In addition, we humans can influence our evolution by the environments we construct and the choices we make; our evolution is not just a matter of chance.*
(Steven Hawes)

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.**
(Jesus of Nazareth)

Meekness is not a condition or status forced upon us because of what we lack but is an evolutionary choice we make to relate to all things and all people.

Ours is a universe of abundance rather than a world of scarcity, a place to live in awe and gratitude with kindness and generosity.

*From Steven Hawes’ A Liberated Mind;
**Matthew 5:5.

The way I choose to put the messages of my life together into a picture is related to all I have ever seen through the eyes of other picture makers and through a constant kind of looking I do myself. What is my own is the constancy of observation of forms and the investigations of ideas and feelings as they combine into the final object to which I sign my name and for which I assume responsibility.*
(Corita Kent)

The path forward is about curiosity, generosity and connection. These are the three foundations of art.**
(Seth Godin)

My reading and journaling today has taken me back to where my dreamwhispering^ began, although I had no idea this is what would emerge at the time.

It’s more than twenty-five years ago I was a presbyter in the Methodist Church wondering about what it was that I did best and should give more time to. I have no recollection of where this thought came from. It was possibly that I’d uncovered a desire to grow and develop, but I am not sure. What I do remember is shaping a list of activities and handing these to people I thought would be honest and critical about what they saw in me.

It was a limited thing because the list only included what I was already doing, but it turned out to be the beginning of something that would grow and grow.

After my own attempt to identify what I did best through the help of others, when I came across some help for identifying people’s gifts, I embraced it both for myself and others. In a voluntary organisation there can be more roles than people. Up until then I had counted a successful meeting as filling as many of these appointments as possible regardless of a person’s abilities, but commitment doesn’t always come with passion, but passion does comes with commitment.

A few years later I was to discover thinking around talents and strengths that was to change my world. It altered the way I see everyone and I began inviting people to explore theirs – I’ve lost count of how many, but perhaps it’s pushing towards a thousand now.

And through each conversation,^^ uncovering the gifts that are in everyone for living towards others, I’ve been learning and developing, both for the sake of others and for myself:

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.*^

Corita Kent’s opening words caught my eye because thinking from many places are part of dreamwhispering – from artists like Joseph Campbell, Scott Peck, Otto Scharmer, brothers Alex and Erwin McManus, Seth Godin, Lewis Hyde, James Carse, enhanced by the imagination and thinking of Maria Popova, Elle Luna, Brené Brown, Ursula Franklin and many more, towards “the final object to which I sign my name and for which I assume responsibility.”

In around two months I will be “asking permission to sit down,” a Methodist euphemism for retirement, and I’ll be given the opportunity to reflect on my work and ministry. I stepped outside of church work five years ago so that I might focus on dreamwhispering, although, looking back, this had been the direction I’d been moving in for some years before this.

Why am I telling you this?

Perhaps I am rehearsing some of what I might be sharing on the 23rd April when I ask permission to “sit down.”^*

But I think it’s really about reconnecting with what matters to me most of all which I hold out as a gift from my life to yours, to help you identify and know and do what you must do.

What I am is a thin silence, a whisper; what you do is the most important thing.

*From Corita Kent and Jan Snowden’s Learning by Heart.
**From Seth Godin’s The Practice.
^Dreamwhispering is my name for the work of listening to what a person’s life is telling them around their values, talents and energies, towards creating a story or narrative they want to develop every day of their lives for the benefit of others. In reality, dreamwhispering is what happens when two people enter into a deep, creative conversation.
^^Conversation is the natural space for dreamwhispering. It is not a programme or course and never will be.
*^From Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.
(^*Dreamwhisperers don’t really retire.)

Beauty is not to be captured or controlled for there is something intrinsically elusive in its nature.*
(John O’Donohue)

Happy are those who find wisdom, and those who get understanding, for her income is better than silver, and her revenue better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her.**
(Older Testament Proverb)

When we come upon beauty life makes both more sense and is more mysterious – a starry night, an elegant idea, two people connecting in a transcendent way, a movement of life. John O’Donohue continues:

Beauty cannot be forced. It alone decides when it will come and sometimes in the last thing we expect and the very last thing to arrive. Creative artists know this well. Great skill and inspiration set the context or scene where beauty might emerge. But it is not the mind of the artist alone that can determine whether beauty will arrive or not.*

What an exciting thought. Not only are we receivers of beauty but, somehow, we are able to produce beauty.

