Are you a preschool or primary level teacher?

Following David's premise that our work is a pilgrimage of identity, and knowing that the very best teachers at these levels intuitively establish full rapport with children by "matching" them in so many observable ways, then ...

...Do some newcomers to our field expect that teaching individuals at these levels will be easy? easier than middle school? easier than high school?

...Do some college students choose to study at our level because they expect that the "curriculum" is simply numbers and letters -not realizing that the curriculum includes careful activation and mindful regulation of all our emotional buttons? a deep knowledge of human resources, child psychology, child development, sociology, family systems, learning to learn and cultivating curiosity, problem solving, social skills, unique learning styles, and a lasting love of learning -despite multiple obstacles that will arise in home life, school life, and community life into the future?

...Do some "outsiders" -adults unaware of the skillfulness in our abiity to attune-confuse out attunement with weakness? or lower intelligence? or childishness?

...Do  some"outsiders" -like the general public, school board elected officials, ivory tower types, lawmakers - underestimate our insightfulness, capacity to engage lofty conversations about the nature of learning and the art of teaching? consider hard data? make unlikely resources work for the advantage of twenty highly differentiated and developing persons under in our care?

Stereotyping and prejudice filters perceptions.  Unchecked, it drives us to talk with a loud voice to any elderly person, or special needs person in a wheel chair!  Unchecked, we make unwarrented assumptions  -just because we have unconsciously learned to "associate" certain characteristics with particular genders, appearances, roles, stages, stations, locations, neighborhoods, nations, occupations, etc.

So let's hear it from the teachers of our very young...have you been mistaken as having a preschool mentality because you work well with this stage group? How do you know? What can we do to counteract this misperception?

How can we help address this issue effectively without eclipsing the immense value of our talents?

The WORK of Parents???

When we follow David Whyte's premise that the nature of the work we engage on a daily basis calls forth and develops characteristics, proclivities, talents, skills needed in order to become successful in that work, then parents will benefit from reading Gethin and Macgregor's treatise on bedtime parenting, HELPNG BABY SLEEP.

Next time you head to your neighborhood book store, or Borders or Barnes and Nobles, the following pages will help you survey the range of information reviewed and shared:
p. 53 The "Unfinished" Baby
p. 61 Help babies calm down when they feel stressed
p. 78 Why do experts recommend sleep training if it isn't safe?
p. 84 Sleep Training: Being out of attunement with your baby
p. 91 Risks of the Protest, Despair, Detachment Process (re hopelessness, helplessness research)
p. 95 The Good News (with suggested reading to support generating the repair process pp 197-200)
p. 105 Gentle Approaches to Help Your Baby Sleep (applies principles to range of ages and stages)
p. 133 Common Sleep Problems - and how to cope with them
p. 153 Responsive Parenting - six gifts you can  give your child (emotional skills of any caregiver... remember babies are not born with capacity to regulate or manage their emotions...the adults in their lives model, organize, and structure experiencs to make this learning possible or not)
p. 175 Taking Care of Yourself (trusting your instincts ... protecting your self from the local whirlpool of myths and bad advice ... sources that help traumatized parents heal from harsh birth experiences)

Merriam-Webster, an essential distinction:WORK? or JOB?

Google dictionary help for work.  Do the same for job.

As you go about your day, allow yourself to think about this essential difference.

Then, consider how we have allowed our industrial age fascination with the factory ... its parts machinery along with speed (and greed)... to infect our very concept of what it means to be human, to sustain ourselves in our natural environment.  Then extend your thinking to include the impact on our families, our schools, our marketplace, our cultures ... and our individual capacities to contribute in significant ways through accomplishment.

An important, indeed essential difference,  boils down to this: 

• a "job" indicates some aspect of the whole...a specific piece of the process or person's efforts, disconnected from the whole.
• in contrast, "work" is an entirely different ...holistic...concept.  In work, the whole process, the whole person matters. Our "work" allows us, even expects us to make a difference!  

NEA President, Education Secretary Talk School Reform

NEA President, Education Secretary Talk School Reform

Greetings Apprentice Teachers!

Grab a cup of beverage, two or three peers...find a place to unwind and talk during Saturday's Goodshop.

Remember using technology that plays your results forward enters your team in the weekly drawing for complementary dinner at The Columbia Club with Dr. Renard.

