rounds of Circle that notice “details” from the story.

And then we weave, and notice together. So often finding aha. So often celebrating a practice of presence and witness together.

And then on with the day / evening.

Jump in. You’ll find a welcoming bunch.

My friend Glen has a skill in framing.

Recently…

“Leadership Development is not a luxury to be enjoyed in good times.
Rather, it is a strategic necessity to survive challenging times.”

That’s a corporate environment.

And so, we do.

We are confirming our plans now for a fourth cohort, Leadership Development Program. Over six months, 24 participants. Starts with a 3-day in-person. Ends with another. A few connections in between. A project to work on with colleagues — “a question that if explored more thoroughly would influence the direction of leadership.”

That Circle above — we’ll do it again. Not a luxury. A strategic necessity.

I’m grateful to contribute. I’m grateful for awesome and adventurous colleagues.

I’m glad for this Stanley Kunitz poem, The Layers (sent recently — thx Jeremy / Poetry Tribe).

Layers. Yes. All of us. And learning. And kindness.

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.

When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.

In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.

I am not done with my changes.