Perhaps if we seek knowledge and desire wisdom then beauty will be more likely to arrive:

There is no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.^

Wisdom is a particular way of expressing what we “know,” the culmination of humility, gratitude, faithfulness, integrity, wholeness, perseverance, courage and generosity

*From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty.
**Proverbs 3:13-14.
*Arnold Bennett, quoted in Jay Cross’ Informal Learning.

Life is on the wire,
the rest is just waiting.*
(Papa Wallenda)

Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.**
(Kevin Kelly)

Waiting?

Waiting?

Still waiting?

I hesitate when I should be moving, and there’s no better way to hide in waiting than to appear busy.

Something happens to us when we are moving, deeper than we know:

We now know that if you change your mind and behaviour in a healthy way, helpful changes in your body will come along for the ride, down to almost every single cell in your body.^

When we move, we change.

But not when we’re waiting.

We need to stop waiting. Thinking about something in a focused way can count as showing up and is a good place to begin – we need to show up with our minds and hearts as well as our hands, anyway. What it does is akin to the call of the starter: On your marks, set ... .

You’ll know if it has worked if, as the athlete falls forward when taking their arms away, you fall into action when you conclude your deeply focused thinking.

*Papa Wallenda, quoted in Seth Godin’s The Practice.
**From Kevin Kelly’s The Technium post: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice. Here’s a video of the 68 bits of advice from Kevin Kelly.
From Steven Hawes’ A Liberated Mind.

Don’t forget, tomorrow is Mindful Doodling and you’re invited.

Long-form creatives are building the storytelling cathedrals of the 21st Century. It’s time to start creating your own masterpiece. It’s time to write your future.*
(Robert McKee)

What is it that you are in for the long haul? How will you develop character, nuance and intrigue in this?

I’ve often mentioned Frederick Buechner’s neat understanding of where we find purpose, this being, where our deepest joy meets the world’s greatest need. Seth Godin puts it this way:

There’s a gap in the market where your version of better can make a welcome change happen. […] Yes, you have a calling: to serve people in a way they need (or want). The opportunity is for each of us to choose a path and follow that, not for our own benefit, but because of what it can produce for others.**

Robert McKee may be writing about screenplays but what goes as an unprecedented time for story development works for our lives, too.

*From Robert McKee‘s newsletter: The Future of Storytelling.
**From Seth Godin’s This is Marketing.

[V]astness is repeated in every system of our lives.  If we only care enough to zoom.*
(Seth Godin)

In a superabundant economy, there are countless niches to make money in, with more emerging all the time.**
(Chris Worth)

There’s a vastness to be discovered as we zoom out into space and there is a vastness to be discovered as we zoom in on life, and especially fascinating to me is the vastness to be discovered in a person’s life.

Also, around and in-between the larger expressions of work we’re familiar with are many smaller spaces to inhabit and flourish with our unique blend of values, talents and energies. They’re worthwhile hanging around with playfulness:

It turns out that many of the best ideas we have start out as filler. Stuff in the margins. Last-minute extras simply to fill space. Because the stakes are low and our defences are down.^

*From Seth Godin’s blog: Zooming in – the magic of looking more closely. 
**Chris Worth’s post for gapingvoid’s blog: The go-to guy vs. the already-here guy.
^From Seth Godin’s blog: The stuff in the margins.

The more entrenched a system of measurement, the more difficult it is for a deviant, an outlier, or even an experimenter to emerge.
(Youngme Moon)

It sometimes happens […] that the spoilsports in their turn make a community with rules of its own.
(Johan Huizinga)

Knowledge is what we know and are always adding to.

Belief is how we store and use the knowledge that is most important to us.

Sometimes knowledge and belief are not enough.

Sometimes we must take a leap that only faith can make possible.

