Category: General Learning

In my call with a friend / colleague yesterday, as check-in we asked this question of each other — What is one thing you are enjoying in your life? What is one thing you are enjoying in your leadership?

First, it’s good to have friends and colleagues that will pick up such a question. This time it’s Glen, with whom I create a six month leadership cohort. Glen and I have been at some level of continuous friendship making, learning, guiding since 2009. Fun.

Second, it’s deliberate to ask the question about joy (so as to lift joy). It’s also deliberate to ask “one thing,” to create a little boundary, a container as my friend Chris likes to reference. It’s not every joyful thing. It’s not a request for a curated list of joy. Lastly, it’s also deliberate to specify “in life, in leadership.” Permission to be a bit more open.

It’s rich to meet each other with invitation. It’s rich to meet each other with commitment to some expression of whole life.

Enjoying in life — I shared these tomatoes. They are a patch near our back alley. Dreamed and realized this year. Dana and I have picked and tasted a few yellow pear tomatoes. Here’s to a couple of months more of that in our climate.

And then, slightly dorky, I shared with Glen a wee story of how these tomatoes grow better when their roots are given room to spread. Each of the last two years, our tomatoes have been in pots. They did OK. Nothing great. This year, in the ground they are doing great(er). They needed room to grow their roots.

You guessed it. Yes, people too. We need our roots. We need room to grow. And, well, like this wee patch, we benefit from a good spot in the sun, some water, some reliable shade, some fertilizer, and some tilled soil.

Roots, yes.
Roots that emphasize joy, yes.
Stories and learning with friends, yes.

My friend Toke (shown above in Rorvig, Denmark 2023 — me, Peter Engberg, Toke) recently prosed a few clarities on life, on living. On stewarding, with simplicity. Words that move my heart. Perhaps yours too. I love the sense of essence.

A Path of Stewarding
Toke Moeller

Love
is not a destination.

It is a practice
of returning 
to Life itself

To the land
without possession.

To relationship
without grasping.

To conflict
without becoming
the conflict.

A steward
walks gently—
holding
what wishes to grow,
releasing
what wishes to end,

trusting
that each honest step
makes a path
for those
who follow.

Perhaps
this is enough:
to practice peace,
and let love
do its quiet work.

Doing simply what needs to be done 
Each moment
without hesitation.

Several tidbits of inspirations have come my way over the last few days. Tidbits that would be well-served by some extended dwelling time.

I’ll mix some of the tidbits together here. All, for inspiration. Perhaps a spark. A memory. An association. Perhaps some medicine.

• My friend Janice Rous writes of trying “softer rather than trying harder.” Janice turned 76 earlier this week. She inspires me with her playfully serious heart and with her wisdom. Janice quotes the poet Andrea Gibson, “I know most people try hard to do good and find out too late they should have tried softer.”

• A recent participant in Wanderful Excursion sent me this poem by William Carlos Williams. It fit to the theme of our Excursion. And I loved that she offered it in the spirit of an appreciation, like she’d left me a bag of plums.
  
  This Is Just To Say
  I have eaten
  the plums
  that were in
  the icebox
  and which
  you were probably
  saving
  for breakfast.
  Forgive me
  they were delicious
  so sweet
  and so cold.

• And then there’s this Rumi quote, picked up through the randomness of an email inbox. I appreciate the reminder, again, that love is a state inner and outer. With self and with others.
  
  Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers
  within yourself that you have built against it.

• And then this portion of today’s Tuesday pot pourri insights. It’s the poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. The Word Woman writing about clarity and settling in a river and in a human soul.

The Clearing
Already the river is lighter in color, 
less brown, less turbid, more 
translucent. Just yesterday 
the currents were thick with mud 
and logs, needles and sticks 
and bits of once-living debris. 
Now that the furious flood has lost 
its force, the gravel and sand 
have begun their settling.
Whatever was floating now rests
on the banks and all that is left 
suspended in the water 
is what is most fine. 
Soon, even that will sink 
and the water will be clear again. 
I, too, have felt the gift of slowing, 
how it invites a sedimentation 
of all I try to carry—the silt of my stories, 
the muck of the world. 
Like a river, the more calm I am, 
the more clear I can become. 
No magic, just a matter of physics. 
How natural it is, the clearing.  

I love it when the butterflies land on me. When I’m not chasing. But rather, watching them land. Perhaps you do to.

Living more softly.

When I was a young teen, my Grandma sat me down to give me a piece of advice. That was Lena, my father’s mother. She was a teacher of my heart, though I didn’t come to know that until another six or so years passed.

I was a teen. A bit out of touch. A bit fumbly, as young teens often are. A bit vacant. I was a kid who cared most about baseball then. And my friends. I think Grandma wanted to steer me into a more thoughtful way of being. She saw some capability in me. Or perhaps just loved me, and did what she did — pointed to a more conscious way to live.

I’m glad.

Grandma drew this diagram for me on a piece of paper. She had flip charts and markers in her home — so I guess I come by that naturally. And then started to explain. “When you are a teenager, like yourself, Grandson, you see yourself as this big circle on the left and you see the rest of the world as this small dot on the right.” She was likely calling out a young and immature quality in me. A self-centeredness.

She continued, drawing a second diagram. “As you grow and learn, you begin to see yourself like this diagram. You become the small dot on the left. And you begin to recognize that the world is the bigger circle on the right. You begin to pay attention to what is going on in the world. You begin to feel its wonder.”

Again, that’s a Grandma that I think showed some guts, some clarity, and some truth-telling. She wasn’t snarky. She wasn’t shaming. I remember feeling that she was speaking with sincerity. And that meant something to me — kinda planted a seed in me that would have me returning to her many times in my young and mid adult life.

Now, I’m now aware that there is nuance to this particular conversation. For some of us, it is significant work and journey to claim our big selves (not make ourselves small). Some of us need to step into our bigness. All of that. I think Grandma was clear on that also, but likely wise enough to know the limit of what I could hear, then.

Well, now, 50 or so years later, I offer this nod to my Grandma. And, bring just one more layer of nuance to those diagrams she drew so long ago.

I’ve added the blue spiral on top of my Grandma’s diagrams. It symbolizes what I’ve come to recognize as a life force moving through us. And through circumstance. And moving with us. It symbolizes an organizing pattern that sometimes calls for brave individuality, in connection with all the other things going on. Or sometimes, an organizing pattern that calls us to a brave communality, an extreme relationality together. Life moves through us. With us. Among us. From those seeds Gma planted in me, a garden remains growing in me. And I’m glad to say that I’ve been able to plant a few seeds in others too.

Grandma gave some good advice. That’s her below, on the left as a 34 year old. On the right, a little later in her life. She passed in 2008, at 89.

Yup. I’m glad for the advice from a Grandma.