Human to Human

I participated on an OD practitioners call earlier today hosted by Dave Feraron. I arrived curious. I left fulfilled. I left reminded of the importance of engaging together so that learning and community can happen.

A thanks to Bob Stilger, my longtime friend and colleague back to our Berkana days. Bob has been asking for many years, “What is a difference that makes a difference?”

A thanks to Rosa Zubizaretta-Ada, who I’ve known of through the Art of Hosting network of practitioners. Rosa brought stories about bringing what we do with what we know on bringing out the best in people together.

A thanks to Yebome Gilpin-Jackson, based in British Columbia. I appreciated her call to explore the “dangerously unequal” in OD.

I also enjoyed the interaction I had in Zoom breakout with Miguel, a California-based practitioner, I’d never met. We got to reflect on the need for reflection.

The field of OD is many things. I particularly appreciate the calls among and with other practitioners for depth in humanity. For calls to practice what we know. To stand for values of learning, connection, and courage that both interrupt and evolve the OD field.

A bow.

Yesterday’s post was on Why I Blog. I named three reasons that are pretty centering guides for me. In blogging. Also in the broadest strokes of attempting conscious life. Today is a double-click to go a bit further with the first reason — paying attention.

Much of my life, personally and professionally, has been a search toward understanding. I’m 62 now. I’ve both lived some of life’s ups and downs, and I’ve got a good chunk in front of me. I’ve been involved in many bodies of work, simple and complex, and have a good chunk of that in front of me too.

Sometimes, the joy of the search is in what I find. An aha. A way of thinking. A nuanced model or exercise for working with a group. A friend. A poem.

Sometimes, the joy of the search is in the search itself. It is life-giving to live curiously together. With wonder about how the world works. About how the parts exist in relationship together. About how to not think of parts, but instead, to think of wholes dancing and changing as they do.

To pay attention is the most basic and lasting of invitations. As a system-thinking person, I’m predisposed to seeing things connected. Meg Wheatley has been a key teacher for me in this — in the early 1990s when I met her she had just written Leadership and the New Science. Meg suggested a different story about connection and attention that was much different than the dominant stories of well-oiled machines.

1) Organizations are living systems.
2) Living systems organize themselves.
3) How might we change and enliven human endeavor to cohere
with what we know about living systems organizing themselves?

Much of my life, personally and professionally, I’ve sought the most poignant of stories. That live underneath the most common of stories. I’ve sought and needed something…more. I’ve been drawn to people that explore such. That want to explore together.

I don’t do well with imposed narrow story. The ones that are convenient for their frequency of use. I don’t want the superficial and performed. I think most people crave something more enduring. Most people want the stories that invite nuanced intelligence together. And wisdom. And genuineness. And bravery. Stories that expect and cultivate aliveness together — the feeling of flowing with life. Stories that grow comraderie together. And love.

I’ve been referencing the poet Mary Oliver at all of my hosted events over the last six months. She speaks of attention so beautifully in her poem, Instructions for Living a Life.

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it. 

Marvelous. Personally and professionally. 

I also often use the Zen phrase (often I think of it as Zen Stew).

Everything is connected.
Everything changes.
Pay attention. 

Marvelous again. In what is personal. Relationships. Family. Community. Reactions to events. Difficult news. And marvelous in what is professional — groups trying to improve how they go well together with things that they care about and with things that add meaning and purpose.

Thx for your attentive eyes, mind, heart. It’s so often the most compelling of reasons and invitations.

Prefer Audio? Listen to this post here.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why I blog. It’s been ten years now of 175-200 posts per year. That’s Monday through Thursday most weeks. And prior to that, it was ten years of more sporadic posting. Streaks here and there. I’ve been thinking about why I blog so often about little noticings. Micro-awarenesses. Little appreciations.

Quite often when blogging, I start by perusing my recent photos on my phone. I’m looking for something interesting. Something little. Something micro. Something that created a recent appreciative moment. The photo above, geese standing on ice, at a nearby pond where Dana and I walked Sunday — does the trick. I like the reflection of the geese. I like the mental surprise (a pond where geese are often swimming, but are now standing). I liked wondering about what geese might think of their partially frozen pond.

Back to the why of blogging. For me.

1. I blog so as to live an attentive life. A curious life. A curiosity with how life flows. And organizes. And invites. And compels. I like converting that noticing from perception to words. It’s inner found through outer. It’s outer created through found inner.
2. I blog to develop a habit and practice of appreciation. For learning. For beauty. For celebration. Appreciation as a lifestyle. As a way of being. As an operating mode to encounter the world. As a kindness to the complexity within me an around me.
3. I blog to encourage associativeness. To connect things. To speak of connection that already is. To widen the lane of perception through the most narrow of openings. I both like and need to feel things non-linear. And less reductive.

And, and, and. There are more likely 47 reasons why I blog. Maybe even 113. But today, this is enough fFor me. And for a few of my closer-in peeps that also seek to sort their lives. Micro-practices of attention, appreciation, association — yup, it’s some of the best simple that I know. For blogging. For living as human.

Wislawa Szymborska was a Polish poet and Nobel Laureate. I went looking for a poem this morning — wishing brevity of expression to match up, or nurture, what is in me and those I love that are both near and far.

I found one, within a collection that I have, Leading From Within. An ear-marked page, from a time long ago, a first reading of this poem.

I quite love this book, Leading From Within. For all of the pointing that it does to growing and nurturing a resilient and imaginative interior.

Enjoy.

A Note
Wislawa Szymborska

Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the sand,
rise on wings;

to be a dog,
or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain
from everything it’s not;

to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chance
to remember for a moment
a conversation held
with the lamp switched off;

and if only once
to stumble on a stone,
end up drenched in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;

and to keep on not knowing
something important.

Yum. “…keep on not knowing something important…” It is such kind orientation. And good company.

Grateful.