Today – September 1st – which in New Zealand is the first day of Spring, seems the perfect occasion to announce that the seeds of Courage & Renewal work in New Zealand have made important new growth.  Rodger Spiller and I, with mentor Rick Jackson alongside, have led two wonderful retreats over two weekends – Courage to Teach and Courage to Lead.  I'm in awe of the transformative power of poems, of the way our participants were so ready to engage deeply with this work, and of the personal insights that emerged from our Circles of Trust.  I feel heartfelt gratitude to the poets and writers for the gifts they so generously offer the world. 

While on retreat over dinner one evening, I mentioned my quest to build my library of NZ poems, and Lesley, a school counsellor, offered her favourite – the poem she keeps at hand to help sustain her in her daily work.   It is too good to keep to myself …….

The Bridge
 
There are times in life
when we are called to be bridges,
not a great monument spanning a distance
and carrying loads of heavy traffic
but a simple bridge
to help one person from here to there
over some difficulty
such as pain, fear, grief, loneliness,
a bridge which opens the way
for ongoing journey.

 When I become a bridge for another,
I bring upon myself a blessing, for I escape
from the small prison of self
and exist for a wider world,
breaking out to be a larger being
who can enter another’s pain
and rejoice in another’s triumph.

I know of only one greater blessing
in this life, and that is
to allow someone else
to be a bridge for me.

                                                Joy Cowley

In his recent blog On the Brink of Everything, Parker Palmer reminds us how easy it is to lose touch with a sense of wonder in our daily lives.  Our senses become accustomed to – even worse, they become addicted to - the over-stimulation of flashing images and life’s frantic noise and pace.  Boredom becomes the enemy, and we avoid it at all costs.

A lot can be learned from watching young children.  For them, life is so new.  They are able to see ‘the miraculous in the mundane’.  Better still, they’re not afraid of risking ridicule when they express their ‘wow!’ moments about life’s wonders.  Sadly, that fear comes later.

I love this video of 15 month old Kayden experiencing rain for the first time.  It reminds me to take time out, away from the screens and the noise and the pace, to slow down and notice – really notice – the many wonders that life has to offer me.

I was delighted to read this Huffington Post article below, which sings the praises of Courage & Renewal work in US schools.  Schools are relationship-centred organisations, and open, trusting relationships between teachers and students, teachers and their colleagues, and teachers and parents are key to raising student achievement.   Yet the current emphasis in education on accountability and measurable outcomes is more likely to foster fear than trust in the hearts of teachers.  

As a Facilitator in preparation with the Center for Courage & Renewal, I am happy to be able to offer this work to NZ educators.   As an introduction, I invite you to join me in August 2015 in Hamilton to participate in the first Courage to Teach retreat to be held in New Zealand.  See the Event Calendar for details.

I am an optimist.  My default position has always been that things will get better; they will turn out for the good.   It’s easy to be an optimist on a personal level, but much more difficult on a global scale.   That’s because the future of our beautiful planet and our human race looks bleak most days, and downright doomed on others.

As an optimist, I love it when my optimism is reinforced and justified when good things happen around me.  And right now I’ve got an enormously good feeling of good things happening around me, with the potential that even better things are about to happen.  And I’m talking on a global scale here.  For me, the future of the world is looking brighter.

That’s because I’m one of the 26,000 people from all around the world (from nearly 170 countries) who are taking part in a massive, open (free), on-line learning course through EdX - Transforming Business, Society & Self  led by Otto Scharmer from MIT.   We’re exploring the environmental, social, and spiritual-cultural challenges we’re facing across the globe and the entrenched structures and paradigms of thought that mean our societies collectively keep on creating results that, individually, none of us want.    

It’s remarkable to realise that there are so many people – people from across the globe, from different cultures, with different beliefs and practices – yet we all share similar hopes and dreams, and worries and fears for the future of our planet and those who live on her.

Otto Scharmer ‘s U.Lab heralds a global movement for good of a scale and complexity never before experienced.   He practises what he preaches by leading from the emerging future*.  There are already many people in many places around the world doing many good things in many different areas of need.  But this massive global learning platform has the potential to bring the energy and visions all these change-makers together and create a momentum for change powerful enough and broad enough to shake the entrenched practices and paradigms of the past, and widen the opening to allow the emergence of a much healthier, more just and altogether rosier, future.

It inspires me to know that my work as a Facilitator-in-preparation with the Center for Courage & Renewal is based on principles and practices that resonate very closely with Scharmer’s vision for the emerging future.     I am part of a global movement that is part of a much greater global movement for change.

It is I who must begin.
once I begin, once I try –
here and now, 
right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying that things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
-to live in harmony
with the ‘voice of Being’, as I
understand it within myself
-as soon as I begin that,
I suddenly discover,
to my surprise, that
I am neither the only one,
nor the first,
nor the most important one
to have set out
upon that road.

 Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost.

 Vaclav Havel
(Human rights activist, political dissident and first president of democratic Czechoslovakia)

I'm sending out good thoughts to all the dedicated teachers around the country preparing for their new classes and the school year ahead.  

