Calm Retreat Booklet 2020

CA LM RETREAT

Facilitators Andrea Malouf, Elisa Stone and Elaine M. Sullivan. Utah Museum of Natural History, February 13-14.

A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES BEGINS WITH A SINGLE STEP.

INDEX

SESSION 1 pg. 4

Journey/Sojourn

SESSION 2 pg. 16

Metaphor

SESSION 3 pg. 23

Letting Go/Surrender/Lost

SESSION 4 pg. 31

Connections/Communications

SESSION 5 pg. 37

Heading Home Again

SESSION 6 pg. 43

Beginnings

Special Thanks to Angie Hunter, Staff Development, Alex Maritnez

Graphic Designer, Megan Mullineaux and Paul M. Mulder from the Natural History Museum of Utah.

– LAO TZU

DAY 1

Center for Authentic Leadership and Mindfulness Winter Retreat Agenda:

A Winter’s Sojourn

DAY 1

February 13, 2020

Morning

8:30-9:30

9:30 -12:00

9:00-9:45

9:45-10:15

10:15-10:45

Check-in and continental breakfast

SESSION 1:Journey/Sojourn

Welcome and Logistics

What is this Work?

Touchstones

Definitions “Journey into Darkness” by Parker Palmer (from Let Your Life Speak)

Day 2: February 14, 2020

Morning

8:30-9:00

10:45- 11:15

11:15-11:45

11:45-12:00

Poem: “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver and Reflection (Silent Break and Journaling)

Introducing ourselves “Who am I?”

“Earth Teach Me” Ute prayer. Silent meditation (video/ audio)

12:00-1:00 Lunch

Afternoon

1:00-2:30

1:00-1:30

SESSION 2: Metaphor: A Map to Dreams

Winter Essay” by Parker Palmer

Journaling based on questions Group processing

Metaphor: “Truth Told Slant” by Parker Palmer ( from Hidden Wholeness, pgs. 92, 90)

12:45-1:30 Connecting with Nature: Silent Walking Meditation and Reflection

2:00-4:00 SESSION 5: “Heading Home Again”

1:30-1:45

1:45-2:15

2:15-2:30

2:30-4:15

2:30-2:45

2:45-3:15

3:15-3:45

Poem: “Sharing Silence” by Gunilla Norris

Walking meditation and/or object box. Journaling

Group share

Music: George Winston Winter

SESSION III: Letting Go/Surrender/ Lost

Poem: “Winter of Listening” by David Whyte

Mobius strip Introduction/Activity Meditation/Journal

Best Day Story. Identifying Gifts. Practice as a Group. Metaphors for Gifts

3:45-4:15 Move into Triads of Best Day Story

4:15-4:30

Group Processing of Triads

2:00-2:15

The Blizzard of the World, Parker Palmer (A Hidden Wholeness, pgs.1-2). What is the sojourn? 2:15-3:00

4:00-4:15 Poem: “It Is I Who Must Begin” by Vaclav Havel

4:15-4:30 Close circle—one word. Native Flute Song by Nino Reyos

Extra Experiences

“Old Maps”

“If You Get Lost”

“Many Winters”

“Gifts of the Imagination”

JOURNEY/ SOJOURN

SESSION 1

“The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.”

– Tony Robbins

Perspective: What is Retreat?

The soul* yearns to be nourished, and if the reservoir begins to run low, we can feel ourselves becoming dull, empty, brittle and arid. If it sinks lower, we enter into states of angst, despair, and depression. Once the reservoir is replenished, there is greater harmony and balance. The soul continues to yearn – this incessant tugging toward perfection may be a definition of the soul force – but more gently now that is being nourished This nourishing can be done in many ways. It sometimes happens spontaneously, but usually we must make an effort to obtain food for the soul. Just as we stop what we are doing to eat regular fool to nourish our bodies, so too must we find a way to stop ourselves, to allow the time and space for spiritual nourishment, to breathe, perhaps to sigh, to open our hearts.

In this busy world, the ability to stop is becoming increasingly rare. Often we awaken to the sound of a radio, which fills us instantly with agitating news. We may read a newspaper while eating breakfast or drinking a quick cup of coffee, which is all we have time for as we rush to take care of the kids or leave for work. We run for the bus, hurry to catch a train, or dash off in the car only to find ourselves snarled in traffic. We bolt through the day and return home in the evening having no idea what happened to all the time.

Our daily office, house, or school work is filled with details, schedules, appointments, maintenance. The day is congested. Evening comes and it is time for food and television. Even now we are usually talking, reading, or watching. This is how we relax. The mind is

constantly engaged. When do we truly stop to simply be, observe, perhaps mediate a little? We know we must feed this machine called the body or it will quickly die. But feed the soul? Who has the time?

…A retreat is medicine for soul starvation…It lifts the veils, dissolves the masks, and creates space within for the feelings of forgiveness, compassion, and loving kindness tat are so often blocked.

The retreat is not an end in itself, it is simply a method to help us slow down and stop.

We are like globes attached to a center point by an elastic thread. The faster we spin, the farther we get from center. When we slow down, we draw in to the center. If we are able to stop, we rest exactly at midpoint.

…There are more moderate forms of retreat where we work together with others while maintaining the psychic space of aloneness. We can be alone, yet part of a group.

..It is up to us. This teacher is not out there somewhere but within each of us.

Enlightenment is not a state we achieve; it is a continuing process….The process continues to unfold, and our lives are changed forever.