The PROMTS below follow in sets of three:

So what is it about perceptions of "a teacher's work" that differentiate between Lead/Master/Professing Teachers (category #1 )and Novice Teacher (category # 2) ? (Define Novice)

And let's clarify "work" perceptions that differentiate between Lead/Master/Professing Teachers and Underprepared Teachers? (Define Underprepared)

Suppose we identify "work" perceptions that differentiate between Lead/Master/Professing Teachers and Poorly Performing Teachers? (Define Poorly Performing)

How might we differentiate between Novice Teachers and Underprepared Teachers?

Are all ineffective teachers actually poorly performing, or simply underprepared in one or more ways?

Are some teachers ineffective because they are simply ill-suited to the nature of classroom teacher's work?

Do we know how "ill-suited" teachers matriculated through years of coursework, student taught/graduated, then were interviewed/employed by school districts?

Are we clear yet how ill-suited teachers actually "slip through the cracks" at each of these three successive stages?

How quickly do ill-suited teachers remove themselves from teaching? How do others remain? How does a typically tradtional school culture of isolation contribute?

Are some teachers ineffective because they are teaching in the complex system of a classroom -but would do well with small groups? - even shine in a certification area that draws on specific talents?

What proportion of Lead/Master/Professing Teachers (when they were 1st, 2nd, 3rd year novices) recall consciously behaving from the similarly rich framework that currently guides their "work"?

How did/do Lead/Master/Professing Teachers define the nature of their "work" early in careers? after five years? after ten years? after twenty? after thirty? then forty? even fifty?

Remember teachers may graduate to Lead role only after ten years, Master role only after twenty years, Professing role only after thirty years of performance (Reference: TeacherJourneyRubric.)

Which five different sources of data review (e.g. teacher interview, peer interviews, action observations, social history, PD Plan, academic background, personality profile, school records, professional references) do your Lead/Master/Professing Teachers identify as crucial when
predicting assignment success? 
evaluating professional status? 
designing a growth plan?
(Provide key details underlying choices in these three arenas.)

Dr. Rene Renard, Grand Council Professor of Career Development

Grand Council Summary

12/7/10 @ The Columbia Club

Manhattan

Work calls forth character-we can use it or lose it!

David refers to Doctor Lydgate's character development over time in George Elliot's Middlemarch: 


Lydgate with an original approach to medicine and a strong youthful idealism, but Eliot lays out the danger awaiting him from the very beginning of Lydgate's career. ...The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross,  is hardly ever told in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardour in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardour of other useful loves, till one day their earlier welf walked like a ghost in its old home ...(p.165-166)

When the place in which we work (even live, for some) makes less and less room for who we are, who we wish to become,  and the gifts we can readily share ... it is time to take oneself on a personal retreat.

1. Stop: Decide to make space and time to recover your well-being...an hour, a day, a week, five minutes is often enough to catch ourselves before we tumbling down that ole rabbit hole!
2. Drop: Go deep within to reconnect with what "sources" us ... fills our soul with enthusiasm, order, goodwill, stimulates our imagination
3. Roll: As we fill up again, we can notice that our imagination rekindles, our perspective clarifies leading to good judgment, wisdome redirects our initiatives and revises our intentions.
4. Set revisioned parameters that preserve and protect the good we are, the good we bring...
5. Firm boundaries between Self and places and spaces around us to enhance the possibilities that surrounding good can come through us!  
6. Without healthy skin, we do not live long on Planet Earth.  Strong and sustainable emotional/spiritual skin also begs daily cultivation -sometimes hourly... the regularity depends upon our the nature and quality of our home situation, our workplace conditions.
7. Like Smokey the Bear ... only we can prevent "forest fires" in our homelife, in our worklife.   Songwriters Arlen and Mercer help us with this catchy tune from the fifties: "You gotta accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, don't mess with Mister In Between..."
8. Let the muse be your guide as you co-create a better order that sustains healthy relationships among those with whom we live and work.

The more features in common, more important to be able to differentiate

A is very different from Z.
A is like and upside down V.
When learning the alphabet visually, learners require less instructional intervention to differentiate A from Z.  Remembering that A is not V seems to pose more challenge.

