Category: General Learning

Today is day 4 of 5, hosting with and for Pastors. I’m reminded of how impactful it is to be in community.

For learning. For courage. For connection. For laughter. For tears.

I’m co-hosting with Travis Winkler. We are encouraging circle, Cafe, OST. Check-ins and Check-outs. Potent questions. Listening.

And as goes with this geography, walks, hikes, lazy-river floats, and karaoke delight!

I’m hosting the next week. A group of 15 pastors. On the theme of Relational Leadership. My friend Travis and I will host. Teach. Convene. Listen. Guide. Adapt. Dwell. With methods. Maps. All toward the basic and yet needed practice — going well together for the things that we most care about.

Last year it looked a bit like this.

In a sensing way, prepping for this group of pastors, I found myself going back to an intro that I wrote of the collection of poems, Most Mornings.

It was good for the book. Honest words. Good for this group too, this week.
I love invitations to context.

For many of us these days, so sincere in our attempts to live awake, there is much volume and scale that seeks our attention. We read articles. We skim news headlines. We listen to podcasts. We sort varied social media teasers that algorithm us to interest. It’s a lot.

Yet despite such volume and scale, I believe that most of us seek to remember one or two things that are important, and then go about living our lives of personal and communal commitment. Most mornings, most of us seek what is grounding, and then go out to do our jobs.

I believe that most of us want to contribute good, whether to the circumstances near us, or to the circumstances further away that we read about. Most of us want to keep appreciating the value of similarities and differences. Many of us want healthy and respectful communities, be they in revolution or in small but significant steadiness of change.

This collection of poems comes from some of my sense-making that so often happens in the morning, nurtured by overnight sleep. These poems sample practices. They sample learnings. They sample insights and discoveries. They sample dilemmas and concerns. They range from simple and clear appreciations to more complex and murky wonderings about how to be in the world of these times.

I offer these verses to invite essences to lead, as poetry often does, and to invite discovery of what can only live between the lines. I offer these poems to bring reflection and waking, to bring phrases and images that might help you, me, and us find morning light and guiding paths.

” Let me fall if I must fall.
The one I am becoming will catch me.”
-Baal Shem Tov, Jewish Mystic, 1700s.

This from yesterday’s Wander School, offered as followup from a participant (thank you Elif).

Because falling is part of it.
Because change and becoming is part of it.
Because trusting is part of it.
Because mystery is part of it.
Because sweetness is part of it too.

On we go.

A friend recommended Rick Hanson recently (thx Marshall). Hanson is a clinical psychologist, and author of the book, Hardwiring Happiness.

Hansen offers this helpful reality (I recognize it in me and others):

Let’s conduct an experiment: Take a moment to think back over your day; which experiences stand out for you?

For most of us, it’s the negative ones. 

Enjoyable, useful experiences—like smiling at a friend, or finishing a task—typically happen many times a day, but they usually wash through the brain like water through a sieve, barely leaving a trace.

Meanwhile, our stressful, often harmful experiences—like getting stuck in traffic, or feeling misunderstood by a partner—routinely produce lasting changes in neural structure or function.

This is your brain’s negativity bias in action.

Positivity is a discipline and practice. This is what I keep learning. Of course there were challenging things in the day — this isn’t about denying such. Of course there was injustice in the day. Again, not about looking away.

Positivity is about looking toward what already exists. Be it the small stuff (I like petting my neighbor’s dog for a few minutes), or the big stuff (a peace accord was signed).

The positivity practice is a deliberate focus on the all of things, including the positive. And making space for that in the brain, in the belly, in the heart. It’s about insisting holism. Or wellism, which is the topic of an upcoming B & B session that brings my friend Marlyn Diaz into the conversation.

Gives me a few ideas for a new exercise I want to try when hosting Pastors later this week. Fun. Here we go.