*Any number of synonyms could be used for “soul”, e.g., essence, self, spirit, interior world, etc. (Excerpted from David A. Cooper (1992) Silence, Simplicity and Solitude: A Guide for Spiritual Retreat. )

What Is This Work?

Sally Z. Hare and Caryl Hurtig-Casbon

Our work together in this group is based on the philosophy and beliefs of Parker J. Palmer and the work he calls formation, or circles of trust. Parker says that without denying or abandoning our outer world, we must reclaim the reality and power of our inner lives.

Formation assumes that each of us has an “inner teacher” who has a continuing capacity for discernment. In Parker’s book A Hidden Wholeness, he writes about the importance of being in a circle of trust to better hear one’s inner teacher.

Formation work is in part the process of creating a quiet, focused, and disciplined space in which the noise within us – and the noise around us – can subside, and the voice of the inner teacher can be heard.

Key Principles of this work include:

•Formation work is about the identity and integrity of the individual.

•Each person has access to an inner source of truth, named in various wisdom traditions as soul, spirit, or heart, a source that can be accessed to guide the work we do, but that is often neglected in professional education and service training.

•We can create open and trustworthy spaces in which people can listen for and speak their own truth without fear and listen to the truth of others without rushing to judgment, fully respecting the confidentiality of what is said. In this trustworthy space, we stay in relationship to one another, neither trying to fix one another nor ignore one another.

•Through the use of metaphorical materials –poems, stories, the various arts media – we can dive into the deeper questions of meaning and purpose that arise in our work and in us.

•We can create space for a respectful, evocative, and yet challenging communal inquiry about the inner dimensions of our work that will not only affirm us, but stretch us and may even at times correct or change our course, since one of the many paradoxes of this work is that inner work can only be done alone – and yet we can do together in community what we sometimes cannot do alone. Surprisingly, that includes hearing our own “inner teachers.”

KEY PRINCIPLES & PRACTICES

• We assume that every person has access to an inner source of truth, named in various wisdom traditions as soul, spirit, or heart--a source of strength and guidance that is the place of truth-telling within us where we know the difference between reality and illusion. Our work recognizes this source of truth, honors the identity and integrity of the individual and affirms the vital relationship between the inner life and one’s work in the world.

• Attending to the creation of a quiet, focused, and disciplined space for this work is essential--a space in which the noise within us and around us can subside, and we can begin to hear our own inner voice. The practices of reflection and journaling, silence and solitude are part of the fabric of our approach. Being together in community--in small groups and large group--contributes to a fuller realization of what our inner voice is trying to tell us, helping both validate and at times question the truth that lives within us.

• We believe it is possible to create open and trustworthy communal spaces in which people can speak their own truth as well as listen to the truths of others without rushing to judgment. We hold to

the fundamental principle of “no fixing.” We practice listening deeply, asking honest, open questions, and speaking for ourselves rather than for another. A commitment to deep confidentiality and trust is essential to this way of working. Making space for diverse voices, and establishing boundaries and guidelines for our work together, helps make the space safe for the human soul.

• At the heart of our work is the understanding that there is a “hidden wholeness” at work in the natural world, in our lives, in our work--a hidden wholeness that often takes the form of paradox. Working with paradox helps us to see how things that are seeming opposites, when more deeply understood, actually complement and co-create each other. You cannot know 1ight without darkness, silence without speech, solitude without community. Understanding and exploring paradox is central to the pedagogy underlying this approach to inner work.

• When working with groups we use metaphorical materials from a variety of wisdom traditions and cultures--poems, teaching stories, creative expressions of various sorts that invite people to reflect on and work

with questions of the soul, spirit, of heart that arise in their work and in their lives. Placing a poem or a teaching story in the center of the circle creates plumb line for dialogue and exploration that is owned by all, providing an opportunity to explore, both “personal” stories as well as universal and timeless stories of human life and experience.

• This approach invites people into participation rather than demanding it from them. Opportunities for engagement with others are offered, and while participation is encouraged, each individual is trusted to determine their level of sharing and participation. In other words, these are not “share or die” experiences.

• This work affirms that we can join in a respectful, evocative, and yet challenging communal inquiry about the inner dimensions of our work that will not only encourage us, but also stretch us. In working with groups we both support space for solitude and surround it with the resources of community. The centuries-old Quaker practice of the Clearness

Committee is frequently used in formation retreats and embodies the paradox of solitude and community. The Clearness Committee is a communal process of discernment grounded in the belief that there are no external authorities on life’s deepest issues. There is only the authority that lies within each of us waiting to be heard.

• We are informed by a ‘movement model’ of social change, and believe that lasting change occurs when individuals choose to live ‘divided no more’. This in turn leads to greater personal wholeness and a changed relationship to role and to institution. Beginning with the individual, this chain of integrity has the potential to weave together soul, role, institution, and social transformation.

- Center for Courage and Renewal www.couragerenewal.org

“Formation is journeying, individually and in community, to our inner selves, our hearts and souls, to identify our true selves and our deep integrity. From this center proceeds our action.”

—Parker J. Palmer

Ideas that increase the likelihood of our working together productively

1. Be 100% present, extending and presuming welcome. Set aside the usual distractions of things undone from yesterday, things to do tomorrow. Bring all of yourself to the work. We all learn most effectively in spaces that welcome us. Welcome others to this place and this work, and presume that you are welcomed as well.

2. Listen deeply. Listen intently to what is said; listen to the feelings beneath the words. As Quaker writer Douglas Steere puts it, “Holy listening—to ‘listen’ another’s soul into life, into a condition of disclosure and discovery may be almost the greatest service that any human being ever performs for another.” Listen to yourself as well as to others. Strive to achieve a balance between listening and reflecting, speaking and acting.

