Sunday Best – October 13, 2024
Tramping through the woods this week, I was able to cross a creek bed that had been impassable during the springtime rains. The view was clear across a pond that had been obscured by the summer’s tall grasses. The source of this summer’s hornets was suddenly revealed, their giant nest dangling from a tree branch.
Autumn can be a season of endings and losses. The frost comes sneaking in at night, the tender plants curl, and the light shrinks with each passing day.
Yet it can also be a season of deepening, where saplings set their roots, long-awaited harvests come through, and subtle truths become evident. The skies themselves can surprise us.
Dear friends, in this time of turning, let us ask ourselves,
What is newly visible?
What is newly valuable?
What is newly possible?
Sunday Best – October 6, 2024
It’s routine in some parts for total strangers to remark, “have a blessed day.” And I can’t count the number of times I automatically murmur “bless you” each sneezy winter season. All of this casual generalized blessing might lead us to discount the word. Fortunately, I was recently reawakened to the depth of its meaning by the poet David Whyte.
A blessing is more than good wishes, he noted. It is someone seeing greater things in us than we see in ourselves, and wishing us greater good fortune than we would dare to dream of for our own lives.
Dear ones, if we are very lucky indeed, we have a few cherished people who do not only love us, but bless us. They see our highest selves. They light a brighter path.
May we bask in this generosity.
May we extend our own blessings in return.
Beannacht / Blessing
by John O’Donohue
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
* This lovely blessing from John O’Donohue, and many others, can be found in his book, To Bless the Space Between Us. And more wonderful illuminations on language can be found in David Whyte’s Consolations.
Sunday Best – September 29, 2024
I’ve been thinking this week about org charts versus organisms.
There’s a place for both, of course, but sometimes we presume that lines and boxes are the only way to organize work. And when the work is merely complicated, this may be so.
But the world – and therefore the work – is alive and complex, full of swoops and swirls and feedback loops. When that’s the case, we might need some different models.
Fewer bosses, more servant leaders.
Fewer ladders, more pathways.
Fewer transactions, more relationships.
Less proclamation, more inquiry.
Less shouting, more substance.
With thanks to the amazing Wellesley Centers for Women, whose 50th anniversary inspired these thoughts, and so much more. I’m honored to be affiliated with this influential and courageous organization.
Sunday Best – September 22, 2024
Autumn moonlight –
A worm digs silently
into the chestnut.
– Matsuo Basho
Sometimes we’re delayed at the office.
Sometimes the clouds roll in.
Sometimes we’re just looking down.
But once in a while,
we glance skyward
just in the nick of time.
Sunday Best – September 15, 2024
Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
– Wendell Berry
This past week was full of work at the root layer, away from the tactics of day to day tending. We took walks. We made big posters of our observations. We studied beaver dams. We planted a tree. We consulted scientists. We thought bigger, deeper thoughts. We met smart and serious and wholehearted new colleagues. We asked better, more informed questions. We sought out farmers and poets as teachers.
Dear friends, in our buzzy noisy world, there never seems to be time to tend to our foundations, the layers that make everything else possible and worthy and strong.
There is always time.
*** Quote from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front. Every time I read this poem, a new line leaps out to stop me in my tracks.