Category: General Learning

Yesterday it was my privilege to listen to my friend Charles LaFond read to me a poem that he had written that morning. “Fluent in Thunder” is a poem for holy week in the Christian tradition. I was deeply moved to hear it. Charles is Canon at Saint John’s Cathedral in Denver. And he is a genuine human being, that wept through reading these words.

Read it here, with a photo posted in his blog, The Daily Sip. And follow his blog. It is worth it. Or, read it below. Sink in to this one.
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Fluent In Thunder
Charles LaFond

It is hard to imagine what She felt that week.

She covers the planet in green, brown, blue
and every color of the rainbow-reminder.
She waves as wheat.
She swoons as flower.
She bears the massive responsibility of air as tree.
She waits as water.
She paves as grasses.
She makes food as vegetable plants;
growing for the hairless bipeds
whose rich seek to destroy her and whose poor
have little access to her food.
She lays majestic as sand making life
even when life seems impossible or unlikely.
She warms as earth even as she warms as sun.

She too was there that day at the cross,
whispering breeze and speaking thunder so fluently.

She provides small holes in which there is birth and metamorphosis.
Only the humans scream – most of her females bears life in the
same silence in which God does.
She eats and processes what she eats as billions of
worms, bees and maggots, making mulch.
She freezes molecules of ice between molecules of rotting wood,
splitting them apart so that soil may appear over time;
which is her great friend.

It is hard to imagine what She, the natural world, with a body
of green and blue, undulating in the chaord of growth,
felt like
that week
in which humans plotted and planned
the destruction of the Loving-Truth-Teller
the One with soft skin and kind eyes.

Creepy-clergy-climbers could see He needed to die.
Political leaders of church and state,
afraid of their smallness, could see He needed to die.
Counterfeit monks and artists could see He needed to die.
Religious competition could see that He needed to die.
Thousands of savior-impersonators could see that He needed to die.
Scribes in their book-forts could see that He needed to die.

But perhaps only She could see that part of God which God
implanted in her and also in Him:
the ability to die and then, after waiting in silent darkness, live again.
Perhaps She could see what would be Jesus’ emerging
simply and precisely because she experiences it so often,
so casually, so cyclicly, so naturally.

As Nature, she could recognize a being whose nature was life,
even if occasionally interrupted by being
cut with a scythe
or starved of water
or denied food
or choked on fumes
or poisoned by chemicals
or left alone to die.
Nature could see that all would be well, even if weird or stinky.

And yet, as Jesus began this Walk this week,
navigating princes, principalities and powers
in majestic silence,
head down,
looking at the planet’s crust for his encouragement,
She looked back and she wept through
her smile into his eyes. “Keep walking on me. I feel your feet.”

And then, in a few steps again she speaks his language;
“Jesus, king of kings, show them what we are.” She whispered
in her feminine voice of breeze, missed by influent scholars
as male voices accused
in their insecurity; little boys in big togas, punching at the One Who Is.

And Jesus, looking down at dirt, saw God and remembered the
mountain-side chats they used to have before the Great Silence;
remembered divine encouragement,
inhaled, and allowed the story to unfold, just for the next 15 minutes, and the next, and then the next – the way we must live in those times.

And so Nature and Jesus let life unfold in
manageable segments, 15 minutes at a time
in  horror
in increments of a few minutes
when night and day were too long a stretch for the unfolding.

And then, as whips hit flesh, the blood spattered onto Her grasses,
As the nails hit bone, the blood spattered onto Her rocks,
As the fever-sweat dripped down wood and slid silently into dirt and around maggots from past occupants.
And as His eyes rolled back into a sacred socket-darkness,
and as saliva dropped onto a lone dessert flower emerging from the rock,

After dawning every day at God’s agreement for existence to Be;
after mornings and mornings of her request for life were again and again granted by the One,

She almost died.

And in her fight to stay alive, God flared up inside her
and in her revival she She clouded over
and thundered blue-black, like his bruises,
just to show Him, with closed-eyes, that she was still there.

He could see Her stormy darkness even under his closed, sticky lids
and felt the chill of the brief desert-night as Nature commiserated with Jesus

And his question,
about whether or not
God had abandoned Him
was answered.

We think God was silent.
Perhaps only because we are not fluent in thunder.

 

“A vocation is not an ego thing; it is the opposite of an ego thing.
It is a call from history, the ancestors,
and those not yet born,
to be thoughtful, just, caring, courageous,
imaginative, creative — that is, alive.”