3. It is never “share or die.” You will be invited to share in pairs, small groups, and in the large group. The invitation is exactly that. You will determine the extent to which you want to participate in our discussions and activities.

4. No fixing. Each of us is here to discover our own truths, to listen to our own inner teacher, to take our own inner journey. We are not here to set someone else straight, or to help right another’s wrong, to “fix” what we perceive as broken in another member of the group.

5. Suspend judgment. Set aside your judgments. By creating a space between judgments and reactions, we can listen to the other, and to ourselves, more fully.

6. Identify assumptions. Our assumptions are usually transparent to us, yet they under-gird our world-view. By identifying our assumptions, we can then set them aside and open our viewpoints to greater possibilities.

7. Speak your truth. You are invited to say what is in your heart, trusting that your voice will be heard and your contribution respected. Your truth may be different from, even the opposite of, what another person in the circle has said. Yet speaking your truth is simply that it is not debating with, or correcting, or interpreting what another has said. Respond from your center, not to another’s center. This behavior honors the previous speaker’s comments without passing judgment. It also avoids introducing defensive feelings that distract from the dialogue.

8. Respect silence. Silence is a rare gift in our busy world. After someone has spoken, take time to reflect without immediately filling the space with words. This applies to the speaker as well be comfortable leaving your words to resound in the silence, without refining or elaborating on what you have just said. This process allows others time to fully listen before reflecting on their own reactions.

9. Maintain confidentiality. Create a safe space by respecting the confidential nature and content of discussions held in the formation circle. Allow what is said in the circle to remain there.

10. When things get difficult, turn to wonder. If you find yourself disagreeing with another, becoming judgmental, or shutting down in defense, try turning to wonder: “I wonder what brought her to this place?” “I wonder what my reaction teaches me?” “I wonder what he’s feeling right now?”

Prepared by Sue Jones with considerable help from formation facilitators, the writings of Parker Palmer, and the Dialogue Group

Journey Into Darkness

Parker Palmer Let Your Life Speak p. 17-18

Most of us arrive at a sense of self and vocation only after a long journey through alien lands. But this journey bears no resemblance to the trouble-free “travel packages” sold by the tourism industry. It is more akin to the ancient tradition of pilgrimage—a “transformative journey to a sacred center” full of hardships, darkness, and peril. In this tradition of pilgrimage, those hardships are seen not as accidental but integral to the journey itself. Treacherous terrain, bad weather, taking a fall, getting lost—challenges of that sort, largely beyond our control, can strip the ego of the illusion that it is in charge and make space for true self to emerge. If that happens, the pilgrim has a better chance to find the sacred center he or she seeks. Disabused of our illusions by much travel and travail, we awaken one day to find that the sacred center is here and now— in every moment of the journey, everywhere in the world around us, and deep within our own hearts.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and excitingover and over announcing your place in the family of things.

QUESTIONS

1.What messages of “having to be good” have kept you from what you love?

2.What has brought you despair?

3.What do you love that can be reclaimed, through imagination or in your life now?

4.What “calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things”?

MARY OLIVER

TEACH ME” UTE PRAYER

Earth teach me stillness as the grasses are stilled with light.

Earth teach me suffering as old stones suffer with memory.

Earth teach me humility as blossoms are humble with beginning.

Earth teach me caring as the mother who secures her young.

Earth teach me courage as the tree which stands alone.

Earth teach me limitation as the ant which crawls on the ground.

Earth teach me freedom as the eagle which soars in the sky.

Earth teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall.

Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring.

Earth teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life.

Earth teach me to remember kindness as dry fields weep with rain.

– A prayer from the Ute Indians

METAPHOR: A MAP TO DREAMS

“Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.”

SESSION 2

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

WINTER

Parker Palmer

In 1995 Parker wrote a welcome for the Fetzer Institute’s newly built retreat center, Seasons, which included a reflection on each of the four seasons.

The little deaths of autumn are mild precursors to the rigor mortis of winter. The southern humorist Roy Blount has opined that in the Upper Midwest, where I live, what we get in winter is not weather but divine retribution. He believes that someone here once did something very, very bad, and we are still paying the price for his or her transgression! Winter here is a demanding season – and not everyone appreciates the discipline. It is a season when death’s victory can seem supreme: few creatures stir, plants do not visibly grow, and nature feels like our enemy. And yet the rigors of winter, like the diminishments of autumn, are accompanied by amazing gifts. One gift is beauty, different from that of autumn but perhaps more beautiful still. I am not sure that any sight or sound on earth is as exquisite as the hushed descent of a sky full of snow. Another gift is the reminder that times of dormancy and deep rest are essential to all living things. Despite all appearances, of course, nature is not dead in winter – it has gone underground to renew itself and prepare for spring. Winter is a time when we are admonished, and even inclined, to do the same for ourselves.

But, for me, winter has an even greater gift to give. It comes when the sky is clear, the sun brilliant, the trees bare, and the first snow yet to come. It is the gift of utter clarity. In winter, one can walk into woods that had been opaque with summer growth only a few months earlier and see the trees clearly, singly and together, and see the ground that they are rooted in. A few months ago, my father died. He was more than a good man, and these months have been a long, hard winter for me. But in the midst of the ice and loss, I have found a certain clarity that I lacked when he was alive.

