Sylvia's Journal

Mary Oliver’s ageless poetic wisdom spoke to me this week: [“Still, what I want in my life/is to be willing/to be dazzled—/to cast aside the weight of facts/and maybe even/to float a little/above this difficult world….”]. I have been dazzled.

Inspired and full of hope I end this week of seeing possibilities, being encouraged by kindred spirits from all over the world. I feel very blessed to get that much support and energy when the affairs of state (MA, the USA and the world) deplete me.

I got some clarity about why, as my guru Judith E. Glaser said “9 out of 10 conversations miss the mark.” It’s because of vantage points and horizons. It’s all about where we stand and what we are looking at.

Matt Taylor clarified the idea of vantage points for me – conversations miss the mark when one is talking from a philosophical vantage point while another is busy engineering, already descended to logistics or a task vantage point. Either one can turn the other off, which usually happens when one doesn’t see where the other stands. 

Bill Sharpe clarified the notion of three horizons – what we are looking at. One is talking about the current horizon, another about his or her faraway aspirational 3^rd horizon and then there are those who are focusing on the 2^nd horizon where the present is being brought steps closer to the 3^rd horizon via experimentation and innovation. In his book ‘Three Horizons, the pattering of hope,‘ Sharpe explores his intuition “that we have within us a far deeper capacity for shared life than we are using, and that we are suffering from an attempt to know our way into the future instead of live our way.”

And finally there is my current author compagnon,  Margaret Heffernan who is reading her book ‘Unchartered’ to me. She kicked over some beliefs I have held for a long time, retold the scenario stories (Shell, South Africa) I already knew and added may more, all seems to have an unlimited supply of stories about what is possible when one has passion, perseverance, patience, and fellow travelers. All stories create a sense of awe as people accomplished (together with many others)  things most people would have considered impossible. She writes, “you cannot solve social problems without social processes.” It seems intuitive.

We had our 4^th New Moon gathering of our 7 months Upcreation! journey on Friday. Part of the day we joined with our European friends who unhooked when it was bedtime for them, while we, on both US coasts, in the middle, and in Canada, continued to meet for another half day until it was bedtime for me (to continue with the Asia/pacific folks after that and resuming with the Europeans the next day. For us east Coasters it is a full day on Zoom (10AM till 8 PM). It sounds horrible but this group is special and wonderful to be with for all the hours (we do break preiodically).

coWe are all trying to right something that is horribly wrong or call something into being that only exists in the mind’s eye. We ended the day with the creation of a model (Pre-Covid it would have been with atoms, but now with bytes) of the patterns we were seeing in our various stands, and finally a Haiku describing 6 months from now, 1 years from now, 5 years from now and far into the future. It was fun, validating and inspiring.

And then, to close this week about possibilities and hope, there was our usual Saturday morning ritual of Music & Imagery with my M&I sisters from near and far, that ironed out the moments of despair and the resulting knots in my stomach, caused by our angry president. I try not to listen to the news too much because it gives him way too much free airtime, poisoning the ether with his vitriol.

This is a line from David Whyte’s poem by the same name. I am listening to an interview with him in which he speaks to our current experience of uncertainty. There is much that resonates with me. I know that everything is waiting for me, to step up, to take a stand, to participate actively in creating a better future. As a small, though not insignificant gesture, I filled in my absentee ballot today – I haven’t decided whether to drop it off at the town hall (no, I won’t use the USPS) or vote in person at the local school on November 3, but just the blackening of the dot next to the Biden/Harris line made me feel better.

Whyte is reminding us about the importance of silence. To create it, to seek it, to turn our hands and eyes away from the screen, up to the heavens, or birds or the flaming foliage of our trees. That is exactly what I am going to do as soon as I have posted this writing.

It take skills and courage to seek silence. I meditate 20 minutes every morning and try to engage in short mini-mediations during the day (failing most of the time), as a shield against the  relentless, noisy and incessant chatter wherever we turn our ears and eyes.

I often invite this chatter into my life by not being able to say no to yet another invite for this or that intriguing, appealing, inspiring course, this or that meeting on Zoom. We can now say ‘yes’ all the time because there is no getting into cars or planes, most of the time no money to pay – we can participate in everything.  

And so I found myself on two Zoom events at the same time, one coming softly in through my hearing devices and the other through my computer audio. When a Facetime call with my husband and daughters announced itself on my two screens, a third input, I realized the folly of what I was doing. I left all the meetings, to find out that the call was a pocket dial – sent to me by the heavens via my granddaughter who pressed against her grandfather’s back pocket. I turned my computer off, and my head towards the late afternoon autumn sun. Silence at last.

It is probably also not a coincidence that I am being asked to become the next clerk of our Quaker Meeting. Quakers know a thing or two about silence, being comfortable and fully present in the silence, where everything is waiting for you. If I was somewhat reluctant to even consider the request yesterday, I am now thinking about it, because, I suppose, the heavens spoke to me by whispering into my ear that phrase of everything that is waiting for me.

I am enrolled in  bunch of initiatives that are all converging towards a seeking for a new Operating System (OS) for our societies, now that the previous OS is no longer working. Otto Scharmer and his Theory U, accompanied by tens of thousands of his team’s disciples (I am meeting more and more online through the free EdX Ulab course) comforts me, knowing all these people are also laying the groundwork for OS 4.0.

I am part of another (worldwide) group, Upcreators in the Americas, Asia and Europe. My fellow Upcreators are also a force for change, maybe on a smaller scale, but every scale helps. I meet people everywhere who are experimenting at a global, regional, and (sometimes very) local level, with amplifying the conditions for creating OS 4.0 and challenging the assumptions and mental mentals of the previous OS. They too are laying the tracks for OS 4.0. And then there are my fellow coaches around the world who I meet through a variety of events (all online); they too are full of hope and energy and resolve to co-create this OS 4.0 for the society. Like a baby in its final days before birth, something is kicking hard and ready to be born.

I am inspired by all this learning and conversing and experimenting and innovating. Something has ignited in me and I have started the first hesitant steps to do my own experiment, very locally, in the town I live in – to come up with a set of initiatives that will help us, resilient New Englanders that we are, to get through our first ever pandemic winter. No one here has experience with a pandemic winter, so that’s where I’ll start – after 40 years of very global, this winter I am turning my energy and attention to my very small town.