Knowing this perceptual axiom operates in human learning, think about how you would  rate (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) the following pairs for ease of differentiation (1=hard to differentiate; 5=easy to differentiate):

1. A vs O
2. A vs B
3. C vs O
4. I vs. O
5. E vs B
6. T vs I
7. D vs A
8. D vs O
9. F vs E
10. F vs B

Through this exercise, we learn that the more features item or event (x) has in common with another item/event (y), the more thoroughly we must examine their similarities and differences in order to tell them apart.  

Practical Application for Parents and Teachers: 

If we want our children to more quickly change their behaviors from the kind we disapprove of to the kind we approve of then we must make it easy for them to differentiate.  Smiles and affable talk clearly indicate parents and teachers approve of the behavior displayed.  Neutral face with a firmly stated "No"(or some equivalent of "No") typically indicates disapproval -with an explicit or implicit invitation to shift to an approved behavior.

We make it  hard for chidren learn to control their impulses (i.e.,  master the necessary shifting to approved behaviors)  when we muddle our verbal, voice tone, and body language cues.  When we mix communication features of a YES vs NO, we delay the development of impulse control.  We make it harder for learners to distinctions between our "approving" and "disapproving" responses to their behaviors.  This delays development of their ability to eventually "self-regulate."

We send mixed messages to our children when we disapprove but smile ... or talk sweetly. this hardly means adults need to speak harshly or loudly or use aggressive strategies like character assassination, disparaging labels, cruelty or meanness.  A simple statement of disapproval  -coupled with natural/logical consequences - consistently applied will do more to shape behavior, than punishment, or enduring parental exasperation. 

 The more important it is to select an appropriate response to x vs y, the more important it is to differentiate between them.  This is true for all life forms, regardless of age or species.  Parents and teachers who cultivate paying positive attention to children, build up a positive emotional/relational bank account!  When children get the positive guidance and consistent attention needed to strengthen bonds as children evolve - they are less likely to seek attention through unpleasant and irritating means. They are also more likely to engage those things we want them to accomplish when they have recieved recognition for these things consistently in the past.

Dr. Carol Dweck, Ph.D. reminds us also to be very careful to recognize and reward the effort exerted.  When focus is placed on the effort given a task, children learn that time and accuracy matter -which they do.  The single greatest factor determining school success is time on task.  Just spending time on a task, without persistent effort to become more accurate, just makes us better at being inaccurate! Practicing reading books that are too hard for us, turns us off from reading, and does nothing to build fluency and vocabularly.  Careless practice of anything simply reinforces carelessness.

Dr. Dweck reminds us that children who have been admired and recognized for their "cleverness" or "smartness," (in contrast to the effort they willingly engage), eventually refrain from engaging anything that is not immediately easy and rewarding.  Their positive identities have been tied to being so clever or being so smart...they do not want to risk diminishing this image -so they begin to decline challenges, become defensive.  As they age they learn different ways to hide the fact that they do not really know -and asking for help becomes a sign they are no longer "smart" enough, "clever" enough.

To avoid this result, be observant of the many opportunities we have in a morning, day, weekend, and week to "outloud" recognize our children's effort and those specific behaviors displayed while exerting these efforts.  When we consistently  recognize and compliment specific efforts, our children will also.  this is how children continue to grow in competancy and self-esteem.  They come to realize that growth is change...and the effort they exert makes change reliable.

EXAMPLE: I notice you put our clothes for tomorrow out on the chair as I asked you.  You did it the first time I asked you.  You did not whine or complain.  Also, you cheerfully asked me questions about whether or not this or that peice of clothing was appropriate for school.  You even walked into the kitchen to ask your wuestions, instead of yelling from the other room.  I really appreciate the time you took and each of your efforts to follow my guidance.  You did it on time!  And you aksed for my help in pleasant ways.  I am proud of the ways you are working to help yourself grow more skillful.

 

On "cultivated attentiveness" p. 58

"A good captain wakes as soon as the wind veers or the rhythm of the wave slapping at the hull increases. Waking in response to change..."is a sign of a good captain, a responsible captain, a leader with whom those on board can be safe.


Curently in our workplaces, we may feel so pressed to seal the deal, rake in extra bucks, raise kids' test scores that we easily (in streams of exhausting stress) lose sight of the forest for all the trees bombarding us.  Distress obscures our capacity to "differentiate" - to detect features that distinguish a from b.  


