I had a conversation with an old friend yesterday. We have been out of touch for a long time, and reconnecting after years was sweet and surprising. We realized that we are both – though of course the same – also very very different today. It is like something quite fundamental has shifted, and something quite elemental is going on inside us. A deepening, an awakening, a quickening. I don’t know what words to put on it. It is an experience of a fuller, a more vibrant and yet also quiet experience of life all at once. Perhaps it is simply – getting to know myself more fully – in connection with all of life. Not in isolation.
Blog
Reflections by Walk Outs
Updates, Observations and Questions
We've heard from many of you that you'd like to know what's happening now in the communities whose stories we share in Walk Out Walk On. So we've asked Walk Outs from each of these communities to share their updates, reflections and questions. We encourage you to offer questions and reflections of your own at the end of each blog entry.Flexing Our Muscles of Discernment
It’s been one year and two weeks since Walk Out Walk On was launched into the world. I just returned home from Denver and Boulder, Colorado, the final two stops on the book tour, and now is a good time to reflect on what I’ve learned over these last twelve months. And here it is:
The United States has lost its sense of subtlety.
Tending to Myself
Or: Putting Relationships in their Rightful Place
This piece is inspired by a reading I did in 2011 with Angela Deutschmann,
and the journey that has followed since.
I just came back from a wonderful week in Europe, attending and co-facilitating the ALIA Europe Leadership Programme. If I am to be honest, as I was leaving Zimbabwe, it felt like a bit of a distraction to leave everything that was going on here, at home in Kufunda, but it turned out to be a week of deep connections, with others and myself. It was a sort of coming home away from home. Much of what I have been working on during the last weeks and months came into clearer perspective, being in a rich community of friends and fellow travelers on the journey of becoming more fully human, more fully me.
America broke the rules of living systems
“Without ethics, politics has no limits. America broke the rules of living systems, and lost its balance. All the oxygen flowed to a smaller and smaller section of the body politic. The history is brief and unquestionable: close to toppling, the society momentarily pulled itself upright, and then became even less ethical, less balanced, more endangered than ever as a lawless financial system came back from death, and like a foolish patient after a heart bypass operation, continued in its old ways.”
Stopped Dead by Death on ‘Burnt Thursday’
I finally took my walk with Freddie – my sweet kairos protector – who stood in front of the Apothiki looking directly at me as I sat at my computer – saying it was now time to go. He had not had his morning walk. I was in no mood to go – and anyway, he had gone hurtling out of the door to visit the neighbours. It was after all an hour later than his usual excursion as I had overslept due to finally getting to sleep in the early hours of the morning. It was time to get some spring water too – so off we went to Kaseni – a 5 minute walk into neighbouring lands.
As I walked down the path in front of the house to where it touches the corner of the streambed leading to the well – I faced death on my pathway. Read More »
Social media seems to be heating up our pot
Last night, ten faces peered back at me from the glow of my computer screen—including my own. This was my first Google+ Hangout experience, and now nine strangers were gazing into my living room (and I into theirs) as we began a dialogue about educators experimenting with walking out and walking on. And who knows how many others peeked in, as lurkers were invited to watch the one-hour dialogue via live stream.
Ten years ago, I would not have invited nine people I had never met into my home at 9 PM on a Wednesday night. A year ago, I would not have “friended” someone I had never met in person. Day by day, my relationship to privacy, intimacy and social boundaries is slowly eroding. Much like the frog in boiling water, I am gradually adapting to the persistent incursions of social media into my daily life—and potentially destroying my brain in the process.
Dare Step into the Fire of your Heart’s Song
If asked to name what was most necessary to walk out and walk on, it would be to follow the heart’s song – the deep intuitive resonance that compels and guides the movement into the unknown.
Bridging Now and Then
Holding
All that is still to be
And has Become
The Song
Sung with Heart-full breath
Beyond the Self
Blessings’ wealth
Parallels
We – human Beings, humanity – are at a crossroads that holds profound choice. Do we go this way or that? Do we stay on the path we are on… or choose another? Do we let go, open up, walk out… walk on?
All are possible. All are choices. Yet what choice provides the greatest flow, the greatest service, the greatest potential? How do we discern? How do we find the courage to say YES – and move… in order to place ourselves well?
This poem speaks to some of the choices, I believe, we face.
Playing to Change the World: The Time of the Jester
Just after midnight last night, I found myself in Boston’s financial district, following in the footsteps of a New Orleans-style brass band that marched along Atlantic Avenue. More than a thousand Occupiers and supporters were dancing in the streets as the city prepared to evict the Dewey Square encampment. The Mayor’s midnight deadline had passed, and the square and surrounding streets were overflowing with people singing and chanting and dancing.
A few hours earlier at the evening’s General Assembly, a proposal was made to meet the City of Boston’s eviction demand with a dance party. The proposal’s champion called for protesters to “clean up our mess entirely” and “be the first Occupy to just ‘poof!’ and be gone like a gypsy squad.”
Cracks in the Ice
“There are Cracks in the Ice!!”
“Don’t worry, we’re fast climbers!”
* * *
We had seen the forecast and knew we needed to get to the base of the ice climb early.
As a staff team of Outdoor educators, we were in training in the Scottish Highlands learning the winter arts of ice-climbing, skiing and winter mountaineering. We were excited as this year – 1985 – held the best conditions for years. Glistening, thick snow, cold conditions and bright blue skies. We were blessed.
So here we were – journeying to the base of Oui Oui before dawn – a notorious ice-climb deep in the mountains of Glencoe. Climbing ropes lassoed over shoulders, rucksacks filled with ice equipment – ice screws, belays, harnesses – and metal crampons – devices that had spikes on the bottom and the front of each – that would eventually be strapped tightly onto the base of each leather boot, plus ice axes strapped to the outside of each rucsac.