Here's a light-hearted piece by performance poet Taylor Mali to provide some inspiration and some good laughs.

Good work is done with heart as well as knowledge and skill, done with a depth of commitment that brings integrity and courage to the workplace. But workplace culture can make it risky to reveal our hearts. So we hide them – and sometimes lose them. By supporting teachers, medical professionals, clergy and others who want to reclaim their hearts, we bring new life to them, their work, and the people they serve.
                                                          - Parker J. Palmer 



As 2014 draws to a close, I’ve been mulling over all that has happened this year – the planned and unplanned, the good and the bad.  It’s been a big year.


My acceptance into the Facilitator Preparation Program with the Center for Courage & Renewal has been the highlight.  


I love the renewed sense of purpose and fulfilment I get from being involved in good work like this – the idea that I can help make a positive difference in the world.   It’s great to be immersed again in new learning, and I'm really looking forward to supporting people who are doing such important work in our communities – those involved in education, leadership, community service, health care and social change.  Through Courage & Renewal work I hope to help sustain and renew their energy and courage so that they are able to keep doing their important work in the world.

On the not-so-good side of the ledger, earlier in the year both my elderly parents had serious falls, and their health and welfare became all-consuming for our family.    In amongst the awfulness of it all though, I discovered the silver lining – it gave me the opportunity to spend many quiet hours with them both in hospital, and I enjoyed some precious conversations and experiences with them, which I now treasure.

At the time this lovely poem by Amy Fleury spoke a lot to me and helped me face my own inner questions around ageing and mortality ……


                Ablution 


Because one must be naked to get clean,

my dad shrugs out of his pajama shirt,

steps from his boxers and into the tub

as I brace him, whose long illness

has made him shed modesty too.

Seated on the plastic bench, he holds

the soap like a caught fish in his lap,

waiting for me to test the water’s heat

on my wrist before turning the nozzle

toward his pale skin. He leans over

to be doused, then hands me the soap

so I might scrub his shoulders and neck,

suds sluicing from spine to buttock cleft.

Like a child he wants a washcloth

to cover his eyes while I lather

a palmful of pearlescent shampoo

into his craniotomy-scarred scalp

and then rinse clear whatever soft hair

is left. Our voices echo in the spray

and steam of this room where once,

long ago, he knelt at the tub’s edge

to pour cups of bathwater over my head.

He reminds me to wash behind his ears,

and when he judges himself to be clean,

I turn off the tap. He grips the safety bar,

steadies himself, and stands. Turning to me,

his body is dripping and frail and pink.

And although I am nearly forty,

he has this one last thing to teach me.

I hold open the towel to receive him.

Amy Fleury

 

In September I had the pleasure of working for a day with a group of Merit Scholars from Macquarie University in Sydney.

Where to from here? was the theme of the workshop, with activities that invited the students  to consider their life direction and future options as they near the end of their degrees.

What a wonderful bunch of young people to work with!  Deep thinkers who care deeply about others, the future of the world, and their place in it.  They grabbed at the opportunity to step out of the busyness of their daily lives to reflect on some very big and very important life questions - about themselves, their journeys thus far, and the things in life that matter deeply to them. 

I came away from our time together with a renewed sense of hope for the future, and also quietly amazed (in the best possible way) at how readily these young people grasped the importance to make time for reflection in our crazy, busy world today. 

I love Mark Nepo’s poem, Breaking Surface, and how it invites us to reflect on our life journey and its possibilities…

Let no one keep you from your journey,
no rabbi or priest, no mother
who wants you to dig for treasures
she misplaced, no father
who won't let one life be enough,
no lover who measures their worth
by what you might give up,
no voice that tells you in the night
it can't be done.

Let nothing dissuade you
from seeing what you see
or feeling the winds that make you
want to dance alone
or go where no one
has yet to go.

You are the only explorer.
Your heart, the unreadable compass.
Your soul, the shore of a promise
too great to be ignored.
                         
-  Mark Nepo

                  Listening  

My father could hear a little animal step,
or a moth in the dark against the screen,
and every far sound called the listening out
into places where the rest of us had never been.

More spoke to him from the soft wild night
than came to our porch for us on the wind;
we would watch him look up and his face go keen
till the walls of the world flared, widened.

My father heard so much that we still stand
inviting the quiet by turning the face,
waiting for a time when something in the night
will touch us too from that other place.

                                                        - William Stafford


How often in our daily lives do we truly listen to one another?

Generally we are listening with only half our mind.  With the other half we are busy filtering what is being said – do we agree or reject it – and we get busy preparing and rehearsing in our heads how we are going to reply, how we can best influence the other person with our opinion.  All the while the other person is still talking.

In a Circle of Trust® we give each other the gift of deep and open listening.  In this way we help “hear each other into speech”.  Because we have no agenda to help or fix or influence each other, we are able to truly listen.  As our listening becomes more open, the sense of trust builds and our speaking becomes more open as well.  As we learn to listen more deeply to others, we in turn learn to listen more deeply to ourselves, which may be one of the most important outcomes of a Circle of Trust.