Under perceived duress, we veer towards less resourceful responses.  We tend to react from our limited store of overlearned, overpracticed beliefs and behaviors.  Pressure and distress compromise our capacity to detect crucially different features of a situation, telltale shifts within our environment.  We just do more of whatever we most commonly did in the past.  Intended changes become short-changed.


Succumbing to pressures from within or without,  jeopardizes our ability to see the whole picture.  It throws a wrench in normally mindful ways of assessing the extent to which "parts" or incidents are balanced within the whole.  Trends are obscured.  We more readily stay stuck in the "same old, same old"cycles.  Extended cylces of unhealthy stress obscure detection and selection of optimal responses.  


Consider how the captains in our workplace may be guiding, leading from this disadvantaged  station. How is morale affected? How do we effectively address a ship going under? How do we best help those around us wake up before the Titanic incurrs its fatal scrape against undetected icegbergs?


David Whyte shares his own story of allowing a non-responsive, sleepng captain  to call the shots, even when he and his mates detected changes that signalled danger  ahead.  The ship was almost lost because each mate on that ship did not activate his/her own internal captaincy.  This incident was David's wake-up call!  


How do we activate responsible captaincy -even when we do not formally have the role of Captain? 

On "coming out of hiding" p. 56

""In order to assume our captaincy, we should not genuflect before the imposing array of other captains. We must stop indulging in worshipful idolatry of Bill Gates or Jack Welch (in their wiser moments, they surely wish to escape from that idolatry) and put our energies toward taking the short but difficult next step on our own pilgrim's path to self-knowledge. So long as the path is a real conversation with the greater world, it will lead us right to the frontier of presence we desire."


Describe characteristics of "presence" you desire to share in the workplace? with family? with friends?
What conditions and circumstances support our capacity to maintain characteristics of this "presence?"
What conditions and circumstances threaten our capacity to maintain characteristics of this "presence?"

Moving from initiation into elaboration ...how do we transition?

"The imaginative eye sees an enormous transition from initiation to elaboration.  The morning was the beginning; the afternoon is for building upon whatever beginnings we have made, otherwise we don't seem to have the energy for anything new.  It's the reason we don't make important appointments for the afternoon unless we can't help it.  We know the person is past their best at receiving our idea no matter how much the energy of our presentation.  We panic slightly if we intuit there has been no real beginning made in the morning." Crossing the unknown sea..., p. 203-204


Perhaps this is why some of us can just grab a cup of something barrelling out the door... into a car... pounding the pavement ... onto the bus ... the train ... to reach without delay that streetcar named Desire calling us to get on with what we wish to be for this new day.  

David posits that plans for our day do not begin in the morning.  Night prepares us in many ways, organizing what we need available internally to resolve the old and initiate the next best step toward our new day's goals. Morning ushers us on stage to bring life to possibilities in mind.  Many people choose simply as possible to grab home's essentials, shut doors behind us, and making a virtual beeline to the workplace found as is...

However, others of us need to take substantial time in preparing ourselves for this meeting of minds at work.  Many people even get up two hours or more earlier than the time it takes to shower, dress, and be at work.  Morning ushers us onto the stage where life's possibilities are co-created.  Some of us set morning's foot upon this stage engaging personally preparatory props and rituals.   Meditating, jogging,   chanting & stretching our way into oneness with this time and space, right here and right now - special transitions prepare plenty of  minds and hearts to interface deliberately with intentional work.  

More traditonal counterparts might find themselves reading morning papers with a standard breakfast that works for such champions.  Still others become ready for morning work through lifting weights ... or a long hot shower while listening to tunes ...or that just right voice reading aloud this day's news.


At different times in my life, I've selected ways from all of the above.   Different kinds of work and different circumstances may call for changes in how we step onto the day's public stage! What matters perhaps is getting the results that give us strength and staying power to move from initiating a good day's work to elaborating upon this work as the day moves toward evening...

Cool

Daylight Savings Time and an extra hour of sleep for our work week!

Howling winds beyond darkened panes...icy rain pelting glass...this morning I am glad I set my 

morning alarm for 5:30. Baby, Orient is cold outside! Sis' boyfriend texts a photo of Madison's first 

snowfall. Connecticut teachers and schoolkids have the season's first two-hour school delay. Todayheralds in a new era for those of us who live East and Midwest ... the 

freezin' season of our work year.  

