Yesterday we celebrated my son’s sixth birthday with a small gathering of five of his friends based on Star Wars. We did nothing but open a space in the middle of our small house and let them bang away at each other for two hours with light sabers. For a six year old boy, this constitutes a great gift (as it does I am sure for the parents of the other boys who came!).
Of course, being the Jedi master, I was obliged to fight them all at some point, and sometimes even two at a time. It was all going so well until I turned and got stabbed right in the eye by a boy less than half my size. My vision went blurry and my eye started to weep. I was fine in the end, but I had to retire, knowing the humlity of what it must feel like to be slain by Yoda.
[tags]yoda, star wars[/tags]
“The secret of life is to have a question or task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day of your whole life and the most important thing is – it must be something you cannot possibly do!”
— Henry Moore
With thanks to my friend Patti DeSante, and also Michael Jones, who uses this quote in “Artful Leadership” (.pdf).
[tags]Henry Moore, Michael Jones, secret of life[/tags]
Photo of Henry Moore sculpture at Hakone Open Air Museum by Nemo’s Great Uncle
cultivate eyes
that enable you to see
through the storms that are right here
to the storms that are coming
in that depth –
great beauty and peace.
photo by damaruc
I was in a conversation this morning with people who work in a big systemic field: early childhood education. It is one of those fields that is rife with research telling us what all the problems are. We have more information than we could ever use about childhood obesity, drug addiction, abuse, longitudinal studies on literacy and employment, links between diet and capacity, intergenerational issues of dependence and parenting…this list goes on. We know everything about every problem but one.
The one problem we don’t know about is how to solve all of these problems.
My suspicion – and this will not be a huge surprise – is that the answer to that one lies in a couple of key things. First, we need each other. No one person can solve that one. Second, we need to learn how to converse in a way that is generative and not destructive. We need to take the opportunities of our time together in conversation to be deliberate about making things better, and not get too wrapped up in the shadow side of our work even though we can see our heart in the shadow sometimes, and it draws us there very easily.
In truth, I’m not interested in answering the question of how do we solve this biggest problem from the outside. I think the best we can do is to get inside it and start practising, start to find ways to bring to life the integration we sense is needed.
[tags]shadow, problem solving[/tags]
Photo by .serena.
Five years ago, four planes were hijacked and crashed and three buildings were damaged and destroyed and upwards of 3000 people died. It was a big event. It has been said often this week that “911 changed everything.”
But did that event change everything, or was it our responses to that event that changed everything? If the first is true, then I believe we have already lost the “war on terror”, for if all it takes is for these acts to be committed and everything changes, then the power rests with those who commit the acts.
But if the responsibility for world-changing rests with us individually and collectively, then we are confronted with the thought that we must bear some responsibility for how the world has changed, and know that it is entirely within our capabilities to change it again.
What do you think?
[tags]911[/tags]