I see now what was concealed when the greenness of his love surrounded me – how I counted on him to help me cushion life’s harsher blows. He cannot do that for me now, and at first I thought,“I must do it for myself.” But as time has gone on, I have seen something deeper still: it never was my father absorbing those blows but a larger and deeper grace that he taught me to rely on. When my father was alive, I confused the teaching with the teacher. Now my teacher is gone, but the grace is still there, and my clarity about that fact has allowed his teaching to take deeper root in me. Winter clears the landscape, however brutally, giving us a chance to see ourselves and each other more clearly, to see the very ground of our being.

In the Upper Midwest, newcomers often receive a classic piece of wintertime advice: “The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.” Here, people spend good money on warm clothing so they can get outdoors and avoid the “cabin fever” that comes from huddling fearfully by the fire during the long frozen months. If you live here long, you learn that a daily walk into the winter world will fortify the spirit by taking you boldly to the very heart of the season you fear.

Our inward winters take many forms – failure, betrayal, depression, death. But every one of them, in my experience, yields to the same advice: “The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.” Until we enter boldly into the fears we most want to avoid, those fears will dominate our lives. But when we walk directly into them – protected from frostbite by the warm garb of friendship or inner discipline or spiritual guidance – we can learn what they have to teach us.

Then, we discover once again that the cycle of the seasons is trustworthy and life-giving, even in the most dismaying season of all.

1.In what ways have I confused the teaching with the teacher?

2.Describe a time when I have “gone underground to renew” myself and prepare for something new.

3.What is invoked in me with the line “Until we enter boldly into the fears we most want to avoid, those fears will dominate our lives.”

4.How do I describe my place in the cycle of all seasons?

THE TRUTH TOLD SLANT: THE POWER OF METAPHOR

(from A Hidden Wholeness Chapter VI, p. 89-111)

“The ability to make a metaphor is the most basic constituent of human thought and language. Yet too often we leave direct consideration of these devices to the poet. In a certain sense, each of us sees the world in a way that’s irreproducible. Our viewpoint is like our dreaming, and the images and metaphors we choose provide maps to our dreams.” ~Brenda Miller, Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction

In A Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer quotes American poet Emily Dickinson’s guidance to “Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant—Success in Circuit lies.” Palmer’s interpretation is that “soul truth is so powerful that we must allow ourselves to approach it, and to approach us, indirectly. We must invite, not command, the soul to speak. We must allow, not force, ourselves to listen” (p. 92).

To explore this indirect approach to unearthing soul truths, Palmer invites us to use metaphor: “We achieve indirection by exploring that topic metaphorically, via a poem, a story, a piece of music, or a work of art that embodies it.” Palmer calls these “third things, because they represent neither the voice of the facilitator nor the voice of the participant. They have voices of their own, voices that tell the truth about a topic, but, in the manner of metaphors, tell it on the slant. Mediated by a third thing, truth can emerge from, and return to, our awareness at whatever pace and depth we are able to handle— sometimes inwardly in silence, sometimes aloud in community—giving the shy soul the protective cover it needs” (p. 92-93).

Activity: Metaphor: Just One Thing, Walking Meditation

Depending on what calls to you, go outdoors, or remain within our retreat space, on a walking meditation. This means being mindful of your breathing, your inner peace, your surroundings, and walking in a state of contemplation rather than to arrive at a destination. On your walk, or meditation, find a thing that serves as a metaphor for one of your soul truths. The thing can be as vast as a mountain or as small as a snowflake; just allow yourself to see

what speaks to you. If you choose to stay indoors, you are welcome to look through our object box and select an object that speaks to you as a metaphor.

*Please note we cannot bring outside materials into the museum in order to protect the collections, so if your “third thing” is something from outside, you can take a picture of it, draw it, describe it, or just remember it to help you reflect.

Once you’ve found your metaphor object, journal on any of the following questions:

•What did I choose for your metaphor, and what does it symboliz e to me as I reflect on my soul truth?

•What does my object/metaphor reveal that I may have been avoiding?

•What does my object/metaphor allow me to embrace to better understand myself?

•Palmer says “what T.S. Eliot said about poetry is true of all third things: ‘[Poetry] may make us . . . a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate, for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves’”(p. 9 4). What deeper, unnamed feelings does my metaphor/object reveal to my?

From “Sharing Silence” by Gunilla Norris

Within each of us there is a silence —a silence as vast as a universe. We are afraid of it … and we long for it.

When we experience that silence, we remember who we are; creatures of the stars, created from the cooling of this planet, created from the dust and gas, created from the elements, created from time and space … created from silence.

Silence is the source of all that exists, the unfathomable stillness where vibration began —the first oscillation, the first word, from which life emerged. Silence is our deepest nature, our home, our common ground, our peace. Silence reveals. Silence heals. Silence is where God dwells. We yearn to be there. We yearn to share it.

And yet in our present culture, silence is something like an endangered species … an endangered fundamental. The experience of silence is now so rare that we must guard it and treasure it. This is especially true for shared silence.

Sharing silence with others is a political act. Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses, to ourselves. It locates us. Without that return we can go so far away from our true natures that we end up, quite literally, behind ourselves. We live blindly and act thoughtlessly.

We endanger the delicate balance which sustains our lives, our communities, and our planet.

I believe that each of us can make a tremendous Difference. Politicians and visionaries will not return us to the sacredness of life. That will be done by ordinary men and women who gather neighbors and friends together and say, “Remember to breathe, remember to feel, remember to care, remember life. Let us do this together for ourselves and our children and our children’s children.”

“SHARING SILENCE”

LETTING GO/ SURRENDER

In the process of letting go, you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself.