Naturally, I adjust! I decide to practice yoga on my mat beside my warm bed for the next hour. This 

makes much more sense on a frosty morning as I imagine the biting alternative. My inner Mother-

Father are pleased their now middle-aged daughter no longer needs to unnecessarily brave harsh 

elements ...nothing left to prove to self weathering the world. 

So instead of being sucked out the front door by a ferocious North Wind... only to turn my latest 

umbrella inside out, I simply tune into muscles on my mat ... delighted to stretch deeply, warmly.  

Crossing the Long Island Sound outside, snow becomes slushy flakes...an hour later, Mattituck will 

report it's first snow just like it's sister to the north, Madison!

We know the weather shapes us ... from our choice to curl under covers for another ten and skip the shower to where we decide to take up residence in our world. Warm and dry climate? Dramatic change of seasons? Gentle seasonal shifts? What will it be? Where we choose to live engaging our livelihood can be deliberate or just handed down to us. My sister (nurse)and her boyfriend (teacher) clearly live and work where they do deliberately...both texted, "YEAH!" at the sign of first snow this morning.

The same level of deliberate engagement can characterize our day's work. I like to be around people who love who they are while they are working. They sizzle with enthusiasm, they speak in passionate tones, they care about making a difference. But these same two people (nurse and teacher) when interviewed reported that as young adults, they chose their fields from among the sources of work available 

-at that time.  

Do we have an inner compass, acting on our behalf ... a kind of Career Yenta -detecting a good match between our personal resources and work fields of possibilities? A good match allows the space to say,"YEAH!" in our work's freezin season.

Did the nurse and the teacher detect spaciousness in their respective fields? Spaciousness that allowed them to wend their way to the just right form of nursing, and level/discipline in teaching? A couple of blogs back addresses the importance of "spaciousness" in our lives. Perhaps most fields of work offer an element of spaciousness to those who enter with proclivity for the thinking, the dispositions, the necessaries of the "job requirements."

How does "spaciousness" play out in 

your field of endeavor? your place of 

work? autonomy in the decisions you 

make daily that matter?

How does spaciousness -or lack 

thereof- determine when we stay, andwhen we leave?

How does spaciousness in our work shape us, and in turn allow us to shape the character of our work? allow us to leave our passionate mark upon the 

field in which we live out our livelihood? make our contributions of merit?

Thoughts??? Blog, blog, blog...

How good work gets done...p.119

David writes, "We seem to have to learn about the illusions of speed indivual by individual, generation afer generation. Yet speed by itself has never been associated with good work by those who have achieved mastery in any given field.  Speed does not come from spped.  Speed is aresult, an outcome, an ecology of combining factors in a person's approach to work; deep attention, well-laid and well-sharpened tools, care, patience, the imagination engaged to bring disparate parts together in one whole."

Consider the following question as you reflect on your workplace:
When do we rush ourselves?
What's gained by rushing?
What's jeopardized by rushing?
Who rushes who? and why?
Is there something greater to be gained instead through cultivating "deep attention, well-laid and well-sharpened tools, care, patience, the imagination engaged to bring disparate parts together in one whole." 

A Moon Full of Principle

The cottage door opened at 5:15 this morning.  Toots padded down the steps with us.  Sis is training Toots to heel.  Sis is showing me the way,  modeling for me (a novice dog person) ...Toots gets practice from an expert now.  Our exercise program has expanded... as does any reality co-created.

Each dark morning thus far, we stand momentarily at our sidewalk's edge. Stillness. We seem to try it on. This allows us to gather the deeper, fuller sense of our inner workings.  Rhythm. We dip into this vast inner sea now in conjunction with very early morning.  Luminous moonshine.

Tapping into this nexus, noticing their mix ... a momentum naturally follows.  We respond to the flow, go with the draw.  We head in the direction of the village and the water's edge.   "No stars this morning," I think inwardly.

"Rather, very few stars and a planet too," my inner critic corrects the internal monologue.  "Accurately speaking, stars don't go in or out.  We personify the stars when we speak that way.  We might also be reflecting an unrevised childlike concept, retained even now despite what we've learned in our science classes."  I think more deeply, more deliberately, consciously: On a certain level, we entertain illusion when we say, "No stars out this morning."  Stars haven't gone anywhere.  Stars go neither in, nor out.

