In this issue:
The From the Four Directions Network now includes more than 1,600 people in more than 30 countries. We would love to have you join us in this work. There are many ways to be involved:
- make a financial donation to support this work in this time
- start a From the Four Directions circle
- participate in a circle
- tell your story of life-affirming leadership
- share your learning
- connect us to additional networks
- weave circles together
- join our listserve (for those who had this newsletter forwarded to them or who found it on our website)
- participate in other Berkana Institute initiatives
The From the Four Directions Newsletter is published monthly. We welcome your comments, suggestions, and stories. Visit http://www.fromthefourdirections.org/, email mailto:info@fromthefourdirections.org, or call us in the United States at 801 377 2996.
From the Four Directions is a global leadership initiative of the Berkana Institute. Through From the Four Directions, we:
- work around the globe to organize local conversation circles on life-affirming leadership
- weave these conversations into a global presence of people everywhere leading the way
For many people, From the Four Directions offers a natural entry point into the broader purpose of Berkana Institute (Berkana's new website will be available in early December).
At Berkana, our experience tells us:
1. The leaders we need are already here. We know that the world has an abundance of people (and communities) who are stepping forward to resolve problems and create a positive future. We define a leader as anyone who wants to help. Our task is to support them to be more effective, life-affirming leaders.
2. Local efforts, when connected, catalyze global change. As these connections strengthen, local efforts emerge into a global system with far more capacity and influence.
3. We must depend on diversity. Without diverse perceptions, we can't see enough of the whole.
4. Humans yearn for the same things. These common yearnings are the basis for our work.
5. Pioneering leaders feel isolated and alone. They are ignored or dismissed by their communities and organizations. Ending their isolation makes a huge difference. We work to develop leaders-in-community rather than leaders-in-isolation.
6. We rely on life's process of self-organization. Purpose and learning replace rigid structures and controls as the means to create well-ordered and sustainable systems.
7. The future is created from where we are now. Berkana promotes inquiry and learning in everything we do in order to discover solutions that restore hope to the future.
8. Pioneering leaders are eager to learn what works. When provided with these, they develop much greater ability and confidence.
9.
Connecting with the global family is joyful. This joy is available
even when people are dealing with tragic or horrific
conditions.
Leadership Story -- The Emergence of Circles in
Copenhagen
Carsten Ohm (on behalf of the Copenhagen Circle)
From the Four
Directions Circle
Host
Copenhagen, Denmark
The candle is
lit.
…gentle silence before check in….
It is soon to be two years since we had our first check-in at our circle in Copenhagen. Now our intention is to check-in with you and the rest of the international community.
So, "Who are we - today?"
A logbook of
stories, a moving centre, a catalyst for changes in our lives…?
For
sure a living organism that has brought us courage, wisdom and deeper
relations.
It all started with a candle, a gentle check-in and a few curious people. Some knowing each other. Nobody knowing everyone.
Looking back we all appreciate the circle as a place where we speak from a deeper place without a need to respond to each other with anything but our listening. That means speaking our truth, anxiety and dreams knowing that we shall not be judged but heard.
We put forth what we need and try to practise generosity. This has taken shape in many ways. A tangible example has been a full day of circle trainings that emerged in cooperation with our sister circle in another city. It not only deepened our circle practise, but also, allowed new people to enter the circle.
But who are
"we" you might ask. Well, among us you'll find young change agents,
retired leaders, entrepreneurs, business coaches, free agents and formal
leaders in traditional organisations. We have found that we treasure the
meeting of the younger and the older, the formal and the informal leaders.
It brings perspective and hope. It also helps us to learn more about
ourselves and others, as we meet as humans from different paths of life.
It feels a little overwhelming to be part of a global initiative like this, but it also brings hope.
Before we blow the candle out we would like to whisper to the centre, that we are starting a new circle in the next months. Our intention is to offer the hosting of the first conversations and then see what happens. We look forward to share more stories about this and listen to yours.
The candle is blowing in the wind - and so are new adventures and meaningful conversations. Happy conversations.
On Air,
The Universal Glue
From David Suzuki's book, The Sacred Balance;
Rediscovering Our Place in Nature (Greystone Books, 1997)
The eminant Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley once performed another thought exercise about air. He pointed out that while 99 per cent of the air we breathe is highly active oxygen and mildly reative nitrogen, about 1 per cent is made up of argon, an inert gas. Because it is inert, it is breathed in and out without becoming a part of our bodies or entering into metabolic transformations. Shapley calculated that each breath contains about 30,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 3.0 X 10 to the 19th power, atoms of argon plus quintillions of molecules of carbon dioxide.
Suppose you exhale a single breath and follow those argon atoms. Within minutes, they have diffused through the air far beyond the spot where they were released, travelling into the neighbourhood. After a year, those argon atoms have been mixed up in the atmosphere and spread around the planet in such a way that each breath you take includes 15 atoms of argon released in that one breath a year earlier! All people over the age of twenty have taken at least 100 million breaths and have inhaled argon atoms that were emitted in the first breath of every child born in the world a year before! According to Shapley:
Your next breath will contain more than 400,000 of the argon atoms that Ghandi breathed in his long life. Argon atoms are here from the conversations at the Last Supper, from the arguments of diplomats at Yalta, and from the recitations of classic poets. We have argon from the sighs and pledges of ancient lovers, from the battle cries at Waterloo, even from last year's argonic output by the writer of these lines, who personally has had already more than 300 million breathing experiences.
Air exits your nose to go right up your neighbour's nose. In everyday life we absorb atoms from the air that were once a part of birds and trees and snakes and worms, because all aerobic forms of life share that same air (aquatic life also exchanges gases that dissolve back and forth at the interface between air and water).
Air is a matrix that joins all life together. It is constantly changing as life and geophysical forces add and subtract constituents to the composition of air, and yet over vast stretches of time the basic composition of air has remained in dynamic equilibrium. The longer each of us lives, the greater the likelihood that we will absorb atoms that were once part of Joan of Arc and Jesus Christ, of Neanderthal people and woolly mammoths. As we have breathed in our forebears, so our grandchildren and their grandchildren will take us in with their breath. We are bound up inseparably with the past and the future by the spirit we share.
Every breath is a sacrament, an affirmation of our connection with all other living things, a renewal of our link with our ancestors and a contribution to generations yet to come. Our breath is part of life's breath, the ocean of air that envelopes Earth. Unique in the solar system, air is both the creator and the creation of life itself.