After I read the little dialogue in which Randy and Jack suggested that Meg Wheatley's book would address the issue, I did a really uncharacteristic thing (at about 9:30 p.m.). I immediately went to Amazon and ordered the book. Now that I have read (and appreciate) it, I want to remember what the issue was to which the book was the answer. Can you refresh my memory--only on this one issue--I won't ask you to do a sweeping job on my memory[?]. I do think Meg Wheatley does a good job, and I certainly believe her answers may be helpful, though I think the spirit work we did is far more sweeping and with more depth. What she has that we didn't is today's world with current issues. Actually, I never did like the "warrior" image, because it is so masculine. However, it now carries a lot of other baggage for me, including the personal (hate, anger, etc) along with the outward destructiveness of war. Maybe this is good archive work if we haven't already done it. In any case, it is a current conversation worth having. Of course, we used war images all the time, but surely there are other current ones that could be motivating. What would we drag out of our corporate memory or current innovation that could lead the way in today's world? Doris Hahn
Can’t recall name of Meg Wheatley's book. Which one is it? "Forgiveness is the final form of love." ~Reinhold Niebuhr ♥
Can’t recall either. Check her website or Amazon. She has more than one book. Beret From: oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Knutson Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 10:38 AM To: ICA-USA Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Question Can’t recall name of Meg Wheatley's book. Which one is it? "Forgiveness is the final form of love." ~Reinhold Niebuhr ♥
What I read, and what I think is her most recent book is SO FAR FROM HOME lost and found in our brave new world. However, my question is: What was the issue raised by us (was it you, Janice) that made Randy suggest that SO FAR FROM HOME might be a helpful read? Doris On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:38 AM, Knutson <i.am.howlingatthemoon@verizon.net
wrote:
Can’t recall name of Meg Wheatley's book. Which one is it?
*"Forgiveness is the final form of love." ** ~Reinhold Niebuhr *♥
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Doris, I frankly don't remember a or the question, but I did like the book. Like you, I also feel that we dealt with her book premise much better and deeper. I think she is challenging what we called "the liberal heresy". It is what we wrote and talked about that I felt was worthy of further discussion. Jack Sent from my iPad On Feb 18, 2013, at 2:45 PM, Doris Hahn <dshahn31@gmail.com> wrote: What I read, and what I think is her most recent book is SO FAR FROM HOME lost and found in our brave new world. However, my question is: What was the issue raised by us (was it you, Janice) that made Randy suggest that SO FAR FROM HOME might be a helpful read? Doris On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:38 AM, Knutson <i.am.howlingatthemoon@verizon.net
wrote:
Can’t recall name of Meg Wheatley's book. Which one is it?
*"Forgiveness is the final form of love." ** ~Reinhold Niebuhr *♥
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Hi Mom & All, I did a quick search and came across this which may have been the reference that spurred you to buy the book (?): Suggest the reading of Meg Wheatley's latest book So Far From Home. Great statement of the hope beyond hope, in the sense in which Kaz spoke of hope as the greatest temptation. Randy Don't know if that helps. Shelley On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:21 AM, Doris Hahn <dshahn31@gmail.com> wrote:
After I read the little dialogue in which Randy and Jack suggested that Meg Wheatley's book would address the issue, I did a really uncharacteristic thing (at about 9:30 p.m.). I immediately went to Amazon and ordered the book. Now that I have read (and appreciate) it, I want to remember what the issue was to which the book was the answer. Can you refresh my memory--only on this one issue--I won't ask you to do a sweeping job on my memory[?].
I do think Meg Wheatley does a good job, and I certainly believe her answers may be helpful, though I think the spirit work we did is far more sweeping and with more depth. What she has that we didn't is today's world with current issues. Actually, I never did like the "warrior" image, because it is so masculine. However, it now carries a lot of other baggage for me, including the personal (hate, anger, etc) along with the outward destructiveness of war. Maybe this is good archive work if we haven't already done it. In any case, it is a current conversation worth having. Of course, we used war images all the time, but surely there are other current ones that could be motivating.
