“Here, I made this.” … These four words carry with them generosity, intent, risk, and intimacy. The more we say them, and mean them, and deliver on them, the more art and connection we create, And we create change for a living.*
Seth Godin

Listening is about being present, not just about being quiet. I meet others with the live I’ve lived, not just with my questions.**
Krista Tippett

I also made it for me.
In fact, the best things I will ever share
matter to me, are
my treasure:
Two myths help us to be
fully human:
One is personal,
The other is social.^

*Seth Godin’s The Practice;
**Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise;
^Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth.

Everything has to work. A new idea or an invention had to be capable of rational proof and be shown to conform to the external world.
Karen Armstrong

There is something lying beyond the perfect of
logos,
Not imperfect
as such, but
more human, more
lively, more
beautiful.
Joseph Campbell spoke of our need
for new myths,
For two myths:**
A personal myth and
a social myth,
To understand life and our place
in the world;
The old myths,
Campbell said, no longer
serve us as we need them to
in our logos-shaped world:
Karen Armstrong concurs:
Like poetry and music, mythology should awaken us to rapture, even in the face of death and the despair we may feel at the prospect of annihilation. If a myth ceases to do that, it has died and outlived its usefulness.*
But myths have been with us
since the earliest burial rites,
And they will be with us for
our future,
Not the little stories of
social media and
weekends and
holidays, but the extraordinary tales
of the greater good of
our lives and how we connect with our
ailing world and
enjoin with others – these stories
held in so many rituals that reveal
The beauty of their
activeness.

*Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth:
**Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth.

look everywhere for difference, … see the earth as source, … celebrate the genius in others, [be] not prepared against but for surprise*
James Carse

As we become people with
more on the inside –
Love
joy
peace
patience
kindness
goodness
faithfulness
gentleness
and such –
We find that we are able to see more
on the outside.

*James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.

Mythology was … designed to help us to cope with the problematic human predicament. It helped people to find their place in the world and their true orientation.*
Karen Armstrong

Our False Self is precisely our individual singularity in both its “Aren’t I wonderful!” or “Aren’t I terrible!” forms. Both are their own kind of ego trip, and both take the tiny little self far too seriously.**
Richard Rohr

We living a false tale when
it’s all about us,
Or its all about others.
Joseph Campbell spoke of our need for
two myths:
The personal and the
social;
When these are in place,
Influencing each other,
Then we have probably found our
true story.

*Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth;
**Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond.

The True Self has knocked on both the hard bottom and high ceiling of reality and had less and less need for more verbal certitudes or answers that always fit. It has found its certainty elsewhere and now lives inside a YES that is so big that it can absorb most of the little noes.*
Richard Rohr

My fascination with genius and my openness to God were both rooted in a desperate search for something to translate my life from the mundane to the transcendent. … One thing I have learned over my lifetime: We search for what we lack, and we long for what we fear we don’t possess.**
Erwin McManus

There is more inside of us than we know –
We are full of adjacent possibilities for how we might
mix our talents and values and energies.
Life is our opportunity to explore,
Not just a part of it –
Our youth or our working years, but
all of it,
Moments upon moments of expression for what we uncover,
So it’s never too late to begin –
Indeed, we’ll simply find more
treasure
towards our richer story.
Erwin McManus won’t know this, but it was
a week spent with him
more than seventeen years ago
that set me on the trajectory of the dreamwhispering work I
do today;
His fascination helped me to keep
seeking and asking and knocking.

*Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond;
**Erwin McManus’ The Genius of Jesus.

I have just completed a book of doodles and
thought someone out there may like to have it
for a donation of £50 to a homeless charity
this winter.
There are almost 100 original doodles in the book.
Drop me a line to let me know if
you are interested.

On a quest, the process of transformation is at least as important, maybe more so, than the destination we’re trying to reach.*
Sunil Raheja

“So far” and “not yet” are the foundation of every successful journey.**
Seth Godin

“But it’s true!”
So what,
Badness is true, but we don’t want more of that,
We want
more goodness –
Humility, gratitude and faithfulness are truths that show
much promise.
The best truth transforms us in this direction
and is always a work in progress.
If I see you’re really trying hard with your truth
then it may well set me a little more
free.

*Sunil Raheja’s Dancing With Wisdom;
**Seth Godin’s The Practice.

The best stories are vulnerable but not raw; they come from scars not wounds.*
Bruce Feiler

Almost everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, scared, and yet designed for joy.**
Anne Lamott

The things we’ve got wrong,
The messes we’ve made,
The errors we’ve perpetrated,
The flaws that adorn and decorate our lives,
These work against us,
Dictating our teleos,
Reducing our options –
Right?
It seems not;
There is not only reality but also
imagination –
Story,
And when these play together, something
wildly wonderful emerges.

Mythology opens the world so that it becomes transparent to something that is beyon speech, beyond words – in short, what we call transcendence.^

*Bruce Feiler’s Life Is In the Transitions;
**Maria Popova’s The Marginalian: Anne Lamott on Forgiveness, Self-Forgiveness, and the Relationship Between Brokenness and Joy;
^Joseph Campbell: from Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth.

As our circumstances change, we need to tell our stories differently in order to bring out their timeless truth.*
Karen Armstrong

That’s what humans do: we make and remake our stories, abandoning the ones that longer fit and trying on new ones for size.**
Katherine May

Our ego, or false self, is the
enemy,
restricting, constricting
us to be less than we can be.
Each one of us struggles with false versions of our self,
Sunil Raheja’s^ four signs of egocentricity helping us to see
just how:
Playing the comparison game,
Defensiveness,
Needing to display our brilliance,
Needing to be liked and accepted.
These shape a story we find ourselves living within,
But the good news is that we can tells our stories differently.
It is possible to be the brilliant and unique person that
you are,
Shaped by
humility and
gratitude and
faithfulness.
Perhaps counterintuitively,
These remove the restrictions,
Setting us free.

*Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth;
**Katherine May’s Wintering;
.^Sunil Raheja’s Dancing With Wisdom

Acknowledging the reality of the extended mind might well lead us to embrace the extended heart.*
Annie Murphy Paul

You have the right to remain silent. But I hope you won’t. The world conspires to hold us back, but it can’t do that without our permission.**
Seth Godin

I’ve been asked to write a blog about
doodling at Christmas,
So I thought to share
one of the things here that I’ll be including:
Doodling extends the mind.
And by Annie Murphy Paul’s argument,
Potentially the heart –
I would also add the will.
Here’s Paul’s list of mind extensions:
Interception (being more aware of what our body sensations are telling us),
Movement,
Gesture,
Natural settings,
Designing built environments,
Space of ideas,
Thinking with:
Experts,
Peers,
Groups.
Doodling appears as an expression of movement,
When we are stuck with text, we can keep our hand –
And our mind –
Moving with a doodle.
When we’re doodling, we’re listening,
We’re moving with what we’re listening to:

One study found that people who were directed to doodle while carrying out a boring listening task remembered 29 percent more information than people who did not doodle, likely because the latter group had let their attention slip away entirely.*

There are lots of other reasons why
doodling is good for us,
But I thought you’d like to know this one and
have a play.

*Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind;
**Seth Godin’s The Practice.