When we slow down the speed of thought, we allow ourselves to experience what David Whyte calls spaciousness.  We grant unadulterated relationship with silence, timelessness, authentic and original conversation.  We experience space and time to 'connect the dots,' update, revise, de-program.  Without spaciousness in our work, in our relationships, in our solitude it is, "As if a symphony, with all its rests, attenuated beats, and rhythms, suddenly had all silence between the notes removed, leaving the notes undifferentiated,crushed and bruised, each sound pressed into the next....a mechanical hum, like an old refrigerator, the white background noise corroding our attempts at real conversation and only noticed in the reverberating kitchen, when it final brings itself to a stop." (Crossing the unknown sea ...Work as a pilgrimage of identity, p.174)

More accurately then, the 'full moon' (so to speak) reflects more than its usual share of light. This level of light challenges our visual capacity to detect all the stars above.  The stars are constantly present in our galaxy, even during our sunlit days, even when we do not look up, even when we fall asleep.

If how we speak reflects our thinking, it makes sense to pay closer attention to what we absorb and stir around in our sensitive minds.  Slowing our speed of thought allows space and time for reflection,  to reach for accuracy.  More readily, we may choose wiser words, respond rather than react.  Silence may be the wisest choice of all options available.  If we said everything that came to mind in a day, we would discover how many of our thoughts and concepts directly conflict, even cancel each other out.  Many are outdated, inhospitably programmed, hollow, even ridiculous.  Most of the thoughts sailing through a given mind on a given day result from cultural, filial, political, and commercial programming.  Perhaps lines from the six o'clock news have poached our neural territory? Have emotional lyrics nested in idle brainspace?  Do verbal sticks and stones, stockpiled from bullying long gone, beg bulldozing?

Our thoughts shed light on how we currently conceptualize ourselves, our colleagues, the work and the partner we engage.  They reveal what we seem to believe.  Our words serve as the currency of exchange in navigating relationship with self, others, life.   Our developed capacity for assessing and selecting  deserves to be nurtured.  Our word choice, tone, and timber can generate peace (or productivity, or willingness, or kindness).  Changing word choice, tone, and timber can contrarily generate alienation, discouragement, violence.

This week's invitation is to increase our accuracy in thinking and communicating through the practice of creating spaciousness.  Let us make room for deliberate reflection and conscious articulation.  As the moon reflects the sun's light, our words reflect the mind's light.  A simple song of thanksgiving about the moon might serve as an anchor to remember this practice.  A practice that slows the speed of thought can increase the probability we will more consistently generate GOOD in our world: "I see the moon and the moon sees me.  God bless the moon and God bless me. There's grace in the cabinets, grace in the hall, and the grace of God is over us all." (Appalachian Dulcimer Singer and Songwriter: Jean Ritchie)

"Thank you," I intimate to the full moon in Orient, on Long Island, in New York, on the East Coast, in North America, on Planet Earth.  "Hello, is anyone out there?" And more accurately, I wonder like Julie in Julia/Julie, "Is anyone really reading this?" Spaciousness. "I am." So here's to the moon ... or "bamoon"as grandbaby Atticus calls our great white waning, waxing, and now wistfully full model of reflection overhead!

Hi Ho, Hi Ho ...

Stars filled a pitch black sky at  5:15 a.m.  My sister and I stand still under not just stars, but constellations ... patterns long ago named, memorialized in myth by our ancestors.  We live in a world of contrasts, patterns, stories.  Clearly, we have been pattern-seekers and meaning-making creatures for thousands of years.

Sis suggests that we exercise along a new path before our workdays begin this morning. Instead of our village path, we walk westward on the Main Road of Orient Village. Macadam underfoot is more felt than seen. Cassiopeia reigns north,  over the Long Island Sound. Orion upholds the south over Peconic Bay.   Darkness and macadam offer us solid experience for practicing how it feels to deepen awareness of the nature of that which we touch, depend upon, use to cocreate.

