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 3rd horizon and then there are those who are focusing on the 2nd horizon where the present is being brought steps closer to the 3rd 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 4th 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.
Sylvia's Journal 
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