― Deepak Chopra

SESSION 3

THE WINTER OF LISTENING (excerpt)

by David Whyte

No one but me by the fire, my hands burning red in the palms while the night wind carries everything away outside.

All this petty worry while the great cloak of the sky grows dark and intense round every living thing.

All this trying to know who we are and all this wanting to know exactly what we must do.

What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.

What we strive for in perfection is not what turns us into the lit angel we desire.

what disturbs and then nourishes has everything we need.

What we hate in ourselves is what we cannot know in ourselves but what is true to the pattern does not need to be explained.

Inside everyone is a great shout of joy waiting to be born.

And here in the tumult of the night I hear the walnut above the child’s swing swaying

Even with summer so far off I feel it grown in me now and ready to arrive in the world.

All those years listening to those had nothing to say.

All those years forgetting how everything has its own voice to make itself heard.

All those years forgetting how easily you can belong to everything simply by listening.

And the slow difficulty of remembering how everything is born from an opposite and miraculous otherness

Silence and winter has led me to that otherness.

So let this winter of listening be enough for the new life I must call my own.

THE WINTER OF LISTENING

The Winter of Listening From River Flow New and Selected Poems ©David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

LIFE ON THE MOBIUS STRIP

I. Inner and Outer Realities

Let one side of the strip represent your outer or onstage life. The words that apply here are “image,” “influence,” and “impact,” words that represent the hopes and fears we bring to our interaction with the external world.

Let the other side of the strip represent your inner or backstage life. Here, the words that apply are “ideas,” “intuition,” “values,” “beliefs,” “faith” and deeper still, whatever words you use to name the wellsprings from which those things come: “mind,” “heart,” “spirit,” “soul,” or “place-beyond-all naming.”

Though we rarely reflect on it, we live with a continual, subliminal awareness of the distinction between inner and outer reality. For example, you know that you are now engaged with my own on-stage performance, reading an essay with which I am hoping to make an impact. But as you read it, you will surely be asking yourself—especially if I start giving advice or getting pious—“is this person the same on the inside as he presents himself on the outside?”

That’s a question we ask all the time about our colleagues and leaders. When the answer is “No,” as it too often is, things start to fall apart. The incongruity of inner and outer; the inauthenticity that we perceive in others—or they in us—has undermined more working relationships, corporate moral, and mission capabilities than we can begin to calculate. So the relation of inner to outer is well worth examining. Together, they weave, or unravel, the fabric of integrity on which individuals and institutions depend.

II. The Four Stages

I see four stages in the relation between our inner and outer lives. We arrive in this world in Stage One, with no distinction between what is backstage and what is on-stage. It is the essence of infants and young children to be undivided, integral, whole—which is

why we love being around them. What you see is what you get: whatever is on the inside comes instantly to the outside, both figuratively and literally! Youngsters remind us of our original wholeness and make us yearn to be whole again.

Our visual aid becomes useful as we examine Stage Two. That strip of paper—one end held in each hand, stretched horizontally in front of your eyes—symbolizes the wall of separation we start building between our inner and outer lives as we move from childhood into adolescence. We do so for many reasons, but behind all of them is an ancient motive: self-protection. The inner is a place of fragile feeling and tender truth. As it starts to dawn on us that the outer world is dangerous, we wall off and hide away that which we hold most precious.

Through this “divided life” is pathological, it is encouraged by our culture, especially by education. Culture tells us that walling off the inner from the outer is the only safe and sane way to live. Education pushes us to replace “subjectivity” with the superior reality of “objective” knowledge and technique, and may punish us if we resist.

By the time we have completed professional training of almost any sort, the wall of separation has become so thick, high, and so wide that we may well have forgotten that we ever had an inner life.

But at some point, if we are not utterly anesthetized, we start feeling the consequence of walling off our selfhood: the pain of being disconnected from our own truth. When that pain becomes intense enough, we move toward Stage Three, in which reclaim inner truth and try to order our outer life around it.

This stage can also be illustrated by out Quaker Power-Point. Take that strip of paper and join the ends together, bringing it into the shape of a circle. The circle symbolizes the desire that animates Stage Three: “I want my on-stage life to be congruent with my

back-stage values and beliefs. I want my inner truth to be the plumb line by which I make outer choices about the work I do and how I do it, about the relationships I enter and how I conduct them.” The word that best describes our goal in Stage Three is “centering” which is probably the most frequently used word in spiritual literature of recent decades.

A centered life is obviously a great step beyond the dualism of Stage Two. But our visual aid reveals the downside of Stage Three: there is a tendency here to “get the wagons in a circle,” to use my inner truth as a screen through which to allow entry only to that which I find familiar and comfortable and to exclude that which seems alien and challenging. We sometimes use our spirituality this way—witness the divisive role that religion often plays in our public life. But when we do, we fall short of the open-hearted engagement with the world that all the great spiritual traditions advocate.

That brings us to Stage Four, where our visual aid becomes essential: take the strip of paper you are holding in the form of a circle. Pull the ends apart, give one end a half twist, and rejoin the ends to create a form known as the Mobius strip. Put the tip of your finger on what seems to be the outside surface of that strip, start moving suddenly and seamlessly you will find yourself on what seems to be the inside of the strip. Continue moving along what seems to be the inside of the strip—and suddenly and seamlessly you find yourself on what seems to be the outside of the strip.