David Whyte writes about how we can more consiously engage the nature of our work, "The right touch at the right time in the right place. The right word at the right time in the right place.  Effort and will used only at pivotal moments. How we long for  that deftness and that mastery, the ability to tap and cleave the fault lines of our own stubborn, stonelike difficulties.  To crack the stonelike essence of our own everyday work. "(Crossing the unknown sea ... p. 120)

At 6:45, Sis drives off to work at the hospital.  My neice goes off to school - our social institution designed to help children gather knowledge, know-how, and habits required by work.  As they leave, I wish them well.  I wish the best for them and those they touch in myriad ways throughout each workday. I sit down to write, making note of all these touchpoints. I realize tht human beings sustain selective attention for some very good reasons...

• the sheer number of perceptions, ideas, people, places, and things we touch in a day would be overwhelming (Ready or not here I come...without selective attention life would become much like a senseless game of tag.)
• seeking patterns helps us make sense...sense is expriencing a kind of touch (Does the word "meaning" originate from the experience of  "me and __?"  Our stories help us contextualize our patterns.  They can help or hinder our move forward.  The nature of the stories we weave about ourselves and how life works can help us become depressed, stay stuck, or change direction to create deeper meaning and engage higher purpose.
• A wise elder tells me that to stay in touch we have to talk about the meanings we are making along our pathways.  We may become motivated to change direction when we gain insight into where we are heading. (Without making the space and time to talk, understand, and exchange insights our relationships can become one way streets, we parallel play,  trust erodes, and fears grow that keep words tucked away, stuck in our heads.)
• This wise woman has taught dance, multimedia film-making, and kinetic awareness for sixty years.  Like David Whyte, she finds wisdom in developing our capacities to regulate our efforts and will from within...using effort and will only at pivotal moments redirecting ourselves, overcoming inertia. She teaches the central importance of paying attention to the nature of our bodies, relationships, and social dynamics. her work encourages calling into play the wide array of muscles (small before large), regulating our muscles to generate accuracy before speed, from small before large.  
• Observing a master stonecutter of many professional years, David notes that "Allen's speed seems to arise from his ability to discern emerging patterns, even when most other competitors are making the mistake of putting speed first, sweating and heaving their stones into place." (ibid)

This week as we engage our work, let us slow down in favor of accuracy.  Let us allow more inquiry, ask deeper questions, go beyond what seems obvious.  Let's pay attention to what we touch, what and how it touches us.  Stay with this experience, follow this thread.  Make time and space to talk about this with important others at work, at home, in the marketplace.  Make mental note of emerging patterns...go with the flow... accuracy trumps speed.

Sunday Night Work Querry

I've heard many adults say that as kids, Sunday evening signalled the approach of what I call "Monday, Monday" blues.   Even now, as adults, the anxiety remains as Sunday morning morphs into evening.  Leaving the comforts of home and going off to their adult workplace ... for a rigorous (or deadening) week ... can generate the same kind of intrepidation within.  


We are wondering here about the nature of Monday, Monday ... and how as adults we may install more resourceful, anxiety-free,  ways to engage work, colleagues, workplace ... some questions arise:


If you looked forward to your school week with confidence and zest, what within you and around you encouraged this response?
If you look forward to your work week with confidence and zest, what goes on within you and around you to bring about this response?
If you had  the "Monday, Monday"  as a youngster ...
...under what circumstances? ...what made it worse? ...what made it lessen or even disappear?

If you ever have  the "Monday, Monday"  now as an adult...

...under what circumstances? ...what makes it worse? ...what makes it lessen or even disappear?

Wondering further about the nature of our work ... and how to engage work as a "pilgrimage"...can ensure that we shape our dispositions and characteristics more consciously. We and the world around us can benefit through our more intentional and deliberate contributions.  Greater satisfaction overtime allows us to enjoy our workplace as a setting of important co-creation on our planet.
          
Thoughts? Experiences? Blog on friends...

Take a personal retreat on our own time...blog from home

Our on-site scheduled Novemeber retreat is postponed for the time being. However, you can take a virtual personal retreat each day in your own time and from any location...just set aside space, time, and blog!

Monday, Monday ... the giraffe looks over this expanse

The alarm beeped us out of bed at five twenty this morning. My sister and I are engaging a way of life not experienced in forty-three years ... living side by side, for the time being. For multiple reasons, now is very different from then. Now, we are both grownups. Our age difference then has virtually disappeared. A great advantage gained from this time marching on is that we can now intentionally support each other's goals. Our top shared goals these days?

