A friend sent this website to me, The Rules, as a truth telling website. It includes this video, a good piece on capitalism as a story, that can, and is being challenged.
New Team
I am flying at 35,000 feet, on my way to Des Moines, Iowa. The clouds below are spotted through the sky casting shadows on the midwest farmlands below. If I looked for long enough, or from a higher altitude than this plane will reach, I suspect I could see patterns in the clouds. The seemingly random has order.
Nature is ordered. Living systems organize themselves. This has been a primary framework for me since the early 1990s working with Margaret Wheatley. This is one of the concepts I hope to explore with a team that I’m meeting today for the first time face to face. It is a group of eleven from the Grinnell United Church of Christ.
They are “Strategic Discernment Stewards,” brought together for what is a six month strategy creation process through participative leadership. They are the group that will get the first wave of how we work together so as to help support the second wave which will take place this fall with a larger group of people. The stewards are the group that will also reconvene after the fall event to help share learnings and support a participative culture of accomplishment.
I’m reminded by Meg and coauthor, Myron Kellner-Rogers in their book, A Simpler Way,
“There is a simpler way to organize human endeavor. It requires a new way of being in the world. It requires being in the world without fear. Being in the world with play and creativity. Seeking after what’s possible. Being willing to learn to be surprised.
This simpler way to organize human endeavor requires a belief that the world is inherently orderly. The world seeks organization. It does not need us humans to organize it.
The simpler way summons forth what is best about us. It asks us to understand human nature differently, more optimistically. It identifies us as creative. It acknowledges that we seek after meaning. It asks us to be less serious, yet more purposeful, about our work and our lives. It does not separate play from the nature of being.”
Transitions
A week ago my daughter became engaged to be married. It was a well-crafted plan by her fiancee, who she has known for four years, dated for two, and even lived apart from for two. It took place at a beautiful space, with picnic prepared and setting sun upon them. Her fiancee had asked me in advance for permission. I told him that permission was not mine to give, but that I very much appreciated the gesture of respect. He showed me the ring. We enjoyed dinner together. Some of it serious. Some of it playful.
Imagine that, my little girl now turning into another phase of adult life. It’s a transition that reshapes family. I become a Father In-law. My daughter becomes a wife, connected into a broader system of brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, parents, and friends. The structure that shapes her life will change. She will now journey with a primary partner. I’m happy for her. I’m happy for them.
What doesn’t transition, however, and that has become clear to me, is some of her overarching life purpose. I’ve shared with her that her job, if you will, is to live into the “fullest version of herself” that she can. That was true before engagement. It was true when she was 12. It will be true when she hits her 30s, 40s, and beyond. My commitment that I shared with her was that I would always support her in the conversation that is “how are you doing with living into the fullest version of self?” It just means now that she lives this full version of self in the context of a particular companion and family that will evolve around her. Her self evolving and family evolving will simultaneously impact one another.
Transitions change things. But they don’t change everything. Purpose can remain through changing arenas. I find it helpful to remember this, as I think of my own transitions, as I think of the teams that I get to work with. The ability to remember that purpose and adapt to what will always be changing arenas is a rather good skill. And it hits home, with this transition of my newly engaged daughter.
The Only Dream Worth Having
Last night I had dinner with one of my oldest friends, Margaret Wheatley. Oldest as in, we go back many years now. Oldest as in, we’ve been through a lot of life together. A lot of cups of tea to share our respective journeys. The joys, the “I wonder ifs,” the tears of a few challenges, and the laughter of realizing how our human brains can so easily cling to a story.
Last night was all of that, this time, a beautiful summer night, up near Sundance, Utah.
Meg shared a poem with me by East Indian writer and activist, Arundhati Roy. It is one that I love and find myself wanting to sit with. It has a stilling and animating quality to it. Meg is using it in her remaining work of “warriorship,” to take people on very deep journeys into serving in the complexities of this world with deep commitment to inner state change.
.
The only dream worth having
is to dream that you will live while you are alive,
and die only when you are dead.
To love, to be loved.
To never forget your own insignificance.
To never get used to the unspeakable violence
and vulgar disparity of the life around you.
To seek join the saddest places.
To pursue the beauty to its lair.
To never simplify what is complicated or
complicate what is simple.
To respect strength, never power.
Above all to watch.
To try and understand.
To never look away.
And never, never to forget.
Arundhati Roy