A role is not a character. A role simply assumes a generic position in a story’s social order (Mother, Boss, Artist, Loner) and then carries out that role’s tasks … .*
Robert McKee

Whether a story is to be marked for grownups or children, the writer writes for himself, outof his own need, otherwise the story will lack reality.**
Madeleine L’Engle

The role comes scripted from
beyond us,
The character comes endlessly
unfolding from
within.

*Robert McKee’s Character;
**Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking On Water.

Your soul is much larger than you! You are just along for the ride. When you learn to live there, you will learn to live with everyone and everything else too.*
Richard Rohr

I am not going to attempt
a definition of the soul,
I only know that people
of all kinds of beliefs
use the word to describe
the biggest iteration of a human
they can imagine,
Which I guess is the point:
Greater expressions made possible
through connection to the
other.

*Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond.

The purpose of freedom is to free someone else.*
Martha Beck

I am not free if
I do not somehow seek to free others;
We often think about freedom from,
But freedom to may be more important:
For you to move into your fullness and
me to move into mine.

*Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity.

More than ever, more of us have the freedom to care, the freedom to connect, the freedom to choose, the freedom to imitate, the freedom to do what matters.*
Seth Godin

To know yourself, you must recognise your rock-bottom inner self, compare your dreams to reality and desires to morality, and from that base explore the social, personal, private and hidden selves that complete your multifaceted humanity.**
Robert McKee

Whilst Confession is a personal
expression of faith in oneself,
And Communion with others allows for
the uncovering of the more within and
co-creation without,
The third critical C focuses these things within
a daily practice –
Activeness, as Erich Fromm named it;
Fromm also wrote about how
none of us are absolutely free, but
it is our responsibility to work out just
how free we are.

*Seth Godin’s It’s Your Turn;
**Robert McKee’s Character.

We need to allow ourselves to pursue hunches, to discover … nonobvious pieces of information and even more important, non-obvious relationships between new information already in our memory. … we need to give urselves time to make new images and move them around inside our heads, and on paper, in new arrangements.*
Peter Turchi

nothing changes in the absence of tension**
gapingvoid

I am glad that I’m not the person
I was at twenty one,
Or thirty three,
Or fifty six –
Although each of these Geoffreys
is still a part of me –
They have helped me to who I am:
I am sixty one,
and I am also four,
and twelve, and twenty-three,
and forty-five,
and … and … and …
If we lose any part of ourselves,
we are thereby diminished.
If I cannot be thirteen
and sixty-one simultaneously,
part of me has been
taken away.^

I have changed,
Through complexity and randomness,
Through exploration and discovery,
Between the old and the new,
Life.

*Peter Turchi’s A Muse and A Maze;
**gapingvoid’s blog: Change sucks, or does it?;
^Madeliene L’Engle’s Walking on Water.

You can still get hold of my colouring book Slow Journeys in the Same Direction: A colouring with a little mindful purpose.

You may want to pick up a copy as a little gift for someone, or even for yourself. I’ve also kept the accompanying Slow Journeys website alive for some extra resource.

It’s always been a great price at only £5; here’s where to get it from.

For your talent to fight above its weight, it needs to bulk up on knowledge.*
Robert McKee

in indigenous ways of knowing, we understand a thing only when we understand it with four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion, and spirit**
Robin Wall Kimmerer

Knowing takes a life time,
It demands our soul.

Some don’t want to know, not really –
They’re happy with what they already know;
Others do want to know, but only with their minds,
Treating it as a commodity and tool,
Believing they can control and use knowledge,
But never understanding its true value;
Still others allow knowledge into their heart – allowing themselves to
imagine and dream,
But they find that even new knowledge fades away
too quickly, and
nothing changes;
There are some, though, who begin to
experiment and explore with what they are knowing,
Discovering that as they encourage it to grow in their own
and others experiences,
It grows and grows,
And is as vast as
the universe itself.

Knowing takes a life time,
It demands our soul.

*Robert McKee’s Character;
**Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.

What would you do if you could not fail? … What would you do even though you might fail?*
Bernadette Jiwa

creativity starts with engaging the world on our own terms, noticing what others miss, and attending to what most matters to you**
Rob Walker

When you begin to see the You
perhaps had not noticed before,
The curious and interested and fascinated You,
The You who gets lost in probing
and questioning and
wondering and
imagining and
hoping and
experimenting, then
you have moved the focus from:
What would you do if you could not fail?, to the
heavier and more promising question:
What would you do even though
you might fail?

*Bernadette Jawa’s The Story of Telling blog: On Doing the Work That is Calling To Us;
**Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing blog: Useless and Valuable.

If a reader cannot create a book with the writer, the book will never come to life.*
Madeleine L’Engle

Because you can create only from what’s already in your mind, your work is strictly limited to the contents of your unthought thoughts**
Robert McKee

Whilst Confession is a personal
expression,
The second critical C that is Communion
allows for
the uncovering of the more within and
co-creation without.

*Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking On Water;
**Robert McKee’s Character.

I have no idea how to get my students to build a self or become a soul … and in the hundreds of faculty appointments I have participated in, we’ve never evaluated a candidate on how well he or she could accomplish it.*
Steven Pinker

The unearthing of an unseen likeness is the most beautiful gift one mind can give another.**
Robert McKee

An unrushed, open and flowing
conversation around
talents and energies and
values is a great place to begin
finding the self and
growing a soul.

*David Brooks’ The Second Mountain;
**Robert McKee’s Character.