I appreciate these words from Matthew Fox in his essay, Leadership as Spiritual Practice. I haven’t met Matthew Fox. Yet, many people have pointed me to his writings and work. Leadership as Spiritual Practice is a theme that has centered my soul and carried expressions of my work through the last twenty plus years. And, it will likely continue to be so for the next twenty. My particular focus has been “participative leadership” as spiritual practice. Bringing people into shared contexts to animate and activate the energy and insight of the whole group.

Last night I shared some of this article with my daughter, a sophomore in college. She is finding her way into her major classes. Like most her age, she has dreams for the future. Some doubts too. How can one not in this era. She has many criteria for this stage of choosing vocation, including, “what would lead to a good job?.”

I feel for the people that are fixated on utilitarian aspects of jobs. Fitting in. Securing income. Securing security. Is that even possible anymore? All of this was very strong in me at that age. It still is. Some dispositions don’t go away.

Yet, what has become stronger in me with age, is the spirit of “calling” to what you want to offer to community and society. It is less about what the world will provide for you. It is less about what you feel entitled to. It is more about offering the gift of who you are. As Matthew Fox says, on behalf of ancestors and those not yet born.

That changes it, doesn’t it.

I dream of a world in which our primary medium for organizing human endeavor is to welcome gifts. To discern gifts together. To welcome surprise. To welcome even the wobbly paths that refine vocation and its new expressions, rather than chain one to a bad choice.

Crazy? I hope not. Spiritually grounded practice? I hope so. For my daughter’s sake. For all of us.

I wrote this poem last week, in support of The Berkana Institute’s initiative, Gathering Friends. It is particularly inspired by my friendship and colleagueship with Margaret Wheatley.
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In These Times, Friends Matter

In these times,
friends matter,
the people we turn to.
To listen.
To be heard by.
To be seen by.
To see.
To love.
To be loved.

In these times
staying awake matters.
Interrupting the many seductions
of numbness.
It takes discipline, doesn’t it.

In these times
dwelling in complexity matters.
Old fixes don’t work.
Imposing them more loudly doesn’t work.
Waiting.
Listening.
Looking for patterns does.
Welcoming surprise
and union with life itself.

In these times
presence is core competency.
It is the core competency.
We grow it together,
telling stories,
and asking questions.

What matters to you?
What is it like to be you?
What has your attention?
Sometimes even,
What makes sense for us to do now?

In these times
friends matter.
Turn, and turn, and turn again
to one another.

Last week I spent an hour on the phone with Chris Corrigan and two other colleagues. I, and we, wanted to deepen our understanding of complexity, something that never stops and feels utterly useful.

One of the things I like about Chris is that he has unique and remarkable ability to synthesize teachings and spit them out as stories. Simple stories. Easy to get stories.

The post below is an excerpt from his writings (the full post is on his blog). What I like in this is the easy distinction between complicated and complex challenges. Most of the world is not “either/or.” Yet, much of the prominent thinking of people in the world remains as “either/or.” These distinctions offer a familiar spot for most people, from which then can be explored deeper, more nuanced aspects and implications. And they are just plain smart. It takes skill to get to such simplicity. The distinctions are remarkable ways to continue to engage a system or team of people in what matters.

The basic difference between complex problems and complicated problems comes down to whether a problem is solvable or not. Is there a stable outcome? Is there an end state? Can research and expertise provide us with answers? Is the situation predictable? Answer yes to these questions and you have a complicated problem. Answer no and you have a complex one. It comes down to the difference between building a community and building a building.

• Complex problems aren’t solvable; complicated ones are.
• Address complexity by sense patterns and weak signals and amplifying them; solve complicated problems by analysing data and problem solving.
• In complexity, pay attention to what works and ask why?; for complicated problems, keep your eyes on the prize and study gaps (ask why not?)
• Be informed in your strategy by stories, myths and parables that translate across many contexts; for complicated problems, adopt “best” practices and rule based solutions.
• Employ collaborative leadership to address complexity; employ experts to solve complicated problems.
• In complexity, truth is found in stories; for complicated situations, truth is found in facts.
• Complex planning requires anticipatory awareness, meaning that you have to constantly scan for meaning through the system; a vision won;t help you. In complicated situations a vision is useful and the end state can be achieved with logical, well planned steps.
• In complexity, the future is already here, but it is quiet and hidden in the noise of the culture. in complicated systems the future is not here and it is well understood what it will take to get there from here.
• In complex systems, the solutions will come at you obliquely, out of the blue and in surprising ways, so you need to cultivate processes that allow that to happen.  In complicated systems, problems are tackled head on from a position of knowing as much as you can about how to proceed and then choosing the best course of action.