Tag Archives: humility

Solstice and the magic swing of simultaneity

Posted on by
1

2000_LightInAutumn_crop

I’m preparing for an Advent Restorying retreat coming up this weekend, reflecting on the diversity of ways to celebrate and keep the season. I’ll share what’s emerging in the next few posts, and hope to have some juicy explorations from the retreat next week.

This time of year in many traditions glows with a feeling of anticipation, of waiting and tending, of renewal and rebirth of divine light and love. Sometimes we tend to assume this renewal of love is confined to the realm of humans, that the stories somehow only apply to us. Here’s a thought from D.H. Lawrence about the trade-off we make when we restrict love to the human story. Continue reading →

Giving thanks for kinship with all of Life

Posted on by
Reply

1999_Eiko_620w

After a long holiday weekend spent with extended family, I am moved to reflect on kinship. I am a branch in a family tree that has roots in Italy and in Germany, Bohemia, Ireland and England. My ancestors are always with me: in specific memories, in personality traits, in my heart. I have a place with photographs of them which I greet daily, smiling at the stories behind the pictures.

Stories tell us who we are and where we’ve come from. My father’s father came over alone on the boat from Italy when he was fourteen, just a year older than my son is now. He lived in Chicago Heights, a town south of the infamous Southside of Chicago, and worked at Calumet Steel to provide for his family. Continue reading →

We don’t like being weather’s loser boyfriend

Posted on by
Reply

1991_Sconset-beach

“Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” ~ Charles Dudley Warner

I love how this captures so much about the human condition. There’s our tendency to make small talk, avoiding substantive conversations. And also our powerlessness in the face of natural forces — even now, after decades and centuries of working so hard to harness, control and subdue them.

It’s humbling to admit we can’t do much of anything about the weather and this ticks us off. In a world of factory farms, deep ocean oil drilling, and genetic engineering, we are little more than sitting ducks in the path of a “Superstorm” hurricane or a “Snowmageddon” blizzard. Continue reading →

How can you balance an elephant on a seesaw with a mouse, and why even try?

Posted on by
1

2008_6.30_620w

My entry into the world of sustainable design came out of an Earth Day talk by the architect William McDonough. For a long time, my why was a reaction against bad news: oil-coated ducks; mountains of trash in landfills; coal mines that leveled living mountains and shoved them into pristine river valleys; climate change; “Cancer Alley,” where they make PVC, a known carcinogen that’s in countless building materials.

I thought, we’ve got to turn this thing around, and we are smart enough: we have the know-how and technology to do it. In my lectures, after pictures of the bad news, I would show a diagram of a circle drawn with arrows, depicting closed loops by recycling materials. I would show case studies of buildings designed to use very little energy, heated and powered by the sun, sheltered by the constant temperature of the earth, roofed with gardens that birds could call home. Continue reading →

A case for direct experience

Posted on by
Reply

2006_6.23_620w

I’m in a rain-misted spring forest examining a batch of cheeky green fungus that has flagged me down. In sliding my eyes along the fallen branch it’s growing on, I notice a snail shell and marvel at its size and intricacy, thinking it’s exactly like a shell one might find along a beach. Then I notice a white fungus, same shape as the green, but with wedding-dress frills instead of garden-party apple green flounces. And just like that, metaphors have crashed the party.

This setting teaches me that metaphor is a habit of culture, a way of mediating direct experience and keeping my distance with cleverness. Continue reading →

Words to the wise

Posted on by
Reply

2005_6.25_620w

Recently, I participated in an ambitious community art project called Autumn Leaves. The gatherings celebrated elders and youth, and featured art, performance, and sharing what gives our lives meaning. We were invited to give our response to three questions, one of which was: What would you say to your 21-year-old self?

My first thought was, this young woman needed so much advice! I’m not sure she would have heeded any of it, but here’s what I had planned to say.

First, rely on your heart. Learn to listen to your inner voice, and be a channel for what wants to come through you, because you’re unique and the world needs what you can bring forth. Since your work is bigger than you, you don’t have to worry about whether it’s good enough. Continue reading →

In praise of maintenance

Posted on by
Reply

2000_LightInAutumn_620w

A common refrain for clients over the years has been to ask for a “maintenance free” building, which in their mind often meant plastic, vinyl and other space-age materials that promise immunity from aging. Yet the laws of physics (otherwise known as the conditions governing all of life on earth) make that patently absurd. As soon as any building is finished, before the paint is dry, the furniture moved in and the art hung on the walls, the process of decay begins. Certainly, some materials are more durable than others –brick versus wood, for example. But mortar and even brick break down over decades of exposure to sunlight, water and freezing temperatures.

The maintenance-free mantra is another example of our futile attempts to master the forces of eternity. Continue reading →

Leaving Birthdayland

Posted on by
Reply

Glacier Bay_620w

Today would have been my mother’s 80th birthday, so this painting is one of hers, done 20 years ago at Glacier Bay in Alaska. She loved the exotic landscapes of Alaska, the history and villages at the intersections of water, cultures, and time.

This is the second birthday from which she has been exempted. Once, a little over two weeks before she died, we sat in her sun-filled kitchen while she extracted cards from her Birthday Book. This was a 9 x 12 spiral book probably from Hallmark, with a page for each month in which to note people’s birthdays and a facing pocket to hold cards ready to send. She reused it year after year, because, after all, people’s birthdays never change. They are one of few constants in this roiling, shifting world.

My mother was a good patient who died peacefully at home, but she didn’t want to go. Continue reading →

Big green fear campaign

Posted on by
Reply

1998_7.19_620w

Sometimes everything feels like a strange mashup. One moment, I’ll encounter mythic stirrings in the echoes of an ancient Celtic festival and the next crash right into the increasingly blatant tactics to maintain the status quo. Such dissonance is a fact of life here on the threshold between stories. As the old story frays, exposing its faults more clearly, the attempts to hold onto it and force it on nonbelievers become more desperate and personal.

On the eve of Halloween, the New York Times ran a story about political consultant Richard Berman’s secretly taped speech to a group of oil and gas industry executives in Colorado last summer. After reading the article and a transcript of Berman’s talk, my first reaction was to label. Greedy, morally bankrupt, and sociopathic have a satisfying ring after learning of a coordinated and well funded campaign against environmental groups that rely on volunteers and committed activists. Groups that I happen to agree with and feel thankful they are out there holding the line against the rapacious fossil fuelers. Continue reading →

Are we really rewriting the OS?

Posted on by
2

2009_7.17_620w

Last week, a tech entrepreneur announced the OS Fund, offering $100 million of his own money to the best and brightest startups that want to change the world by designing a better future. Sounds exciting, right? Their manifesto says it straight:

“In order to affect real change for humanity at a global scale, we need to think and operate on a fundamental level: the operating system.”

Yes, I thought, he’s onto something. It’s another way of saying we need a new story. This is a compelling perspective:

“Historically, germ theory, American democracy and the Internet rewrote the operating systems of healthcare, governance and our societal infrastructure.”

Can’t argue with that. As I read further, though, I realized this wasn’t about a new OS at all. It’s about fancy new software. An arms race of software, like those fat seats and giant cupholders in American cars. Continue reading →