What would we drag out of our corporate memory or current innovation that could lead the way in today's world?
Doris Hahn
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So Far From Home Lost and Found in our Brave New World by Margaret J. Wheatley Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2012 Here's a review of that book written by Joyce Marshall. It appears in the latest issue of the Realistic Living Journal, November 2012. I have not read anything with which I resonate more strongly than this book. Drawing on her work with systems, Wheatley lays out the elements of the world we now live in – robber barons, millions oppressed, ideological dumbing down, manufactured selves, consumerism, distraction, etc. – and how these elements interact, resulting in humanity being Lost. The first step toward being Found is to recognize how profoundly we are Lost. To motivate ourselves by the outcomes we hope to achieve is not appropriate. That kind of hope is the flip side of fear. But there is a different kind of hope – that we will BE hope, be warriors of the spirit. This requires looking directly into the darkness of our times and being brave and decent human beings who face deeply challenging circumstances. As Wendell Berry put it: “No matter how bad things get, a person of good will and some ability can always do something to make it a little better.” Maybe our work won’t be different from what we are now doing, but the context shifts. Expectations and attitudes shift. One aspect of that spirit is avoiding getting caught up in outrage and righteous anger. The truer feeling is being overwhelmed with grief. Allowing ourselves to experience our grief will leave us with greater clarity about how to respond. Wheatley, articulating what I have been sensing for some years now, clarifies a context that I have fuzzily tried to talk about. Her mentors are Chogyam Trungpa and Pema Chodron, and though they are Buddhist, I am happy to follow her call to arms and become a Christian spirit warrior. I would like for all my friends and colleagues who are vocated to serving the world to read this book – yesterday. Joyce Marshall On 2013-02-18, at 7:53 PM, Shelley Hahn wrote: Hi Mom & All, I did a quick search and came across this which may have been the reference that spurred you to buy the book (?): Suggest the reading of Meg Wheatley's latest book So Far From Home. Great statement of the hope beyond hope, in the sense in which Kaz spoke of hope as the greatest temptation. Randy Don't know if that helps. Shelley On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:21 AM, Doris Hahn <dshahn31@gmail.com> wrote: After I read the little dialogue in which Randy and Jack suggested that Meg Wheatley's book would address the issue, I did a really uncharacteristic thing (at about 9:30 p.m.). I immediately went to Amazon and ordered the book. Now that I have read (and appreciate) it, I want to remember what the issue was to which the book was the answer. Can you refresh my memory--only on this one issue--I won't ask you to do a sweeping job on my memory<330.gif>. I do think Meg Wheatley does a good job, and I certainly believe her answers may be helpful, though I think the spirit work we did is far more sweeping and with more depth. What she has that we didn't is today's world with current issues. Actually, I never did like the "warrior" image, because it is so masculine. However, it now carries a lot of other baggage for me, including the personal (hate, anger, etc) along with the outward destructiveness of war. Maybe this is good archive work if we haven't already done it. In any case, it is a current conversation worth having. Of course, we used war images all the time, but surely there are other current ones that could be motivating. What would we drag out of our corporate memory or current innovation that could lead the way in today's world? Doris Hahn _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net
Doris, I don't think Jack and I ever specified an issue as such from Wheatley's book. As I recall, he mentioned that he was reading it and I reported that I had read it and we agreed we should talk about it sometime, which we never did. I frankly found the book a little depressing at first until toward the end where she talks about hope, which conjured up images of "the hope beyond hope" that Joe talked about, and Kazantzakis' "hope as the greatest temptation." When I looked back at the whole book through those last couple of chapters I could see that she, in her own words, was affirming the goodness and possibility in the world as it is, something all of us stated and lived by years ago in our "all is good..." articulation of the Word. I have read, I think, almost everything Wheatley has written. Her first book, Leadership and the New Science, was first published in the early 90s, from which she received much acclaim. She has since updated it twice. She is, as far as I know, one of the first to