Category: General Learning

I value Facebook. It is plain and simple. There are people that I’m in contact with because of FB that I wouldn’t be otherwise. This includes updates, serious and funny. This includes my ability to say hello, easily, with a kid of shared nod.

And, I laughed when I read this below. Close enough to the truth to strike a note of funny. It was sent to me by friend and colleague (and FB friend, of course), Jerry Nagel.
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Non-Facebook Friends

I am trying to make friends outside of Facebook while applying the same principles. 

Every day I go to the street and tell a passerby what I have eaten, how I feel, what I have done the night before and what I will do after. 

I give them pictures of my family, my “animal farm”,  me gardening, trail walking or golfing, and my friend and I trying to rescue an injured cat.

I also listen to their conversations and tell them I love them. 

And it works!!  I already have 3 people following me — 2 police officers and a psychiatrist.

Mark Nepo, though I don’t know personally, inspires me often. He is a poet and philosopher. He is a cancer survivor. He writes of transformation and awakening.

He is one of few people for whom I can pick up one of his books, start reading anywhere, and be very satisfied after a few short paragraphs. Enough so that I often put the book down, just to let the words settle into me. It’s a bit like meeting a friend in passing, but pausing to take a longer morning walk together. Ever reliable.

“The Exquisite Risk” and “Facing the Lion, Being the Lion” are two in particular that I’ve enjoyed and used with others.

There are lots of resources on Mark’s website, including places to sign up for regular reflections through email. Give it a good peek.

Here’s a post from him that I saw recently.

During my cancer journey, I was able to see my heart on a screen during a test in which I was injected with radioactive dye, so they could trace the first pass of blood through the first chamber of my heart. It was an experience that changed my understanding of heart. 

THE HISTORY OF MY HEART 

It has pumped strong since my first breath. At first it grew like a fish, no limbs, no eyes; just swimming in place while I tried to do what I was told. It knew nothing of where I would lead it or where I would be taken. As I grew, it spread into a red bird whose wings stirred me with a want for impossible things. But wanting, falling, loving, dying and being battered wore me down to life on Earth. Beating in the face of so many abrasions, it only toughened, its cords of muscle eating my heartaches like calisthenics; always whispering in my sleep, “Give me more!” 

In my cancer, it grew very still. The doctors thought it was going away or back to where it waited while I was being born. It was only gliding beneath the storm. Now on the other side, it has morphed again. How to say it? I’ve become a mold hollowed by my sufferings: all to be filled by my heart which has slipped its casing completely, pouring itself into the contours of my being. Now it washes everywhere: behind my eyes, my lips, inside my fingers. Now, wherever you touch me, you touch my heart.

A Question to Walk With: Begin to tell the story of the history of your heart.

Quite a nice invitation, isn’t it.

I met David Korten in the mid 1990s. I was in my earlier years with The Berkana Institute and Margaret Wheatley. I remember the trip to his home on Bainbridge Island, WA, a ferry ride from Seattle. I remember meeting his spouse Fran, her kindness. I remember coming to know some of David’s work.

This morning I reread an opening passage from David’s book, The Post Corporate World: Life After Capitalism.

“In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy and the market economy. For those of us who grew up believing that capitalism is the foundation of democracy and market freedom, it has been a rude awakening to realize that under capitalism, democracy is for sale to the highest bidder and the market is centrally planned by global megacorporations larger than most states.”

I appreciate David’s beckoning to look at nuance. It’s never been as simple as capitalism good, everything else bad.

I see that David’s book, When Corporations Rule the World is now in it’s 20th anniversary edition. There is rich material and story in David’s work, which I find myself returning to and using more.

I love this photo, taken earlier this week on a walk with Glen Lauder, about one mile from my home.

It was the thistle that caught my attention. I believe they are Milk Thistle, sometimes called Scotch Thistle. A whole field of them in bloom! These stand three to five feet tall. They are next to a community park and two baseball diamonds. This park is where I most commonly walk my dog.

I also like the mountains in the background, which Glen was so appreciative of — “right in your own back yard!” Furthest away and tallest is Mount Timpanogos, part of the Wasatch Range. Its peek height is close to 12,000 feet. Where we are, with the thistles, is about 4,600 feet.

There are trails of snow remaining as you can see. A relevant marker of melting each year is whether the snow will remain through July 4th. I doubt it this year. These June days each climb to the mid 90s, which the thistle seem to love!