What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying.
I’m saying, What if that is our joy?*
Ross Gay

Radical engagement involves collaborating with unlike and unlikely others, making our differences productive – not just with people we like, and not forcing or feigning amiability or agreement. We do this by stepping up our engagement fro just talking to also acting together.**
Adam Kahane

The sharing of information
at the beginning
and the making of things
at the end may fascinate
and fulfil,
But perhaps it will be
the stories we share
as an insertion between these
that will remain with us
forever.^

*Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights;
**Adam Kahane’s Everyday Habits For Transforming Systems;
^Following opening our minds to others, there is the possibility of opening our hearts, towards opening our wills, to meet one another as human beings travelling the same road of life. I appreciate that time may be of the essence, which makes the difference between a finite and an infinite game.

SOME RANDOM THIN|SILENCE

This is premature certainty: committing to a direction before you’ve tested it. Because premature certainty is so insidious, it can actually be more dangerous than making big mistakes.*
Anne-Laure Le Cunff

There is an old aphorism: It’s easier to be a great man than a good one.**
Ryan Holiday

The first elemental truth^ states
Life is hard–
Perhaps our best lives
are created through how we overcome.

Going for the easier solution
may be our worst response,
And facing the fullness of the problem
may shape the people we become.

*Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s Ness Labs newsletter: Premature Certainty;
**Ryan Holiday’s Right Thing, Right Now;
^Richard Rohr’s Adam’s Return.

SOME RANDOM THIN|SILENCE

A stress-free life might sound great, but it would mean not just avoiding the hard parts but forgoing many of the sweetest moments.*
Arthur Brooks

The outlaw is the radical, the one close to the roots of existence. The one who refuses to forget their humanity and in remembering, helps everyone else to remember, too.**
David Whyte

Perhaps take a moment to write out a list of the most rewarding
and significant moments in your life.

It’s more than likely that many of these
were due to or included some form of stress.

To be most human includes stress–
Look at how you treasure the contents of your list.

*Arthur Brooks’ The Free Press blog: Stress Makes Life Meaningful;
**David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea.

SOME RANDOM THIN|SILENCE

Your inside person does not have age. It is the ages you have ever been and the age you are at this very moment.*
Anne Lamott

A stress-free life might sound great, but it would mean not just avoiding the hard parts but forgoing many of the sweeter moments.**
Arthur Brooks

I wonder,
If you choose an age to stick at,
What would it be?

For me,
It would have to be
the age I am now…

For all the creaking of my body,
The mistakes I’ve made
The amount of time I have left.

There are also the things I know and can do,
The people in my life,
The possibilities I can see.

*Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything;
**Arthur Brook’s The Freepress blog: Stress Makes Life Meaningful.

SOME RANDOM THIN|SILENCE

Follow your passion
if it’s wrapped in your talents cum strengths.*

Follow your talents
if they are the most amazing things you can do.**

The thing is,
Talents that have the potential to be strengths are crammed full of passion.

And passion that is about your deepest joy
meeting others’ needs is full of talent.

They are one
and the same.

*As we grow we develop skills; when we put these together into patterns, that’s a talent, but a talent that fills your heart and you have positive, developing experiences of, that’s a strength– the strongest way you can live.
**You’ve likely invested thousands of hours developing these.

SOME RANDOM THIN|SILENCE

For me, conversation at its best, is a form of advancement and course direction. I don’t know about you but I find I have to write my ideas down to really know what I think. And, further more, I have to say those ideas out loud, or indeed to sing them out loud, to somebody else, before I know if they are valid or meaningful, or not.*
Nick Cave

In the conversational nature
of my work** with another,
I often find myself saying something
I hadn’t posited or connected in my lone thinking.

I mention something
I’m exploring,
They reflect back, and,
Bam!

The next thing I say comes from
I don’t know where.

This is the wonder and delight of conversation.

And so I offer up
my journaling, blogging, and work
as playgrounds for exploring
“Yes, and …”

*Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage;
**This is my dreamwhispering work around a person’s abilities, energies, and values, out of which their personal myth emerges – contact me to find out more.

SOME RANDOM THIN|SILENCE

Sometimes people become confused and think that to be stuck in an outdated rage means to fuss and fume and to act and toss and throw things. It does not mean that in most cases. It means to be tired all the time, to carry a thick layer of cynicism, to dash the hopeful, the tender, the promising.*
Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Here’s how to guarantee you have a good day: do good. Any other source of joy is outside your control or is non-renewable. But this one is all of you, all the time, and unending.**
Ryan Holiday

We think we can control our anger–
All the time it’s seeping into
Our bones, our thinking, our ability to respond.

We want justice but,
Like Godot, it’s unlikely
to turn up as we expect.^

Better to bring our own justice,
The kind that will change our day–
To do good to others is to do good to ourselves.

When we bring imagination to reality
in a generative action, transcendence
and transformation may follow.

*Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves;
**Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic;
^John Caputo (What Would Jesus Deconstruct?) writes: Justice is always to come, never realised, always soliciting from ahead, but at the same time justice is demanded now.

SOME RANDOM THIN|SILENCE

To be in touch with the wildness of the natural world, in its heights and depths, can also be to open our senses to the unplumbed depths of our inner being and its mystery of light forever shimmering from deep within us.*
Philip Newell

When we ship, we open ourselves to judgement in the real world. Nothing is more empowering, because it plants us solidly on Planet Earth and gets us out of our self-devouring, navel-centred fantasies and self-delusions.**
Steven Pressfield

We are quite the bemusing expression
of the universe.

We not only unfold
through our lifetimes.

We are agents in
its unfolding.

Explorers of the depths
of our wild complexity.

Beyond experiencing,
We become makers.

Some name this productivity–
Though the wild word is simply fruitfulness.

**Philip Newell’s Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul;
**Steven Pressfield’s Do the Work.

SOME RANDOM THIN|SILENCE

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.
Anne Lamott

As if to prove you can still
disconnect for a few minutes,
Why not try it now?

No phone
noise
hurry
others–
Just you
breathing
quiet.

You may make
a habit of it.

*Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything.

SOME RANDOM THIN|SILENCE

Gratitude is not a feeling but a deliberate practice.*
Bernadette Jiwa

Ever wonder what God thinks of money? Just look at the people he gives it to.**
Anne Lamott

Gratitude fills me up
today and tomorrow too
and being my purest wealth
will never leave me poor

*Bernadette Jiwa’s Briefly blog: The Extraordinary In The Everyday;
**Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird.

SOME RANDOM THIN|SILENCE