III. The Illusion of Inner and Outer

There is no “inner” and no “outer on the Mobius strip. All is one, and the two apparent “sides” keep cocreating each other. So the Mobius strip is exactly like life itself: what is inside us continually flows out to help form, or deform, the outer world; what is outside us continually flows in to help form, or deform, our inner lives.

Stages Two and Three are illusions—necessary illusions, perhaps, but illusions nonetheless. We may kid ourselves into thinking that we are hiding our inner truth behind a wall, or that we are using it to screen

the world. But we are always on the Mobius strip. We are always engages in a seamless interchange with that which is “outside” us, always helping to co-create the world for better or for worse—exactly as the world is helping to co-create us. This simple fact seems not to be widely understood in a culture that insists on separating “personal” from “professional.”

The college faculty with whom I work often claim, “I can’t bring my personal values into the classroom.” The only reply I know is, “Who are you going to send in there, then?” Students are adept at discerning our ideas and values and beliefs, whether we give voice to them or not (that’s how students survive!)—and the same is true of those who work under leaders of all sorts. If leaders try to mask who they are, they only delude themselves and contribute to that ethos of inauthenticity in which things start to fall apart.

We have only one choice. We can walk the Mobius strip called life wide awake to its continual interchange, learning to co-create in ways that are lifegiving for ourselves and those around us. Or we can sleep-walk on the Mobius strip, co-creating in ways that are dangerously unconscious and sometimes death-dealing.

Every spiritual tradition I know is a wake-up call, a plea for heightened awareness of the fact that, in every moment of every day, we are helping co-create the reality we call “the world.” Every spiritual discipline I know is intended to increase our conscious embrace of life on the Mobius strip, our acknowledgment of the fact that we have the capacity to co-create death or co-create life.

Stage Four is the adult version of the wholeness into which we were born. Of course, adult wholeness is infinitely more complex than the wholeness of infancy, for now we carry all kinds of things we did not have in childhood: the burden of our failures and grief’s, the challenge of what we know and what we yearn for. But by embracing life on the Mobius strip, we can reclaim our original wholeness and act with integrity in the world. We can choose each day between that which gives life and that which deals death: “Therefore, choose life.”

Mobius Strip (Parker Palmer) Tales of the Divided life

USE STRIP LIFE AS WALL

-arrive in this life undivided, whole

-sooner or later become de”formed”, erect wall between “inner” and “outer”

-learn to protect what is within, or deceive folks around us

ONE SIDE “OUTER OR ONSTAGE LIFE”/

words to describe our experience: image, influence & impact

words that name or hopes & fears as we interact with the world:

Anyone listening to me? How do I look while I’m trying?

2ND SIDE REPRESENTS OUR “INNER” OR “BACKSTAGE” LIFE

Here vocab less anxious/ more reflective, words like ideas, intuitions, feelings…

This wall protects the inner from the external threats of life, but we are walled off Hide our vulnerabilities from assaults of the world.

Irony is the truth we try to hide from the world, disappears from our own view. The wall itself and world become all that we know. We may even forget that the wall is there…

When the pain of living behind the wall becomes too much- the yearning is to become centered.

The goal is to center our life on our inner truth is a step toward integrity.

CIRCLE – trouble is we fence in our truth and fence out those that we aren’t comfortable with.

SHOW THE TWIST – MOBIUS STRIP

-trace with finger

-what seems to be the outer edge now becomes the inner surface and the inner Continues on to become the outer…

The amazing Mobius Strip- the two apparent sides keep co-creating each other

“The Mobius Strip gives us a clear message:

Whatever is inside us continually flows outward to help form or deform, the world- and whatever is outside us continually flows inward to help form, or deform, our lives.

The MS is like life itself, here, ultimately there is only one reality and in this Reality there is no “onstage life and no backstage lifewe have arrived back

Where we began…

Questions: Celebrate what’s right with the world

– How can I be the best for my work?

– For my world?

What do I put “inside the circle”?

What do I put “outside the circle”?

When I find yourself “behind the wall” instead of “on the strip ”, does the problem feel like it is outside or inside of me? If “outside” what keeps you from changing the situation? If “inside” what blocks your transformation?

Describe a time when I let an inner truth make an “on-stage” ap pearance. How did it feel? What were the consequences?

CONNECTING/ COMMUNICATIONS

“We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”

SESSION 4

― William James

The Snowman

1.What winter memories of my childhood come to mind as I think of “The Snowman” story?

2.What causes us to lose touch with the way we see winter as a child?

3.What remnants of my own childhood winters might I like to reclaim for myself now?

4.The Snowman can be seen as a best and worst day all rolled into one. The child in the snowman keeps the scarf to remind him the magic he experienced, however temporal, was real. What is my scarf I can hold to remind me what I get to keep even in the face of loss?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5qGUhWPi6w

From the book by Raymond Briggs

PARKER PALMER ON LISTENING AND ASKING HONEST, OPEN QUESTIONS

How we listen in a circle of trust is as important as how we speak. When someone speaks from his or her own center to the center of the circle, the rest of us may not respond the way we normally do--with affirmations or rebuttals or some other way of trying to influence the speaker. So we learn to take in whatever is said with as much simple receptivity as we can muster.

Receptive listening is an inward and invisible act. But in a circle of trust, it has at least three outward and visible signs:

»»Allowing brief, reflective silences to fall between speakers, rather than rushing to respond; silences that honor those who speak, give everyone time to absorb what has been said, and slow things down enough so that anyone who wishes to speak can do so.

»»Responding to the speaker not with commentary but with honest, open questions that have no other intent than to help the speaker hear more deeply whatever he or she is saying--a demanding art...

