Parables are basically stories that tell us there is more to this, to that, to us, to you, to me than meets the eye.

It’s really helpful, then, to see ourselves to be living parables, stories unfolding into more, not only for exploring the nature and contribution of our own lives but to encourage others to explore their own in a pass it forward way.

My friend Alex McManus believes that we carry 3.5 million years of knowledge in our bodies.

Above everything else, we are learning creatures – and there is so much to learn.

Everything is knowledge or potential knowledge to us, whether natural or made.

Learning is best served slow but, as with so many areas of life today, it is in danger of speed.

The best learning is slow because it not only provides information to be converted into knowledge but when we live what we know then it turns into wisdom:

‘So when we say, “save the earth,” we’re talking about saving ourselves.’*

(*Billy Moyers from Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth.)

What if we saw communicating longhand as an opportunity?*
(Bernadette Jiwa)

My father always told me to practise neat handwriting, because that’s how you show other people that you’re trustworthy.**
(“Dani”)

Poor handwriting may not actually be a sign that we are untrustworthy – otherwise, beware doctors.  A lack of good handwriting in our lives may be a sign of hurriedness … towards who knows what:

‘There’s a Buddhist story about a man galloping by a monk who asks, Where are you going.  Ask my horse, says the man.’^

I always find that things change when I’m writing longhand.  I see more as my fountain pen scrapes across the paper, slowing me down even more.  I’m particularly thinking of journaling but it spills out into communicating with others, too.

Georgia O’Keefe would paint small flowers large:

“A flower is relatively small.  Everyone has many associations with a flower – the idea of flowers.  You put out your hand to touch the flower – lean forward to smell it – maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking – or give it to someone to please them.  Still – in a way – nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.  If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small.”^^

This feels like the effect of writing longhand.  We see a flower, our world, a theme, an other, ourselves with greater clarity:

“So I said to myself – I’ll paint what I see – what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it – I will make even busy New-Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.”^^

Texts and emails are useful but only up to a point.  They begin to lull us into a sense that we are really capturing thoughts or communicating because of how many we send and how quickly we get a response.  We’re in danger of believing what Erich Fromm saw us being in danger from:

‘The fact is that most of us are half asleep while we believe ourselves to be awake.’*^

O’Keefe noticed her flowers and painted them large.  Which makes me wonder, what do we notice and want others to also see, to benefit from, to be blessed by.

Perhaps a little bit of writing with a pen and paper would help explore this more?

(*From The Story of Telling: The Shorthand Trap.)
(**The character Dani in Albert Espinosa’s If You Tell Me To Come, I’ll Drop Everything, Just Tell Me To Come.)
(^From Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost.)
(^^From Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: Georgia O’Keefe on the Art of Seeing.)
(*^From Erich Fromm’s The Art of Listening.)

If you’re mindless, then you don’t notice nuance.*
(Ben Hardy)

For good craftsman, routines are not static; they evolve, the craftsmen improve.**
(Richard Sennett)

We find ourselves in a wonderful world.  Simply magical.  Everything charged with a richness yet to be discovered.

And we have incredible bodies and brains that can discover and then accommodate a limitless number of upgrades in response to this deep fecundity:

“Our world, and the worlds around and within it, is aflame with shades of brilliance we cannot fathom – and is far more vibrant, far more holy, than we could ever imagine.”^

I am staggered by the unimaginable numbers of possibilities.

Richard Sennett suggests that we all can develop ways of more richly creating within this world, with these bodies;

‘I’ve kept for the end of this book it’s most controversial proposal: that nearly everyone can become good craftsmen.  The proposal is controversial because modern society sorts people along a strict gradient of ability.  The better you are at something, the fewer of you there are.’**

When we believe such a story, those who are not “the few” have to pick up the rest of what is available.  Yet, when we notice the endless nuance, the universe has provided us each with the possibility of journeying through our lives in pursuit of something we love and that is meaningful.

We can tell one another different stories to the norm, encouraging openness to our worlds and the others within these and what they bring – some part of the richness in which we can flourish.