Eventually, leapers may spoil the original game, but they often lead us to a game that matters for more people.

Firstly, they must enter or create a liminal space in which they begin to form a communitas of people around the new thing for which there is no measurement.

*From Youngme Moon’s Different.
**From Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens.

Genuine self-esteem is soft and open to our own flaws; the kind built on pretence is rigid, defended, and rejecting of self-honesty. The difference is fusion with our conceptualised self-stories.*
(Steven Hayes)

It is ironic that you must go to the edge to find the centre.**
(Richard Rohr)

We long for belonging and connection, and as a result can create stories for ourselves that we believe will bring us this.

Some are stories of dependence, some are stories of independence.

The best stories are of interdependence.

Honesty about who we are allows for connection to take place with others, with our world with ourselves, and, if we have a god, with god.

This story involves us walking from the centre of our lives to the edge, defusing from the story we have been telling ourselves – reality is bigger than we allow.

From the edge, we gain greater perspective and see not only the truth of who we are more clearly, but also the truth of others, our world and god. This includes a great deal of many things, including the wonder and beauty of our lives.

When we each make this journey – which is part of what it is to be human – then others helps us to see ourselves with greater clarity, with a greater perspective:

As you emerge from behind your eyes, you begin to see behind the eyes of others.*

Steven Hawes imagines this to be a place of greater consciousness, a transcendence to which we are connecting and in which we are belonging.

It is a hard journey, though, as Tania Luna readily admits and also offers the reason why it’s worth it:

We feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not.^

It’s okay to need others and to be needed, to not have all the answers, to fail, to struggle – it’s human.

*From Steve Hayes’ A Liberated Mind.
**From Richard Rohr’s Eager to Love.
^Tania Luna, quoted in Chip and Dan Heath’s The Power of Moments.

Remember, you’re invited to some Mindful Doodling on Thursday, 4th February (2pm, UK time).

Leaders make art and artists lead.*
(Seth Godin)

Whoever the leaders are (I’m using leader in the widest sense), whatever their fields of interest and expertise, they have borrowed from others the “materials” for their “art.”

The best know they must not allow the limits of their worldview to get in the way of what may be out there to be explored:

A worldview is the shortcut, the lens each of us uses when we see the world. It’s our assumptions and biases and yes, stereotypes about the world around us.**

They move to the edge of their worldview, opening their minds to others: opening their hearts, they step outside into the worlds of others; and they create new and improved worldviews when they open their will and make their art.

Rohit Bhargava adds further nuance to this journey via his lens of curation – we must be: curious, dislodging ourselves from the centre of our worldview, observant as we look out into the larger world of others, fickle as we gather as many ideas as possible rather than being fixated on the few, thoughtful as we consider what the new-to-us means for others and can mean for us, and, elegant as we make something new and beautiful.^

Life calls us to this journey every day, giving us incredible energies to employ:

What counts is not so much whether a person actually achieves what she set out to do; rather it matters whether effort has been expended to reach the goal, instead of being diffused or wasted.^^

Mihály Csikszentmihalyi is helping us to see something about our lives from another perspective, continuing:

The meaning of life is meaning: whatever it is, wherever it comes from, a unified purpose is what gives meaning to life.^^

We are all creators of meaning and as we live towards this meaning, the “art” we produce will also become the materials useful for others around us and who follow towards the making of their art.

*From Seth Godin’s The Practice.
**From Seth Godin’s This is Marketing.
^From Rohit Bhargava’s Non Obvious 2019.
^^From Mihály Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow.)

If you’re free next Thursday (4th February), it would be great to see you at Mindful Doodling.

Emphasis 1: You MADE that!? – all your talents and energies and, possibly, values are wrapped up in this process.

Emphasis 2: You made THAT!? – the product you have delivered or shipped or contributed.

Emphasis 3: YOU made that!? – the irreplaceable and unrepeated you who has not sold your soul in the your product and is always leaping forward to something new and different.

Emphasis 4: YOU MADE THAT!? – when everything lines up; the imaginative and hopeful you in your sweet spot producing and delivering what only you can.