The system has called our bluff. If you want to learn, learn. But we pay for it with effort.*
Seth Godin
I am ignorant
but open,
I am incompetent
but passionate.
*Seth Godin’s blog: Education is free, learning is expensive.
Learners
Time for kindness
We do it because being kind is the more courageous thing in a cynical world. We do it because it is right – because people deserve kindness and because kindness makes us better.*
Ryan Holiday
No time to waste. Of course there isn’t. Time is all we’ve got. Time is all there is.**
Seth Godin
How adaptable
kindness is–
In reacting and responding
to needs,
Growing into seeking
opportunities,
Not only for solving
problems, but,
Given air to breathe,
Becoming ever-present–
In thinking
in words spoken
and in actions,
And sometimes
in simply being there
in this moment–
I don’t need it
courier-delivered
and can begin
to use it right now,
In some way
for this person
in this task–
Everyone
and everything
becoming better
with kindness–
Even me.
*Ryan Holiday’s Right Thing, Right Now;
**Seth Godin’s This Is Strategy.
Learning to breathe
In my tradition, our story of creation is one that takes four days to tell…at its centre is the most crucial concept: that you are the universe, that everything the creator went through, you’ve gone through, too…I am not Jasper Young Bear. I am the creator, and believing that I am the creator is the only way I can do this work.*
Jasper Young Bear
The soul is not only the breath of human life. It is the breath of all life, the anima mundi, the animating life force of the universe. It is the vital spark in all things, distinct by not separate from our physicalness.**
Philip Newell
A story we need to hear,
A character we need to be,
A making we need to bring,
A breathing–
It’s deeper lore,
Strange to our ears–
When we breathe
the world lives,
When we hold our breath,
Earth gasps.
*From, Suleika Jaouad’s The Book Of Alchemy;
**Philip Newell’s The Great Search.
The one and only*
Don’t worship your heroes. Surpass them.**
Derek Sivers
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.^
W. H. Murray
It just may be
that you will bring something
wonderful into the world
if you go original
rather than copy–
*A little Chesney Hawkes to accompany the blog;
**Derek Sivers’ How To Live;
^Quoted in Jean ~Houston’s The Wizard Of Us.
It’s quite becoming
Precognitions [:] perhaps the most striking of these is our relentless, unshakeable belief that the world is unfinished – that there is something wanting to emerge. We sense this not because of naive optimism, but because of a truth buried deep in the marrow: that awe are not separate from this world’s becoming. Its completion calls us because we are part of what completes it.*
AleXander McManus
But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.**
Jesus of Nazerath
Mercy making
alchemy possible–
We share it with others–
We share it with ourselves
and we watch to see what happens–
Mercy frees
imagining,
So we might
enter into our
becoming.
*AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments;
**Matthew 9:13.
New worlds
You need the eye, hand, and the heart. Two won’t do.*
David Hockney
They always spot the ladybug, the fluttering orange butterflies, the dandelion that’s one little puff from bursting. Their questions are my favourite part…Children have been my greatest teachers.**
Maggie Doyne
Wonderful talents
and generous values
can be the making of adulthood,
But sometimes
the best eyes we can have
are from our childlike selves–
Who knows what new
worlds we may see
to bring these to.
*Quoted in Austin Kleon’s blog: Go on until you fall over;
**From Suleika Jaouad’s The Book Of Alchemy.
The thick line
Meaning is not something Moses discovered like an objective truth, not something he invents for himself. It is a threshold he crosses.*
AleXander McManus
The successful blueprint aligns that change you seek to make with the life you seek to live.**
Seth Godin
Firstly
the blue moment and then
the blue-print–
Meaning materialises
through a moment that
changes us–
The future is over there
but between here and there
there lies a thick line–
The line
changes everything
starting with you–
*AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments;
**Seth Godin’s This Is Strategy.
Until the end
I’ll go on until I fall over.*
David Hockney
Meaning cannot be simulated.**
Arthur Brooks
There will be a thread^
running through all you do
in your lifetime–
Something you cannot put down
because that would be to walk
away from Self–
Nuanced, quirksome, imperfect–
Iterating, adapting, regenerating–
Meaning wrapped
in the fullness of days.
Consider who you are. Above all, a human being, carrying no greater power than your own reasoned choice, which oversees all other things, and is free from any other master.^^
*Quoted in Austin Kleon’s blog: Go on until you fall over;
**Arthur Brooks’ The Meaning Of Your Life;
^I continue in my work to help people notice their thread; I work 1:1 with a small group: it’s a gifted experience and I have a place available. Drop me a line in the comments if you want to find out more. It’s my thread.
^^Epictetus, quoted in Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic.
Feeding the imagination
Thinking that you are good can make you bad.*
Edward Slingerland
Learning is how to live.**
Derek Sivers
To shift
rather than stick,
That is the question–
Whether to explore
the inexhaustible
human capacity to learn–
Or stay
in the same old
same old–
One becoming
younger, the other
turning older–
*Edward Slingerland’s Trying Not To Try;
**Derek Sivers’ How To Live.
Crafters
You can find the craft in whatever you do.*
Rob Bell
You won’t get fired for following a best practice. But you won’t build something that matters with them either.**
gapingvoid
There are instances and
situations where
I want you to follow the guidelines –
Think, piloting the plane–
There are many more places where
I would love for you to bring
your crafter’s heart,
And bring more–
Possibilities I cannot see, born of
deep talent and purpose and meaning,
Expressed through imagination
and skill and service–
You feel and notice
more than most–
Because this isn’t some genetic club,
It’s your choice.
We are not observers of a world already built. We are participants in a world still becoming – shaped by intention, tension, and the trembling power of presence.^
*Rob Bell’s How To Be Here;
**gapingvoid’s blog: Beware Of Best Practices;
^Alex McManus’ Blue Moments.
THIN|SILENCE 
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