Every couple of weeks I sing with an evensong chorale, singing Gregorian chant and other liturgical music for a meditation service at one of our local churches. The whole experience is deeply spiritual for everyone who comes, including (and especially) the singers. Over the past few years we have focused on how to collaborate on a level that befits the experience we are trying to generate for the congregation. And it really comes down to sustaining flow. Our director Alison Nixon, who thinks a lot about these things, usually has some wisdom to impart to us each week. On Sunday …
Rob Paterson is blogging some fierce (as they say down east) about John Holt and unschooling. Rob quotes from Holt: “Education, with its supporting system of compulsory and competitive schooling, all its carrots and sticks, its grades, diplomas, and credentials, now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern and worldwide slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and “fans,” driven more and more, in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My …
Doug Manning at Proactive Living quotes a study from the Us Department of Labor that says that there are more college graduates taking unemployment than high school dropouts. Although percentage wise, high school dropouts outnumber their college graduates, the stats point out to a myth about education: that you can buy your way to prosperity: This is a sobering new reality of the 21st century, one that is partially of our own making. We have successfully encouraged and enabled more young people than ever to obtain a four-year degree. However, we have done little to help them evaluate the commercial …
Elder Sonny Diabo, (Mohawk, Kahnawake)The group I was working with in Montreal this week is assisted by the man pictured above, Sonny Diabo, an Elder from Kahnewake, a First Nation across the river from Montreal. Sonny is a marvelous and generous teacher, and is invaluable to the group. In the contemporary world, we don’t always get time to spend with Elders and so when I have the opportunity, I try to take advantage of it by asking about teachings in certain areas of my life that I am currently thinking about. Recently as evidenced here at the Parking Lot weblog, …
George Nemeth got riffing on my post about project management as jazz and a really cool conversation evolved in his comments (scroll down). One of the comments from John Galt challenged the idea that strategy can be created in an emergent and improvisiational framework: The jazz metaphor is apt for improvisation. Not for strategy as we are speaking about it. One nice definition of improvisation in strategy is the act of �creating strategy as it is being implemented� or making it up as you go along. Now, classic strategy is a process for thoughtful managers in mindful organizations. Mindful � …