I love this video, shared by a friend, Ani Rose, who I know through the Ignite Leadership Initiative. The video describes the Japanese practice of Kintsugi — filling the cracks in broken pottery with gold. It’s about a lot more than pottery.
On Powerful Questions
I work with many people who are trying to develop powerful questions. They have learned — or they are following their instincts — that the question is a key point of engagement, and sometimes, intervention.
Inquiry together is a key aspect of a different narrative about leadership. An older narrative would have been more about telling people what to do. Marching orders. Embedded in that is a pretty deeply held mechanistic worldview. People as parts. Organizing and manipulating things. Linear orientation to time and progress. Let’s be clear — this worldview is in all of us. And of course, there are times when that orientation is just right. Putting together fifty sandwiches in ten minutes for a church picnic is pretty much an assembly line job.
However, the newer narrative — hmmm, the one that many of us are learning is more accurate and helpful — is about engagement and collaboration. It’s not marching orders. It’s questioning invitations. It’s expectation to engage key questions together, to learn together real time and with great transparency, and to build relationships, all in a real time kind of way. The newer narrative is often about attention to dynamics, not things. Dynamics change and are always present. Like the weather. It’s pretty hard to manage the weather. Rather we respond to the ever-changing dynamic by getting a sweater or bringing a swim suit.
Back to questions.
I see a lot of people fretting over the wording of questions. Trying to get it just right. Garsh, I’m going to let myself sound a bit hypocritical here for a moment. The wording of questions matters, but sometimes, I observe in myself and others an approach to naming questions that itself feels overly mechanical. Trying to engineer together many social variables to find just the right solution. It’s not an answer we’re looking for — well, at least some of the time. It is an engagement that creates a minimal container for people to find a minimal (or more) layer of interacting with one another to animate a shared energy.
The words matter. And, they don’t.
On the weekend I watched a video of some friends discussing powerful questions. It’s a community of practice and I wasn’t able to meet at the chosen time. I loved hearing their insights about questions. I offered this in retrospect: I love it that we are all growing our ability to ask questions. Asking questions (in small groups or large) is not all about a silver tongue. It is, to me, about partnering an inherent curiosity with a desire to welcome an emergence from the space between. The question is one of the things that helps that happen.
I know I rely on what I would call “pocket questions.” What do you care about here? What is important to you in this? What could this also be? I know that I trend my questions within an appreciative orientation — even with the tough stuff. What are you learning about this difficult time that is important to remember? It’s good to have these. Not to perform them, but rather, activate genuine inquiry together.
And, I want to continue to encourage the orientation that is underneath the words. What would it take for any of us to further grow in our appreciation for what arises when curiosity feeds an expectation of emergence?
That’s not just a skill. It’s an orientation. And it makes even the most simple questions, powerful.
Banuua
I’m told that “banuua” is a Swahili word that means joy.
This is my 12 year-old son in a mens / boys performance at his junior high school. Elijah is in the back, five from the right. He’s got a big smile.
I love it that he loves this. He gets to move. He gets to sing. He gets to be in the company of men offering something beautiful.
I also love his teacher. You don’t see so much of it in this video, but this dude is great with these young men. Engaging. Funny. Talented. No small thing to get them into it and legitimize their inner love of voice and movement. His love of music shines through clearly and makes me recognize what a credit he is to the public school system.
I’m totally going to use this with groups I work with!
Here’s to joy. And to our sons, or any of us finding it in good company.
Do Not Hesitate To Leave Your Old Ways Behind
My friend and colleague Erin Gilmore recently shared the poem below in the context of the UCC Ignite Leadership Initiative that we are cohosting with others. It’s a doozy. I love the threads of letting go and moving to the new. Bozarth-Campbell was one of the first women to be ordained priest in the Episcopal Church. Enjoy this one. Fully.
Passover Remembered, by Alla Bozarth-Campbell
Pack nothing.
Bring only
your determination to serve
and your willingness to be free.
Don’t wait for the bread to rise.
Take nourishment for the journey,
but eat standing, be ready
to move at a moment’s notice.
Do not hesitate to leave
your old ways behind —
fear, silence, submission.
Only surrender to the need
of the time — to love
justice and walk humbly
with your God.
Do not take time
to explain to the neighbors.
Tell only a few trusted
friends and family members.
Then begin quickly,
before you have time
to sink back into
the old slavery.
Set out in the dark.
I will send fire
to warm and encourage you.
I will be with you in the fire
and I will be with you in the cloud.
You will learn to eat new food
and find refuge in new places.
I will give you dreams in the desert
to guide you safely to that place
you have not yet seen.
The stories you tell
one another around the fires
in the dark will make you
strong and wise.
Outsiders will attack you,
and some follow you,
and at times you will get weary
and turn on each other
from fear and fatigue and
blind forgetfulness.
You have been preparing
for this for hundreds of years.
I am sending you into the wilderness
to make a new way and to learn my ways
more deeply.
Some of you will be so changed
by weathers and wanderings
that even your closest friends
will have to learn your features
as though for the first time.
Some of you will not change at all.
Some will be abandoned
by your dearest loves
and misunderstood by those
who have known you since birth
and feel abandoned by you.
Some will find new friendships
in unlikely faces, and old friends
as faithful and true
as the pillar of God’s flame.
Sing songs as you go,
and hold close together.
You may at times grow confused
and lose your way.
Continue to call each other
by the names I’ve given you,
to help remember who you are.
You will get where you are going
by remembering who you are.
Touch each other and keep telling the stories.
Make maps as you go
remembering the way back
from before you were born.
So you will be only the first
of many waves of deliverance on these desert seas.
It is the first of many beginnings —
your Paschaltide.
Remain true to this mystery.
Pass on the whole story.
Do not go back.
I am with you now
and I am waiting for you.