Woods, like other wild places, can kindle new ways of being pr cognition in people, can urge their minds differently … It is valuable and disturbing to know that oak trees can take three hundred years to grow, three hundred years to live and three hundred years to die. Such knowledge, seriously considered, changes the grain of the mind.*
Robert Macfarlane

Most people don’t know the names of these relatives; in fact, they hardly even see them.  Names are the way we humans build relationships, not only with each other, but with the living world.  I’m trying to imagine what it would be like going through life not knowing the names of plants and animals around you … I think it would be a little scary and disorientating – like being lost in a foreign city where you can’t read the street signs.**
Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Persian King Xerxes, lover of
sycamores, once
halted his army as they marched
to fight with Greece, to contemplate
one might example;
Henry David Thoreau would tramp miles
in all weathers to keep an appointment with
a tree neighbour or friend;
Antoine Saint-Exupéry once flew tribal leaders
from Libya to Senegal who promptly wept
at the sight of trees reaching away from the
airstrip, never having seen
such beings before.

Our longest living, and perhaps
wisest, neighbours are not human –
Before our recent move from Edinburgh,
We would visit some an eight hundred year old oak wood,
Delighting in the presence of these ancient Quercus,
With so many stories to tell, so much pain endured, and yet,
Here they were in leaf and acorn.

Here’s a thought that came to me and that
I’m going to act upon,
And I thought to offer you to try out –
If you wish:
To find a local tree that I can visit and
spend time with throughout the year,
To find out the tree’s name, and
perhaps something of its age, to
listen to its stories, and gratefully accept its
introduction to the neighbourhood.

You may also wish to add the
delightful story of Bertolt –
For children of all ages; the book is a
wonderful tale of a young child and his tree friend –
You may find most of it
in this episode of
Maria Popova’s The Marginalian.

*Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places;
**Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.

When in doubt, come back to the stories.**
Chris Guillebeau

The thing you do
Does not hang in space like some
cold commodity;
It comes with a story and a
community that will
guide you when you are
disorientated or languishing or
despairing or doubting –
Whether uncovered yet or not,
They are there, making this day
wonderfully worthwhile.

*Chris Guillebeau’s The Happiness of Pursuit.

What could be better than humour and compassion and the savour of life?  What could be better than that man’s work should become the world’s freedom, and man’s enjoyment the world’s perfecting.*
M. C. Richards

M. C. Richards’ Centering.

These peregrini,as they were also known, viewed their wanderings, or peregrinations, as a process of seeking their places of “resurrection” – they were searching for their path of new beginnings.*
Philip Newell

Those whose hope is strong see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born.**
Erich Fromm

Not all those who wander are
trying to get away from something,
And not knowing what it is that is
being travelled towards doesn’t mean
these roamers are lost in their imaginations;
they are coupling their attention and creativity to a
deep reality missed by others,
Ready to bring to birth the
unlikely and incomprehensible.

*Philip Newell’s Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul;
**Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope.

Brigid challenges us to be people on our knees, that is, people midwifing new births for this moment in time. The good news is that we do not have to create the births. Our role, rather, is to midwife what is trying to come forth from deep within the human soul.*
Philip Newell

The midwife is never heard to say,
“No, no, this will never do!,”
But safely welcomes the newborn, and,
Before this,
Waits –
Two demanding skills we must develop for
this twenty-first century.

*Philip Newell’s Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul.

A god can create a world only by listening.*
James Carse

Pay attention to the world, and train yourself to notice what others miss.**
Rohit Bhargava

What are you listening for? –
Deeper sounds that
are laying down a path for you
to journey to places, through
spaces, others are unaware of,
So you might lead us there.

*James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games;
**Rohit Bhargava’s Non Obvious 2019.

Somehow, whatever creative powers we have in our work are intimately connected to our ability to remember who we are amidst the traumas and losses of existence … there are tremendous forces at work upon us, trying to make us like everyone else, and therefore we must remember something intensely personal about the way we were made for this world in order to keep our integrity.*
David Whyte

Our hope lies not primarily in human reason and scientific analysis, but in the untamed regions of intuition and human imagination within us.**
Philip Newell

For a moment, forget
the technologies, the titles
and positions,
All the possessions, and
feel your wild and prime connection with
the world from which you have come and to which
you shall return;
Feel the wonder snd power of this,
Remembering
there is something more you want to bring.

Please don’t forget.

*David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea;
**Philip Newell’s Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul.

It’s one of the first questions I silently ask myself when meeting a new client: “What does this person do so well, so naturally, so easily, that they don’t even realise it’s a gift?” I’ve never met a person who doesn’t have a gift.*
Katherine Morgan Schafler

A brilliantly dramatised protagonist is clear yet more complex than anyone you know.**
Robert McKee

It would be a delightful way to spend an hour,
With a coffee, and
perhaps a piece of cake,
Exploring together the wonders of
your gift –
A holy and wonderful thing.

*Katherine Morgan Schaffer’s The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control;
**Robert McKee‘s newsletter: How Complexity Can Captivate Your Audience.

In Greek the word for ‘the beautiful’ is to kalon.  It is related to the word kalein which includes the notion of ‘call.’  We experience beauty, we feel called.*
John O’Donohue

*John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty.

These tribes believe that people who are born without hearing their birth song soon struggle throughout their lives, because they are untethered and don’t comprehend where and how they fit in the world.*
Jacqueline Freeman

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 Hayes

There was no birth song
sung over the traveller,
Not by their mother,
Nor their family –
None had been caroled over them at their beginnings,
They did not know this was even a thing –
And so it came to pass that the traveller set out
upon their journey bereft of soul melody.

For many years the traveller journeyed ,
Often silent, though
sometimes humming
a delightful tune, or
an earworm of a lyric fixing them upon
some unconsidered possibility, until
the insistence of the everyday ordinary meant these
would slip away, and the silence return.

Occasionally, they would come upon others
who were singing a full melody, prompting
the longing to find their own song –
One full of hope and telling tales
of exploit and meaning;
The more they allowed this desire the day,
The longer the tune and more the lines,
Until they had captured a song for the journey.

Perhaps the universe had gifted this,
Or maybe it was god,
But in singing it they knew themselves
a troubadour, that
life is for finding the song, and
maybe the richest of ballads come
with time and openness and
ceaseless wandering.

*Jacqueline Freeman’s Song of Increase;
**Steven Hayes’ The Liberated Mind.