Category: General Learning

It’s good to have themes. Overarching statements or patterns. About who we are, and about what we are up to. Or about what we are discovering. About how the world works.

One theme for me lately is “learn a thing by doing a thing.” It’s the commitment and the creativity to get started and then to let that thing inform us about what it really is. It can be true cooking a meal. Or running a program. I’m finding it true in creating Becoming & Belonging offerings.

In that spirit, a further theme of “inner leadership” is arriving for me. As another entry point into all the work. For teams. For individuals. For executives. For mid-level. For entrepreneurs. For artists. For poets.

Inner Leadership is

• practice
• listening deeply to one’s own truth
• aligning action with inner knowing
• presence
• purpose

Or more poetically, Inner Leadership is

• a quiet flame within
• that guides by stillness
• courage
• points towards what is most true and most alive

One more theme, discovered while doing. Not only to we live life, but life lives us.

This is significant. It changes the context for most everything — planning, accomplishing, worrying, fretting. It signals a more life-giving approach. It’s not that we need to create everything from start (and some of the fears that go with that). It’s that we need to surrender to what is already alive and moving. Give ourselves to life living us. In programs. In conversations. And yes, to simple things like making the soup.

Not trying to over assert the theme. I am trying to point to a neglected philosophy, a pre-industrial orientation. Or perhaps a post industrial era that reclaims life-giving creative spirit.

Thx for reading. Perhaps hearing a few sparks in your mind and heart. Best way to jump in to this with me is through my Becoming & Belonging series. I know I’m talking about it a lot. And posting.

Learning by doing. And then stay doing in ways that reanimate life.

I love this Mary Oliver piece shared recently with me (thx Saoirse).

Dangerous.
Noble.
Light.
Frolicsome.
Improbable.
Beautiful.
Afraid of nothing.
Wings.

Plenty to work with there, isn’t there.

Wander School is one of my Becoming & Belonging offerings. It’s also a header for the whole of what I’m up to these days. Descriptions, details and dates to jump in are here. I’m hosting a session tomorrow and Wednesday. Next up are in May. Online stuff that brings the heart inline.

Why Wander School?

I know this about myself — I see / think / feel / learn in collages. My collages have movement in them. Above is this morning’s collage, that focuses on Wander School. Some clarifying why that I hope you feel as invitation to some Inner Leadership.

• for inner spaciousness
• for playful discovery
• for reconnection with mystery
• for reconnecting with self
• for reconnecting with a sense of the world

Wander School is…

• intention to learn without rigid expectation
• less of a fixed destination
• more of a practice of being with what emerges and with what flows
• a way of being that changes our ways of doing

I hope this stirs you. Perhaps just to take with you and enjoy in your morning. Perhaps to engage with others. Perhaps to jump in and stir together with me in a shared inner spaciousness.

My friend, Pastor Kate Kennedy, writes of rethinking sheep. From dumb followers to sharp organizers. She touches some of the evolutionary instinct to go together.

I enjoyed the read and the rethinking. Perhaps you too.

Says Kate…,

“I’ve always assumed that sheep were a bit dumb. I’ll admit, I fell for the cliché. To be fair, among all the friendly farm animals, sheep don’t seem particularly bright. Certainly not compared to clever pigs, who are as smart as your dog, or strong horses with their wise eyes. Case in point: once I saw a YouTube video of a flock leaping over a wall that wasn’t there. The farmer had removed it after the first sheep cleared it, but the rest kept jumping, just to be safe.  If you asked a sheep, “If your friend jumped off a cliff, would you?” that sheep would say “of course I would.”

But recently, I researched sheep and learned more—not just about them, but about myself. One shepherd put it this way: “If you pay attention, you cannot help but be impressed by how smart they are to have survived domestication since 10,000 BC. Although many think their flocking instinct is a sign of ‘dumbness,’ it is in fact a community-based survival mechanism where they have learned that their strength is much greater in numbers and their comfort and survival is enhanced as a group rather than as an individual.”

That made me wonder—did I think sheep were dumb because I feel a little bit dumb when I need other people? Have I internalized the message that relying on community is a sign of diminished capacity? Honestly, yeah, almost definitely. I don’t need to tell you we live in a culture that glorifies independence, that insists it’s morally superior to need nothing from anyone.”