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!