apply systems thinking and the way natural processes work to organizations and communities. One of her main theses is that hierarchical, top-down, command and control techniques no longer work and that our businesses, communities, etc. must organize, or she might say "self-organize," in the way nature is organized, in webs of interrelatedness, etc. She has used that understanding with her consulting clients, one of which has been, surprisingly, the U.S. Army, which may be what prompted her "warrior" imagery. My favorite of all her books is one she co-authored with Deborah Frieze called Walk Out Walk On. They wrote it just before The Long Walk Home. In this they tell the stories of seven communities, not all geographic, from around the world which are "living the future now." One of their theses here is, "Whatever the question, community is the answer." If you were so inclined to read another of her books, this is the one I would recommend. Short of taking on a book, go to www.margaretwheatley.com/writing.html where you will find a whole list of shorter articles from which to pick and choose. The ICA-USA's Accelerate 77 program draws from a process articulated in Walk Out Walk On. Wheatley and Frieze posit that everything that needs to happen in local community is already underway and there's no need to spend time initiating anything new. What is needed is to (their 4-step process) identify, connect, nurture and expand what is already going on. (ICA called step 4 "accelerate.") By so doing, the isolated efforts emerge into networks of relationships which evolve into communities of practice, and these communities of practice, over time, change the world. These concepts are echoed in different ways by Paul Hawken (Blessed Unrest) and Peter Senge (The Necessary Revolution) to mention two. A group of local colleagues and I are using similar assumptions and approaches in promoting grassroots sustainability here in McKinney. It's been interesting to watch Wheatley's evolution over the years, from something of an "applied" scientist to a poet and woman of a depth of spirit that has led her to see meaning and possibility in life and the world as it is. This is exhibited in her discussion of emergence in The Long Walk Home. Most of her later books have a lot of poetry and photography in them, as did this one. She reminds me somewhat of Loren Eiseley. Thanks for prompting this conversation. Best to you and Charles. Randy "The sustainability revolution is nothing less than a rethinking and remaking of our role in the natural world." -David Orr ________________________________ From: Doris Hahn <dshahn31@gmail.com> To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net>; Colleague Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 10:21 AM Subject: [Dialogue] Question After I read the little dialogue in which Randy and Jack suggested that Meg Wheatley's book would address the issue, I did a really uncharacteristic thing (at about 9:30 p.m.). I immediately went to Amazon and ordered the book. Now that I have read (and appreciate) it, I want to remember what the issue was to which the book was the answer. Can you refresh my memory--only on this one issue--I won't ask you to do a sweeping job on my memory. I do think Meg Wheatley does a good job, and I certainly believe her answers may be helpful, though I think the spirit work we did is far more sweeping and with more depth. What she has that we didn't is today's world with current issues. Actually, I never did like the "warrior" image, because it is so masculine. However, it now carries a lot of other baggage for me, including the personal (hate, anger, etc) along with the outward destructiveness of war. Maybe this is good archive work if we haven't already done it. In any case, it is a current conversation worth having. Of course, we used war images all the time, but surely there are other current ones that could be motivating. What would we drag out of our corporate memory or current innovation that could lead the way in today's world? Doris Hahn _______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
I totally mis-quoted the title of the book under discussion in this response to Doris. It is, of course So Far from Home, not The Long Walk Home. Not sure where that came from. Randy "The sustainability revolution is nothing less than a rethinking and remaking of our role in the natural world." -David Orr ________________________________ From: R Williams <rcwmbw@yahoo.com> To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>; Order Ecumenical Community <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2013 6:38 AM Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Question Doris, I don't think Jack and I ever specified an issue as such from Wheatley's book. As I recall, he mentioned that he was reading it and I reported that I had read it and we agreed we should talk about it sometime, which we never did. I frankly found the book a