»»Honoring whatever truth-telling has been done by speaking one’s own truth openly into the center of the circle--placing it alongside prior expressions as simple personal testimony, with no intent of affirming or negating other speakers.

When people speak instrumentally, trying to get leverage on each other, it is nearly impossible to listen receptively to what another says. We listen with half a mind, at best, busily filtering what we hear so that we can embrace what we agree with and reject the rest. We listen, that is, with our egos. But when people speak expressively, we listen openly, with our souls. Now we can attend fully to whatever is being said, knowing that people are not trying to comment on us and our truth but are making an honest effort to express truths of their own.

A Hidden Wholeness, p. 119-120.

[In a clearness committee] committee members are guided by a simple but demanding rule: the only way they may speak to the focus person is to ask brief, honest, open questions.

The questions should be short and to the point, confined to a single sentence, if possible. A brief question, with no preamble or explanation, reduces the risk that I will start to offer covert advice.

The questions should be gently paced, with periods of silence between a question, a response, and the next question...

I should not ask questions simply to satisfy my curiosity. Instead, my questions should come from a desire to support the focus person’s inner journey with as much purity as I can muster. As a member of the committee, I am not here to get my own needs met. I am here to be fully present to the focus person, hoping to help that person be fully present to his or her soul.

It is usually most helpful to ask questions that are more about the person than about the problem, since a clearness committee is less about problem solving that about drawing close to true self...

...the focus person had the right to pass on any question, without explanation, and committee members should avoid asking questions of a similar sort. Taking a pass does not mean that the focus person is stifling the inner teacher: he or she may learn something important from the fact that a certain question cannot be answered in front of other people.

A Hidden Wholeness, p. 137-138

Examples of Honest, Open Questions

When you felt like this before, how did you handle it?

If you were to represent this situation in a painting, what would it look like?

What is either helping you or hindering you?

How would you like to be remembered?

How have you reacted in similar situations?

Is there another aspect to...?

What makes your heart sing?

What metaphor describes what you are feeling or experiencing?

Guidelines for Asking Honest, Open Questions . . .

. . . in support of the rule “no fixing, no saving, no advising, no setting each other straight” – and in support of our intention to help each other listen for inner truth . . .

•An honest, open question is one you cannot possibly ask while thinking, “I know the right answer to this and I sure hope you give it to me . . . “ Thus, “Have you ever thought about seeing a therapist?” is not an honest, open question! But “What did you learn from the experience you just told us about?” is.

•Try not to get ahead of the focus person’s language with your questions. “What did you mean when you said you felt sad?” is an honest, open question. “Didn’t you also feel angry?” is not.

•Ask questions that are brief and to the point rather than larding them with rationales and background materials that allow you to insert your own opinions or advice.

•Ask questions that go to the person as well as the problem, questions about the inner realities of the situation as well as the outward facts.

•Ask questions aimed at helping the focus person explore his or her concern rather than satisfying your own curiosity.

•If you have an intuition that a certain question might be useful, even if it seems a bit “off the wall,” trust it – once you are reasonably certain that it is an honest, open question. E.g. “What color is this issue for you, and why?”

•If you aren’t sure about a particular question, sit with it for a while and wait for clarity.

•As a group, watch the pacing of the questions, allowing some silence between the last answer and the next question. Questions that come too fast may feel aggressive, cutting off the deep reflection that can help the focus person.

•If you have asked one question and heard an answer, you may feel a need to ask a follow-up question. But if you find yourself about to ask the third question in a row before anyone else has had a change to ask one, don’t!

•Avoid questions with yes-no or right-wrong answers. At the same time, remember that the best questions are often simple and straightforward.

Learning to ask honest, open questions is challenging. We may slip occasionally into old “fixing” habits and need forgiveness, from others and from ourselves. As the old saying goes, “Forgive and remember!” and try not to make that particular mistake again. It helps to continually remind ourselves that our purpose in this exercise is not to show what good problem-solvers we are, but simply to support another person in listening to his or her inner teacher.

Asking Open, Honest Questions

“The best single mark of an honest, open question is that the questioner could not possibly know the answer to it . . . Ask questions aimed at helping the focus person (story teller) rather than at satisfying your curiosity. Ask questions that are brief and to the point rather than leading them with background considerations and rationale – which make the question into a speech. Ask questions that go to the person as well as the problem, e.g., questions about feelings as well as facts. Trust your intuition in asking questions, even if your instinct seems off the wall: ‘What color is your present job and what color is the one you have been offered.’”

-Parker J. Palmer

Examples of Open, Honest Questions

When you felt like this before, how did you handle it?

If you were to represent this situation in a painting, what would it look like?

What is either helping or hindering you?

What would the opposite be?

How would this be different if?

Will you say more about?

Is there another aspect?

If one of your friends described you?

What metaphor describes what you are feeling or experiencing?

How would you like to be remembered?

In my dream, a blue mare loping, Pewter on a porcelain field, away. There are bursts of soft commotion

Where her hooves drive in the drifts, And as dusk ebbs on the plane of night, She shears the web of winter, And on the far, blind side She is no more. I behold nothing, Wherein the mare dissolves in memory, Beyond the burden Of being.

Date Published: 2019-08-07

Source URL: https://poets.org/poem/snow-mare

THE SNOW MARE

The Snow Mare

N. Scott Momaday, a Kiowa Indian, was born in Lawton, Oklahoma.

“HEADING HOME AGAIN.”