1. Trim excess from our lives.
2. Revise lifestyle "set points" to promote focus and accomplishment in our final forty.
3. Harness feedback systems that restore balance as we cross this unknown sea.

Stepping off the porch into the dark, I carefully negotiate a rocky pathway until I reach a sidewalk that stretches past the village school. Quiet expands around us as I follow my sister's lead into the tiny village and on toward the water. A single street lamp spills light through the thick canopy of century-old maples. In a new dawn, we wend our way rhythmically toward Peconic Bay.

The vast expanse of dark waters contrasts with the narrowness of peninsula upon which we stand gazing outward. Absolute silence expands my inner awareness of this new day's possibilities for natural order, insights, observations, contemplation, deeper meanings and higher perceptions. A rustic boardwalk has allowed us to stand over the water's edge. I think to myself, "Someone built this boardwalk. Thank you!" A moment passes; "Someone visioned ... provisioned this modest, just enough yacht club. Thank you!"

I remember the tiny foam giraffe tucked into my pocket...a farewell gift from my daughter, Sara. The giraffe serves me this week as a totem, model, guide, perceptual medicine. "Thank you, giraffe, for showing me the way to 'let our head and neck float high' enough to catch an expansive view of each place and space we share."

Giraffe medicine allows us to more fully notice the people past and present who take up the slack in our lives together on this planet. We take up the slack when we envision something that begs to become in those spaces and places experienced, shared. It is actually the work of some of us to take up the slack for others. Work expands opportunities to share our visions, talents, inclinations ... even our drives! Engaging work anywhere allows us to cocreate, contribute, collaborate in life's positive evolution. In the words of Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D., through our positive engagement with others, we can "make things more wonderful" for each other.

As we cross the unknown seas this week, we pause periodically. We notice little and large contributions made by others near and far. These currently support our ability to make things better, healthier, happier ... more fulfilling, more insightful, more useful, practical, beautiful. Call upon giraffe medicine in the morning, during lunch, in the evening to expand our vantage point, our awareness. We include a "Thank you!" to those who recently or once upon a time took up the slack which expands our horizons now. From an attitude of gratitude we become more fully able to live expansively in the truth, our collective truth.

As this week ripples outward from within and around us, let us remember with appreciation those who take up the slack in our day, or stage of life. We honor as well those who have come and gone ... the thinkers, noticers, listeners, gatherers, tool makers, artists, builders, plumbers, inventors, teachers, grandparents ...those who take up slack in the collective lives around them. In advance, we may thank those who will find themselves crossing their unknown sea in ways that grace our spaces and our places with traces of just what the doctor ordered.

And remember to call upon your giraffe medicine!

Take a three day retreat with us at Montclair Unity in Northern New Jersey

David Whyte is a phenomenal thinker, writer, visionary. His book, Crossing the unknown sea: work as a pilgrimage of identity, inspires us to take a deeper look at the world of work. Just how does "work" encourage us to step up to the plate of Life in ways that we actually co-create a greater life for all? Here are four topics and related questions to ponder before you join us on our retreat:

• Which edges of our personality does our work stretch? (Whatever you dedicate eight hours or more per day to ...paid or volunteered... is your current work in the world.)
• How does this work, in contrast to our "off hours" home life, encourage us to develop dimensions that are bolder, braver, more organized, less abrasive, etc? (What are the characteristics called forth through your work and workplace?)
• If you did not have to get up each morning to put on your work face, your work disposition, and consistently use your work words ... which elements of your all too familiar personality might take over... even run rampant? (How does your work provide a safe haven for self respect, admiration by others, sense of contribution to the world around you?)
• If you did not have to practice operating outside your all too familiar comfort zone in order to build your work identity of competence and contribution, what would the world ultimately miss? (How does your work help to structure the better parts of you? How does it require you to "exercise muscles" that build self-esteem?)

Now take a moment. Pick a topic above that grabs your attention... meditate on this topic, or dialogue with a partner, or craft an affirmation honoring the characteristics you develop through your work, or observe someone you admire at work in order to contemplate exactly what you admire and why!

On retreat, we will explore David's book together while learning to practice four distinct pathways to deepened insight. We will emerge with greater appreciation of ourselves, others and the world around us. When we set sail on Sunday, our compasses will guide us on a future course of conscious co-creation in our own lives and in the world around us!