little depressing at first until toward the end where she talks about hope, which conjured up images of "the hope beyond hope" that Joe talked about, and Kazantzakis' "hope as the greatest temptation." When I looked back at the whole book through those last couple of chapters I could see that she, in her own words, was affirming the goodness and possibility in the world as it is, something all of us stated and lived by years ago in our "all is good..." articulation of the Word. I have read, I think, almost everything Wheatley has written. Her first book, Leadership and the New Science, was first published in the early 90s, from which she received much acclaim. She has since updated it twice. She is, as far as I know, one of the first to apply systems thinking and the way natural processes work to organizations and communities. One of her main theses is that hierarchical, top-down, command and control techniques no longer work and that our businesses, communities, etc. must organize, or she might say "self-organize," in the way nature is organized, in webs of interrelatedness, etc. She has used that understanding with her consulting clients, one of which has been, surprisingly, the U.S. Army, which may be what prompted her "warrior" imagery. My favorite of all her books is one she co-authored with Deborah Frieze called Walk Out Walk On. They wrote it just before The Long Walk Home. In this they tell the stories of seven communities, not all geographic, from around the world which are "living the future now." One of their theses here is, "Whatever the question, community is the answer." If you were so inclined to read another of her books, this is the one I would recommend. Short of taking on a book, go to www.margaretwheatley.com/writing.html where you will find a whole list of shorter articles from which to pick and choose. The ICA-USA's Accelerate 77 program draws from a process articulated in Walk Out Walk On. Wheatley and Frieze posit that everything that needs to happen in local community is already underway and there's no need to spend time initiating anything new. What is needed is to (their 4-step process) identify, connect, nurture and expand what is already going on. (ICA called step 4 "accelerate.") By so doing, the isolated efforts emerge into networks of relationships which evolve into communities of practice, and these communities of practice, over time, change the world. These concepts are echoed in different ways by Paul Hawken (Blessed Unrest) and Peter Senge (The Necessary Revolution) to mention two. A group of local colleagues and I are using similar assumptions and approaches in promoting grassroots sustainability here in McKinney. It's been interesting to watch Wheatley's evolution over the years, from something of an "applied" scientist to a poet and woman of a depth of spirit that has led her to see meaning and possibility in life and the world as it is. This is exhibited in her discussion of emergence in The Long Walk Home. Most of her later books have a lot of poetry and photography in them, as did this one. She reminds me somewhat of Loren Eiseley. Thanks for prompting this conversation. Best to you and Charles. Randy "The sustainability revolution is nothing less than a rethinking and remaking of our role in the natural world." -David Orr ________________________________ From: Doris Hahn <dshahn31@gmail.com> To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net>; Colleague Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 10:21 AM Subject: [Dialogue] Question After I read the little dialogue in which Randy and Jack suggested that Meg Wheatley's book would address the issue, I did a really uncharacteristic thing (at about 9:30 p.m.). I immediately went to Amazon and ordered the book. Now that I have read (and appreciate) it, I want to remember what the issue was to which the book was the answer. Can you refresh my memory--only on this one issue--I won't ask you to do a sweeping job on my memory. I do think Meg Wheatley does a good job, and I certainly believe her answers may be helpful, though I think the spirit work we did is far more sweeping and with more depth. What she has that we didn't is today's world with current issues. Actually, I never did like the "warrior" image, because it is so masculine. However, it now carries a lot of other baggage for me, including the personal (hate, anger, etc) along with the outward destructiveness of war. Maybe this is good archive work if we haven't already done it. In any case, it is a current conversation worth having. Of course, we used war images all the time, but surely there are other current ones that could be motivating. What would we drag out of our corporate memory or current innovation that could lead the way in today's world? Doris Hahn _______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
participants (7)
-
Beret Griffith -
Doris Hahn -
Jack Gilles -
Ken Fisher -
Knutson -
R Williams -
Shelley Hahn