(*From Benjamin Hardy’s Willpower Doesn’t Work.)
(**From Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman.)
(^Sy Montgomery, quoted in Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: How to be a Good Creature.)

THE BIGGEST THIN|SILENCE DOODLES YET

These images have just gone up outside The University of Edinburgh Chaplaincy: a bright story-board telling of the kind of space students and staff will find in the Chaplaincy, part of a rebranding of sign-ware for this university service to all members of the grand institution.

Why not tell your story brightly?

Life’s beauty: the kindest act toward you in life may come from an outsider not interested in reciprocation.*
(Nassim Taleb)

You are the product of your changing environment.**
(Ben Hardy)

The dictionary definition of a callous is hard skin caused by friction.

There’s a lot of friction in life and friction with the wrong kind of environment can leave us protecting ourselves, but also more hardened to the possibilities of changing, developing and growing.

There’s another kind ofd callous.  The one formed by practising the thing we love, able to press further, with a finer touch, into what it is that is important to us.

Now we want to be lifelong learners, we find ourselves noticing larger energies in our lives, we are willing to try something different.

To open our minds, our hearts and our wills is this way is an act of love:

‘The process itself is a volitional act of love, enabling new realities.’^

What Joseph Jaworski is saying here about the volitional nature of the journey we make into more is important.  We cannot be made to take this journey.  Another cannot make the for us – hopefully they are making their own.

The critical thing about these two forms of callous is the environments.  One is painful, the other hard but delightful.

Change your environment and you will find yourself changing.

Read some thoughts you have been closed to – opening your mind begins to change your environment.

Notice what is is that really interest you in this – opening your heart changes the environment from one of new information to one of new energy.

Think of some small action you can try out – opening your will changes the environment from one of potential energy to kinetic energy.

(*From Nassim Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes.)
(**From Benjamin Hardy’s Willpower Doesn’t Work.)
(^From Joseph Jaworski’s Source.)

All that is required to be free from the ego is to be aware of it, since awareness and ego are incompatible.*
(Eckhart Tolle)

Defining moments shape our lives, but we don’t have to wait for them to happen.  We can be authors of them.**
(Chip and Dan Heath)

Curiosity can be delegated.  Interest and intent focus, too.

With these go our greater imagination, collaboration, risk-taking, achievement, impact and contributed beauty.

But you’re here, with everything you are and have, and it would be a great shame not to do something with that that you’re unaware of right now, before it’s too late:

‘You don’t need a permit or a blessing or any sort of permission to decide to take your turn.  You only have to open your eyes and look.  And then choose.’

The things that we should leave to others are those they love to do and we don’t.

The things we must never delegate are what we are capable and impassioned to do.

(*From Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth.)
(**From Chip and Dan Heath’s The Power of Moments.)
(^From Seth Godin’s What To Do When It’s Your Turn.) Continue reading →

Every missed rite of passage led to a new rigidification of the personality, a lessening ability to see, to adjust, to understand, to let go, to be human.’*
(Richard Rohr)

Boredom, daydreaming, a good book, building in three dimensions, interactivity with other humans – these are precious skills, skills that are being denied kids that are simply given a plate of chicken fingers and a tablet instead.**
(Seth Godin)

We find ourselves in an astonishing world with our incredible consciousness.

We are capable of taking things that exist and imagining them into something quite different.

This has certainly spiralled in our recent history.  What had once been available to a few is now made available to the many, beginning with education and most obviously in technology.   However accessibility brings with it the danger of mindlessness.  Ben Hardy writes:

‘If you’re mindless, then you don’t notice nuance.’^

Seth Godin fears we are becoming “digital zombies.”**

Richard Sennett is perhaps describing something we are losing when he describes prehension:

‘Prehension signals alertness, engagement, and risk-taking all in the act of looking ahead […].’

When we notice more, we resist rigidification caused by the rewiring of our brains through technology, our thinking becomes more expansive, adaptive, and, therefore imaginative.