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”

SESSION 5

― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

Excerpt

from Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. Jossey-Bass, 2004

There was a time when farmers on the Great Plains, at the first sign of a blizzard, would run a rope from the back door out to the barn. They all knew stories of people who had wandered off and been frozen to death, having lost sight of home in a whiteout while still in their own backyards.

Today we live in a blizzard of another sort. It swirls around us as economic injustice, ecological ruin, physical and spiritual violence, and their inevitable outcome, war. It swirls within us as fear and frenzy, greed and deceit, and indifference to the suffering of others. We all know stories of people who have wandered off into this madness and been separated from their own souls, losing their moral bearings and even their mortal lives: they make headlines because they take so many innocents down with them.

The lost ones come from every walk of life: clergy and corporate executives, politicians and people on the street, celebrities and schoolchildren. Some of us fear that we, or those we love, will become lost in the storm. Some are lost at this moment and are trying to find the way home. Some are lost without knowing it. And some are using the blizzard as cover while cynically exploiting its chaos for private gain.

So it is easy to believe the poet’s claim that “the blizzard of the world” has overturned “the order of the soul,” easy to believe that the soul—that life-giving core of the human self, with its hunger for truth and justice, love and forgiveness—has lost all power to guide our lives.

But my own experience of the blizzard, which includes getting lost in it more often than I like to admit, tells me that it is not so. The soul’s order can never be destroyed. It may be obscured by the whiteout. We

may forget, or deny, that its guidance is close at hand. And yet we are still in the soul’s backyard, with chance after chance to regain our bearings.

This book [and the resources of Courage & Renewal] is about tying a rope from the back door out to the barn so that we can find our way home again. When we catch sight of the soul, we can survive the blizzard without losing our hope or our way. When we catch sight of the soul, we can become healers in a wounded world—in the family, in the neighborhood, in the workplace, and in political life—as we are called back to our “hidden wholeness” amid the violence of the storm.

Share your reflections with a friend:

•What are the blizzards (storms) in your life or work?

•What’s the “rope” that connect you to who you are at your very core?

LEADING THROUGH THE BLIZZARDS COURAGE & RENEWAL

7/28/15

Rodger Spiller, MCom

There’s a Leonard Cohen song, The Future, which refers to “the blizzard of the world”

The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul.

Leaders experience this blizzard in many forms, including an ever-increasing volume and velocity of challenges and complexity. The blizzards faced by business leaders can cause them to lose sight of what matters most and to lose their sense of orientation.

Author Parker J. Palmer describes how: “…farmers on the Great Plains, at the first sign of a blizzard, would run a rope from the back door out to the barn. They all knew stories of people who had wandered off and been frozen to death, having lost sight of home in a whiteout while still in their own backyards”. {see complete Palmer entry}

The Center for Courage & Renewal, co-founded by Parker Palmer, encourages leaders to explore and enquire into their inner and outer worlds. In an approach that is rare in leadership development

•What is the nature of the blizzard(s) in my life and work?

settings, the Courage to Lead® retreat explores important topics metaphorically, using poems and stories that embody the topic. Palmer calls these embodiments “third things” because rather than representing the voice of the facilitator or participant, they have “voices of their own, voices that tell the truth about a topic” and evoke from us what our authentic or deeper self wants us to pay attention to.

Highlighting the potential and challenge of this approach, Palmer cites T.S. Eliot and notes that what Eliot said about poetry is true of all third things: “(Poetry) may make us… a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves”.

For example, in response to the subject of “The Blizzard” and the Leonard Cohen lyric you might take 15 minutes to reflect and write in a journal your answers to the questions (NB: If you don’t think you have time to do this, that very response highlights the potential value for you of this reflection):

•What does it feel like to be in it?

•What does the blizzard obscure?

•What gets “lost” when I am in it?

A companion exercise, about tying the rope to the barn, is to work with the poem.

“THE WAY IT IS”

by William Stafford:

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread. Questions for reflection on this poem are:

•What are some threads – personal beliefs and convictions that I try to hold onto in my life and work?

•What helps me hold on to them?

•What makes it difficult to hold on?

•Have I ever had to explain about my thread? How have I talked about it?

•What might it mean to “follow” my thread, rather than pull or push it? How does that change things?

•What does it feel like to be separated from my thread? Say, by losing something, or choosing a path?

“THE WAY IT IS”

BEGINNINGS

“The

SESSION 6

beginning is the most important part of the work.”

― Plato, The Republic

IT IS I WHO MUST BEGIN

IT IS I WHO MUST BEGIN

by Václav Havel

It is I who must begin. Once I begin, once I try — here and now, right where I am, not excusing myself by saying things would be easier elsewhere, without grand speeches and ostentatious gestures, but all the more persistently — to live in harmony with the “voice of Being,” as I understand it within myself — as soon as I begin that, I suddenly discover, to my surprise, that I am neither the only one, nor the first, nor the most important one to have set out upon that road. Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost. ~ ~

The poem It Is I Who Must Begin, by Václav Havel is included in the collection, Teaching with Fire: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Teach, edited by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner.

EXTRA EXPERIENCES

THE CENTER FOR AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP AND MINDFULNESS PRESENTS

CA LM RETREAT A WINTER SOJOURN

“Authenticity - We recognize that each person has an inner source of truth-an inner wisdom-that is the basis for the authentic self.

Wholeness - We honor the unique journey of each individual, one that engages the whole person-mind, body, and spirit-in exploring the inner life.

Mindfulness - We pay attention wholeheartedly to ourselves and others-invoking silence, solitude, and deep listening.” —a Center for Renewal and Wholeness in Higher Education