midwifing change
we’re caught in a liminal space that’s colored more by the war of the worlds than the transition between them. what might it mean to consider the space of the threshold — hospicing the old and midwifing the new?
midwifing change
we’re caught in a liminal space that’s colored more by the war of the worlds than the transition between them. what might it mean to consider the space of the threshold — hospicing the old and midwifing the new?
Margaret Wheatley, the brains behind the Berkana model, spoke of four essential areas of work that are needed to sustain an emerging paradigm: naming, connecting, nourishing and illuminating elements of the emerging patterns. These are how we are beginning to understand our role in this work: seeing ourselves as gardeners, or midwives, working to
... See moreWhen we mourn the extreme levels of suffering in the world together as a community, we can be held and hold others as we each go through our own personal cycles of grief, or what the Germans refer to as Weltschmerz (a deep sadness about the imperfection of the world). Such communal solidarity can get us through our darkest moments and ensure we
... See moreOld attitudes and ideas simply aren’t adequate to help us navigate what lies ahead. And pervasive gloom about the future risks being self-fulfilling.
The problem (or at least one of the problems) is that the twin edicts to simultaneously optimize your team and life and to be flexible in light of an uncertain future are in opposition to each other. Optimization presumes a kind of certainty about the circumstances one is optimizing for, but that certainty is, more often than not, illusory.
In these times of transitions, of systems shifts, of collapse and erosion, of unravelling - of so much no longer making sense, or seeming to work - we think that the shape of tomorrow will be in part determined by the richness and health of the compost from which seeds of the future grow. This means paying as much attention to endings as we do to
... See more*“Despite current ads and slogans, the world doesn’t change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships form among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what’s possible.
This is good news for those of us intent on changing the world and creating a positive future. Rather than worry about critical mass, our
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