There are some interesting years ahead but I hope they will be interesting because we are exploring new rites of passage that make it possible for people to live analogue-ically as well as digitally, towards what Karen Armstrong reminds us the best myths or meta-stories have always encouraged us towards:

‘The myth of the hero told people what they had to do to unlock their own heroic potential.’^^

(*From Richard Rohr’s Adam’s Return.)
(**From Seth Godin’s blog: The digital divide is being flipped.)
(^From Benjamin Hardy’s Willpower Doesn’t Work.)
(^^From Karen Armstrong’s Twelve Steps to A Compassionate Life.)

A myth was an attempt to express some of the more elusive aspects of life that cannot easily be expressed in logical, discursive speech.*
(Karen Armstrong)

In the absence of data, we will always make up stories.  It’s how we are wired.  In fact, the need to make up a story, especially when we are hurt, is part of our most primitive survival wiring.’**
(Brene Brown)

Everything we do happens through the stories we are living, telling ourselves and making up.

When we know this, we can swap bad ones for good ones.  Of course, we need some help, that’s where we create stories with and for one another.

Be sceptical of those who know what it’s all about.  Go with those who want to explore more:

‘We have received everything, even the opportunity to come to earth and walk awake in this wondrous universe.’^

(*From Karen Armstrong’s Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.)
(**From Brené Brown’s Rising Strong.)
(^From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)

Yet I know
that I am a Poet!
I pass you my Poem.

… My Poem is life, and not finished.
It shall never be finished.
My Poem is life, and can grow.*
(Gwendolyn Brooks)

There is no industry, no economy, no market.  Only people.  And people, people can take action if they care.**
(Seth Godin)

Every so often, we get an inkling, an itch, a feeling, an insight that life is more than what it has become.

We may, then, describe life as a story, a game, a poem, a calling, a prayer … :

‘Write a prayer that is worthy of the destiny too which you have been called.’^

Whether we understand that calling to be from the universe or world or god or deep within ourselves or all of these, for a moment we see a little more clearly.

We need to hold on to this and look more closely.

It will soon disappear beneath getting out to work, shopping, school runs, escape at the weekend, the latest twist in some soap opera.

These worlds are not mutually exclusive, but one is more easily lost to the other.  They can exist together into a bigger world.

“We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clearer path to a lesser goal.”^^

(*Gwendolyn Brooks, quoted in Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings.)
(From Seth Godin’s blog: There is no “the industry.”)
(^From John O Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)
(^^Robert Brault, quoted in Benjamin Hardy’s Willpower Doesn’t Work.)

When you make a dream come true for yourself, it’ll be a dream come true for someone else, too.*
(Derek Sivers)

Truth be told, there’s very little leadership these days.  As a result, day to day work is dictated.  Employees engagement and satisfaction is assumed and not cultivated.**
(Brian Solis)

Some think they are leading when they tell others what to do and they do it.

Sometimes this is necessary but not often – it works when it’s a matter of life and death right now.  (Though we also have to recognise, this kind of leadership also creates life and death scenarios.)

The rest of the time there’re many other forms of leadership that can be employed, including leadership like yours.

This way of thinking of leadership sees and hears a bigger story, a deeper story.  One that is about the amazing life we have been afforded in this universe rather than our usual bottom lines.

Henry David Thoreau saw himself standing between two eternities:

‘In any weather, at any hour of day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time […] to stand in the meeting of two eternities the past and future, which is precisely the present moment, to toe that line.’^

The reason we get stuck in the day-to-day repetitive stories that we do is because they’re far more clear than those that ask us to look further and to listen harder.  But when we give ourselves to the latter, another eternity opens, the eternity of the present.

Here’s how Eckhart Tolle puts it:

‘Each person’s life – each life form, in fact – represents a world, a unique way in which the universe experiences itself.  And when your form dissolves, a world comes to an end – one of countless worlds.’^^

And if you are a world then there is much still to be discovered, there’re things about yourself you haven’t seen yet.  You discovering yours will create spaces for others to explore and discover theirs.

And we don’t have to be ready and sorted.

This all happens on the journey.

(*From Derek Sivers: Anything You Want.)
(**From Brian Solis and gapingvoid’s eBook 10 Reasons Your Culture is Failing.)
(^From Henry David Thoreau’s Where I Lived and What I Lived For.)
(^^From Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth.)