HOW TO RECOGNIZE GRACE By Marilyn Chandler McEntyre sent by Heather

It takes you by surprise
It comes in odd packages
It sometimes looks like loss
Or mistakes
It acts like rain
Or like a seed
It’s both reliable and unpredictable
It’s not what you were aiming at
Or what you thought you deserved
It supplies what you need
Not necessarily what you want
It grows you up
And lets you be a child
It reminds you you’re not in control
And that not in control is a form of freedom

The Invitation by Oriah

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

Quotes to share!

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." --Dr. Seuss via The Lorax

A Few Quotes from Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows:

What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains

which I found VERY well written, well researched and thought provoking!

(and let me own a disclaimer up front—I realize that this smattering of “stuff” makes me party to what Carr ponders and wonders about in the book, being jazzed by sparks rather than committing to deeper thinking and knowing!)

During the twentieth century, neuroscientists and psychologists also came to more fully appreciate the astounding complexity of the human brain. Inside our skulls, they discovered, are some 100 billion neurons, which take many different shapes and range in length from a few tenths of a millimeter to a few feet. A single neuron typically has many dendrites (though only one axon) and dendrites and axons can have a multitude of branches and synaptic terminals. The average neuron makes about a thousand synaptic connections and some neurons can make a hundred times that number. The thousands of billions of synapses inside our skulls tie our neurons together into a dense mesh of circuits that, in ways that are still to be understood, give rise to what we think, how we feel, and who we are. (p. 20)

The paradox of neuroplasticity, observes Doidge, is that, for all the mental flexibility it grants us, it can end up locking us into ‘rigid behaviors’…..Plastic does not mean elastic, in other words…..the process driving it may be ‘survival of the busiest’. (pp, 24/25)

‘If the experience of modern society shows us anything, observes the political scientist Langdon Winner, ‘it is that technologies are not merely aids to human activity, but also powerful forces acting to reshape that activity and its meaning’.

……Sometimes our toold do what we tell them to. Other times, we adapt ourselves to our tools’ requirements. (p. 47)

Between the intellectual and behavioral guardrails set by our genetic code, the road is wide, and we hold the steering wheel. Through what we do and how we do it—moment by moment, day by day, consciously or unconsciously—we alter the chemical flows in our synapses and change our brains. And when we hand down our habits of thought to our children, through the examples we set, the schooling we provide, and the media we use, we hand down as well the modifications in the structure of our brains. (p. 49)

To read a book was to practice an unnatural process of thought, one that demanded sustained, unbroken attention to a single, static object. It required readers to place themselves at what T.S. Elliot, in Four Quartets, would call “the still point of the turning world.” (p. 64)

But the world of the screen, as we’re already coming to understand, is a very different place from the world of the page. A new intellectual ethic is taking hold. The pathways in our brain are once again being rerouted. (p. 77)

The Net differs from most of the mass media it replaces in an obvious and very important way: it’s bidirectional. We can send messages through the network and receive them as well. (p. 85)

There’s much to be said for what economists call the ‘unbundling’ of content. It provides people with more choices and frees them from unwanted purchases. But it also illustrates and reinforces the changing patterns of media consumption promoted by the Web. As economist Tyler Cowen says, ‘When access (to information) is easy, we tend to favor the short, the sweet and the bitty.’ (p. 94)

Many observers believe it’s only a matter of time before social networking functions are incorporated into digital readers, turning reading into something like a team sport. We’ll chat and pass virtual notes while scanning electronic text. We’ll subscribe to services that automatically update our e-books with comments and revisions added by fellow readers. ‘Soon,’ says Ben Vershbow of the Institute for the Future of the Book…, ‘books will literally have discussions inside of them, both live chats and asynchronous exchanges through comments and social annotation. You will be able to see who else out there is reading that book and be able to open up dialogue with them….(p. 106)

The Net seizes our attention only to scatter it. (p. 118)

The mind of the experienced book reader is a calm mind, not a buzzing one. When it come to firing of our neurons, it’s a mistake to assume that more is better. (p 123)

It’s not only deep thinking that requires a calm, attentive mind. It’s also empathy and compassion. (p. 220)

That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence. (p.224)

Enough! May we continue to be critical consumers of any media and continue to find the connections that really matter to keep us and our brains both wide and DEEP!

Our Metaphors

A Metaphor is not an ornament, it is an organ of perception.

Leading as an improvisational dance.

Knowing is not enough, we must apply, willing is not enough we must do it. -Goethe

Permaculture vs. Monoculture
simple, natural, generative, not orderly vs. clean, orderly, not natural, not simple.

The is a parachute; It functions best when it's open.

If language is to retain its power to nourish and sustain our common life, we have to care for it in something like the way good farmers care for the life of the soil. -Marylin McEntyre

Education is like a Chinese meal: a series of short courses, none of which you ever really finish.

The mind is barren soil, and will produce no crop, unless it is continuously fertilized with foreign matter. 

Minds are like parachutes; they only function when they are open.

Leading as an improvisational dance

 

TED Talks sent from Monica

"Finding Her Here" Jayne Relaford Brown

I am becoming the woman I've wanted
grey at the temples, soft-bodied, delighted
cracked up by life,
with a laugh that's known bitter
but past it, got better,
who knows that whatever comes, she can outlast it.
I am becoming a deep weathered basket.

I am becoming the woman I've longed for,
the motherly lover with arms strong and tender,
the growing up daughter who blushes surprises.
I am becoming full moons and sunrises.

I am becoming this woman I've wanted
who knows she'll encompass
who knows she's sufficient
knows where she's going
and travels with passion,
who remembers she's precious
but knows she's not scarce
who knows she is plenty . . .
plenty to share.

A Callarse/Keeping Quiet

Keeping Quiet

Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,

let's not speak any language,

let's stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,

without hurry, without locomotives,

all of us would be together

in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea

would do no harm to the whales

and the peasant gathering salt

would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars of gas, wars of fire,

victories without survivors,

would put on clean clothing

and would walk alongside their brothers

in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn't be confused

with final inactivity:

life alone is what matters,

I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren't unanimous

about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,

perhaps a great silence would

interrupt this sadness,

this never understanding ourselves

and threatening ourselves with death,

perhaps the earth is teaching us

when everything seems to be dead

and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve

and you keep quiet and I'll go.

A callarse 

Pablo Neruda

Ahora contaremos doce

y nos quedamos todos quietos.

Por una vez sobre la tierra

no hablemos en ningun idioma,

por un segundo detengamonos,

no movamos tanto los brazos.

Seria un minuto fragante,

sin prisa, sin locomotoras,

todos estariamos juntos

en una inquietud instantanea.

Los pescadores del mar frio

no harian danio a las ballenas

y el trabajador de la sal

miraria sus manos rotas.

Los que preparan guerras verdes,

guerras de gas, guerras de fuego,

victorias sin sobrevivientes,

se pondrian un traje puro

y andarian con sus hermanos

por la sombra, sin hacer nada.

No se confunda lo que quiero

con la inaccion definitiva:

la vida es solo lo que se hace,

no quiero nada con la muerte.

Si no pudimos ser unanimes

moviendo tanto nuestras vidas,

tal vez no hacer nada una vez,

tal vez un gran silencio pueda

interrumpir esta tristeza,

este no entendernos jamas

y amenazarnos con la muerte,

tal vez la tierra nos ensenie

cuando todo parece muerto

y luego todo estaba vivo.

Ahora contare hasta doce

y tu te callas y me voy.