Human to Human

It’s been a full week. A fun week too. I’ve hosted a few groups. I’ve felt much learning.

B & B this week was the format, Pick a Card. I used a new deck, Live Your Values. The richness of the format so often is about bringing curiosity to a life circumstance. The cards offer a lane to explore more kindly within self, and with others.

And then there was my Circle Workshop, Learn (To Be) Circle Here. Such good folk showing up. Some old friends. Some new, wishing to grow in practice and in community.

In the spirit of Start Point and End Point, I invoked (read) excerpts from a John O’Donohue’s Blessing For The Traveler. I loved connecting the blessing to the travel of learning together.

For The Traveler
John O’Donohue

Every time you leave home,
Another road take you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along.

…

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

On we go. Full.

I loved invoking this word, “murmurate” last week. With two groups. Making a noun a verb.

The above image is of Starlings. Flocking. Moving with fluidity. They are a murmuration.

In both settings, I invoked the words as a connection to some basic questions that many of us OD people ask, that many of us complex systems people ask.

How do we go well together
for and with the things and people that we most care about?

And then in my brain, this morphs to a few important sub questions:

How do we learn well?
How do we lift the relational?
How do we open ourselves to what is larger?

All of that takes me back to some early foundation learning with Meg Wheatley (thx again Meg). In the mid 90s after the release of her stellar book, Leadership And The New Science, Meg was bringing forth a game changing narrative.

Organizations are living systems (not machines).

Living systems have a way of organizing themselves (Starlings as an example — don’t seem to have a boss or a planning committee).

If we learned more about how living systems organize themselves,
what would that teach us about organizing human endeavor?

These videos of murmurations are easy to find. It’s a fun moment to get lost in them. And then wonder about such questions.

OK, off into another part of my day. Murmurating.

In 2020 I published this book above, A Cadence of Despair. It’s a collection of poems and essays from a year’s worth of recovery and learning and journalling. It offers voice to some rather difficult times. But then also, voice to the glimpses that begin to show up, that begin to shine up, and point to some integration. It’s a bit raw. A bit clunky. But also has a few really important learnings.

My friend Katharine Weinmann recently shared one of my poems from this book, on her blog. My poem is called “I Suppose”. It was / is some of my clarity on how the inner work must be done in conjunction with the outer work. It’s fun to see words picked up and shared. Thx Katharine.

For inspiration.

I Suppose

I suppose that my hope is that
this inner journey is refining me.

I suppose that my hope is that
I am daring to lean into the wound and anger
of leaving innocence and ignorance.

I suppose that my hope is that
I will find integration and wisdom.

I suppose that my hope is that
I am connected to divinity,
either approved by God, or in sync enough.

I suppose that my hope is that
I am loved and accepted.

I’m becoming aware that this only happens in the external
when it is happening in the internal.

I know this phrase, and, well, invitation, from a few contexts of life — “what we practice, we become.” It’s as sensible as anything I know.

There’s Toke, my Danish colleague / friend / brother, who has been invoking this principle connected to peace, practicing peace. In Toke’s words, “practice peace within, and, two meters around you.” Tangible. And inviting.

There’s the men’s retreat I just returned from. I’ll apply the principle to the value of “unplugged.” When we practice unplugged, we become unplugged. It’s a resonance change, the becoming part. It’s in and under our skin, just like a personality. Travels with us, a reliable friend.

What we practice, we become. It’s in Wander School too. When we practice wander, we become it. Said differently, when we practice belonging to and moving with life, we become belonging to and moving with life.

I both like, and need, the simple guidance. It’s a sweet invitation. With orientation. And with commitment. It’s a doing. It’s a doing that connects to a being. And vice versa.

Tomorrow I host a Circle for a leadership team in a very thoughtful community wellness center. There too, we will invoke “what we practice, we become.” We practice connection. And courage. And compassion. And simplicity. And life flowing in and around us.

Such learning. Within and with others. I’m grateful to be in such a big world. Yet in practice that guides the small steps.