The Edge of the World A lot of the leaders I know like to feel they are out in front, on the cutting edge of the world. They have this picture in their heads of themselves with a long line of people behind them. As a leader, they want to take people beyond the everyday into something extraordinary. Leaders like to feel they are stepping off the regular path toward something exciting and new. They want to believe they are leading the rest... Read more
Rocking and Listening There are times when we all need some rocking and listening. The news can be overwhelmingly full of disasters, natural and otherwise. We are working so hard and do not seem to be making much real progress. It can feel like we are just falling further and further behind. Even the weather seems to be against us as summer abandons us and autumn takes its place. The first week of October could be our last opportunity for a... Read more
Setting Aside Our Fear Our fear keeps us awake at night. It holds us back from even trying to do what we hope to accomplish. Fear eats away at us, robbing us of who we have the potential to become. It can steal our closest relationships and our most cherished dreams. We have known fear since before we can remember. We may have been, or be, afraid of the dark, afraid of being our true selves, afraid of failing. Some... Read more
Tapping Into Monastic Curiosity Many of the things I do are motivated by curiosity. I get interested in something and set off to find out more about it. The leaders who inspire me are curious. They want to find out how far or fast we can go and what is going to happen next. There is something about curiosity which gets me to do things I might not think I want to do. Why is curiosity inspiring? What is the... Read more
What We Hear When We Listen We hear remarkable things when we listen. Many of us rarely spend the time or effort it takes to listen well. When we do, we hear things which take us by surprise. It is not necessarily while we are listening that we hear everything. Part of the practice of listening to sacred stillness is it helps us hear and reflect on what we hear. One of the disciplines I practice is a form of... Read more
Celebrating Spiritual Life We love to celebrate, commemorate, and recognize. Almost anything is a cause for our celebration. At the same time, our culture has converted celebrating into a financial activity. Holidays which entered our culture as spiritual events have been converted into commercial seasons. We have developed sectors of our economy which are almost entirely dependent on holiday spending. Our culture does an excellent job of generating revenue from holidays with spiritual roots. I saw the first Christmas decorations... Read more
Understanding Strength and Weakness We like to believe we are strong people. Some of us are physically strong, while others focus on mental toughness. We appreciate our emotional strength, our spiritual strength, or how much stronger we are becoming. Building strength and overcoming weakness are important to us. We take tests to find our strengths and measure how strong they are. Strength helps us do things while weakness makes it harder to get things done. It is usually more polite, and... Read more
Listening to Sacred Silence Listening to sacred stillness is more than just being calm and sitting still. It can be easy for us to get stuck in our image of sitting quietly. We see the challenge as meeting our goal of five minutes or twenty minutes of stillness. The truly important part is our openness, our willingness to listen. This is not a test or competition or anything else we can measure. The question is not How long? as much as it is How... Read more
The Power of Comfort We believe in the power of comfort. Our comfort zones have well defined boundaries. We have carefully established which foods make us comfortable and the best places to eat them. It is almost as if we believe our society exists to make us feel comfortable. We expect our possessions to give us comfort, from our favorite chair to our cars to our phones. Discomfort stops us in our tracks. We even say, when we disagree or... Read more
Looking Beyond Our Next Move Two of my strongest strengths are being analytical and being strategic. I am a good strategic thinker. There are only a few things I enjoy more than figuring out how to get from here to there. The space between where we are and where we want to go is creative space for me. Life can feel like a big chess match in which we are looking for and beyond our next move. At the same time, I... Read more
Strategic Monk
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