Our Tribe

Our tribe members are those people who accept us as we are and gladly accompany us on our journeys of evolution.

Happy Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day
By Lynn Ungar

Celebrate this unlikely oracle,
this ball of fat and fur,
whom we so mysteriously endow
with the power to predict spring.
Let's hear it for the improbable heroes who,
frightened at their own shadows,
nonetheless unwittingly work miracles.
Why shouldn't we believe
this peculiar rodent holds power
over sun and seasons in his stubby paw?
Who says that God is all grandeur and glory?

Unnoticed in the earth, worms
are busily, brainlessly, tilling the soil.
Field mice, all unthinking, have scattered
seeds that will take root and grow.
Grape hyacinths, against all reason,
have been holding up green shoots beneath the snow.
How do you think spring arrives?
There is nothing quieter, nothing
more secret, miraculous, mundane.
Do you want to play your part
in bringing it to birth? Nothing simpler.
Find a spot not too far from the ground
and wait.

Organize For Who You Are Now

Tip of the Month: Organizing for the Real You

This is from the newsletter of one of my favorite organizers, Jeri Dansky. Visit her website, www.jdorganizer.com, for the original article.

How many of us keep things we think we "should" want or need - when the reality is we don't want those things and will never use them?

Here's Erin Doland of Unclutterer, writing in Real Simple in March 2009: "I liked to think of myself as someone who exercised every day by running on a giant motorized treadmill, read all the literary classics, and baked cookies for every special occasion. The reality? I am not a runner, I like to read pop fiction, and cookies aren't really my thing." So Erin got rid of a lot of stuff.

And here's Melissa Stanton, writing in the no-longer-published Organize magazine, about her Lenox dishes and crystal stemware: "When properly set, my dining room table could be dressed to impress. Problem was, in more than a decade of owning such finery, which I acquired as wedding gifts and by inheritance, I never set my dining room table as described. For most families, dining on fine china is a relic from a way of life we don't live."

Another aspect of organizing for reality is recognizing what activities we're never going to have time for. Fellow organizer Marcie Lovett just wrote about her own experience in this regard: "I finally realized that I will never have the time to do every craft that looks interesting, so I am going to concentrate on the few that I really enjoy: crochet, card making and sewing. That meant paring back the supplies that I am keeping and getting rid of everything else."

Then there's me. A while ago I realized that I simply don't iron anything and I gave away my ironing board. I've joined Erin in giving away highly-acclaimed books that I honestly don't want to read. And I got rid of the cups and saucers, since all I ever use for coffee and tea are my favorite mugs.

So if you're keeping items that don't fit your real life - or the life you are truly aspiring to and moving toward - then give yourself permission to let them go.

A Little About Theory U

The New Century Summit at the Berkeley UU Church this weekend used the principles of Theory U, which was refined by Otto Scharmer, a senior lecturer at MIT. He collaborated on a book about the process (with Peter Senge, Betty Sue Flowers and Joseph Jaworski) called Presence. It is a leadership model with a difference.

Scharmer has observed four different types of listening: downloading, factual listening, empathic listening and generative listening. You know you're downloading when you say, "Yeah, I know that already." With factual listening, you might say, "Ooh, look at that." You switch off your inner voice of judgment and focus on what is different from what you already know. Empathic listeners might say, "Oh, yes, I know exactly how you feel." It requires an open heart to really feel how another feels. We can begin to see the world through the other's eyes. And generative listening is listening from the emerging field of future possibility. "I can't express what I experience in words. Everything slows down. I am connected to something larger than myself."

Another way to say it is that to listen in this new way, we need to 1) observe, observe, observe; 2) retreat and reflect -- allow our inner knowing to emerge; and 3) act in an instant. (This means to prototype the new in order to explore the future by doing, to create a little landing strip of the future that allows for hands-on testing and experimentation.)

Scharmer says that connecting to one's best future possibility and creating powerful breakthrough ideas requires learning to access the intelligence of the heart and the hand -- not just the intelligence of the head.

Happy Birthday, Javier

Another birthday for Javier. Because we are going to be in Berkeley for a church conference, we will get to celebrate together on his birthday. This is a man who deserves a cake not just on his birthday. He deserves a cake a week because of the quiet good he brings to the world. He has helped repair, restore and create gardens for two of my friends who needed a healing touch. He has been a supportive and loving partner to my daughter, walking her dogs, supporting her dreams, driving her to Best Friends Sanctuary in Utah, learning to cook for her. He is a man of few words but when he talks, you listen. He is there for the ones he loves.

Happy Birthday, Javier!

Keokuk Haiku

Skates slide over pond
Goldfish glide under the ice
We meet in between

Olympia Brown Opened Doors for Women

My MIT list (Most Important Tasks) is topped today by: Prepare for Olympia Brown talk. She is a woman I had not heard of until I joined the Sierra Foothills Unitarian Universalists in Auburn. I had visited Unitarian churches over the years but judged them to be too intellectual for my tastes. I stumbled onto this church almost by accident and from the beginning I have been connected with both my head and my heart. We adhere to no creeds but there are seven principles we affirm and promote. The two that speak to me the most are: the inherent worth and dignity of every person and respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

We have a part-time minister so we have guest speakers and members of the community present sermons twice a month. In February, John & I will be offering an imagined interview between Bill Moyers and Olympia Brown. She was one of the first women ministers, ordained in 1863. She also became a voice of the women's suffrage movement, speaking often with Susan B. Anthony. Her devotion to her ministry kept her from being one of the most well-known women's rights workers. On Nov. 2, 1920, Olympia Brown, at the age of 85, was among the first women to cast a ballot, after fighting for that right for 60 years. She was an amazing woman who opened many doors for women because she refused to give up.

Here are some words from her final sermon, delivered just before she was able to vote for the first time.

The opening doors lead to no dark dungeons, open upon no burning lake, give no evidence of everlasting punishment. But all gladden us with assurances of Divine Goodness and indicate the final triumph of the good ... Not only by the researches of science are we shown the glories of creation but the scenes of beauty which daily greet our eyes, the song of birds, fragrance of flowers, the moonlight shining on the waves all tell the same story of divine love.