Tag: #grief

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Wisdom — An Online Series Beginning June 4, 2020

I think one of my favorite parts of this online series that I’m co-hosting with Quanita Roberson, that begins June 4th is this notion:

In these days,
it is not more tools that we need; it is more connection.
It is not more information that we need; it is more wisdom.

This series is NOT a training of easy steps that assure neat and tidy outcome. It IS a communing of people readied by life circumstance to develop a different relationship with forgiveness, and the doorway that creates to wisdom.

This online series mixes teaching, sharing stories, asking questions, wondering and wandering to territories known and not known. There will be whole group and small group interaction. This series mixes insights found in both words shared and silence welcomed.

Week 1: Anger
Week 2: Grief 
Week 3: Compassion 
Week 4: Grace 

We want to help all of us go deeper, more able to insert wisdom — thought, heart, belly, spirit, and practice — to the plethora of chaotic circumstance that accompany 21st century life.

Registration is open. Join us as a wisdom seeker and wisdom contributor.

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For Listening

Yesterday I walked near my home. Where I live it’s the time of year when flowering trees are nearing full bloom. Their brilliance and fullness so often invoke drop-jawed awe from me. And listening. I find myself staring at these trees, with welcomed pause, to be quiet and to listen spaciously in the quiet.

I’ve been involved in a few podcast recordings lately. With thoughtful people making sense of the times, sharing wonderings, witnessing grief and joy in human experience.

Peek and listen as inspired.

Human to Human The Podcast — Featuring Casey Tinnin (16 minutes) — Casey is one of my favorite people in the world. His energy and his honesty are very inviting. I met him through the United Church of Christ Next Generation Leadership Initiative, at which I’ve been faculty now for three years. Casey brings insight, wonder, compassion and so many other delicious slivers of aliveness in making space for people.

Fire & Water — CoVid Grief, Anger, Sadness, Confusion, Hope (12 minutes) — These all go together, don’t they. It’s important to give ourselves to hope. Or to witness it. It’s also important to give ourselves to the grief. Quanita Roberson and I reflect on such notions.

Fire & Water — Paying Attention, A Reflection (20 minutes) — This recording follows an online community call with people associated / interested in Fire & Water as a leadership program and rite of passage. A big part of Fire & Water is the ability to pay attention to the unseen as well as the seen. 

 

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A Blessing in Chaotic Times — Thanks Jan Richardson

Thanks to friend, David Jenkins for recently sending this poem below. Jan Richardson, the author, is an artist, writer, and minister in the United Methodist Church. It is from her book, The Cure for Sorrow.

I post the poem here for any of us, that in addition to helping amidst CoVid on the external, are also leaning further in to this ripe moment and deep challenge of the personal internal.

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This is the Blessing in the Chaos

To all that is chaotic in you, let there come silence.
Let there be a calming of the clamoring,
a stilling of the voices that have laid their claim on you,
that have made their home in you,
that go with you even to the holy places but will not let you rest,
will not let you hear your life with wholeness
or feel the grace that fashioned you.
Let what distracts you cease.
Let what divides you cease.
Let there come an end to what diminishes and demeans, 
and let depart all that keeps you in its cage.
Let there be an opening into the quiet that lies beneath the chaos, 
where you find the peace you did not think possible
and see what shimmers within the storm.

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Reflecting On Grief — 16 Minute Podcast on Wise Leadership

 

I’m excited to be beginning a podcast with colleague and friend, Quanita Roberson. We’ve called it Fire & Water, with intention to help many of us “come of age in this age” and “cultivate wise leaders.”

This first offering, 16 minutes in length, is a conversation on grief. We cover a fair range that all speaks to the fundamental need to develop a relationship with grief (rather than just avoiding it):

  • letting go of the old for the new to come
  • lessons learned
  • the “wildness” of sorrow
  • the trouble with “untended gardens”
  • the need for community in grieving
  • how we avoid grief differently
  • the connection of rage to unprocessed grief
  • difference in masculine and feminine relationship with grief
  • spaces needed these days
  • the relief of permission

Enjoy.

You can sign on to follow / share future podcasts at Podbean. We intend monthly ish shows. As always, please share with others as inspired.

And for those already ready for the edginess of a full 16-month leadership program, apply now for Fire & Water Leadership Cohort that starts August 2019. Again, please share with others as inspired.

 

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