Loving The World

As we come to the end of another year, another decade, we naturally tend to reflect on the past, and look for hope for the future. Looking back at the past year and decade, it reveals much opportunity for growth in our world – we have to find better ways to get along with the people we share our planet with then going to war with them, we have to find better ways to share our material wealth, we have find ways to coexist with the ecosystems that sustain us, we need to find ways to scale back our obsession with possession and live more simply, more sustainably.

In his 1970 essay “The Servant As Leader” Robert Greenleaf pointed out that “the only way to change a society (or just make it go) is to produce people, enough people, who will change it (or make it go). The urgent problems of our day – a senseless war, destruction of the environment, poverty, alienation, discrimination, overpopulation – are here because of human failure, individual failures, one person, one action at a time failures. (…). We will recover from this by growing people, one person at a time, people who have the goals, competence, values, and spirit to turn us about. (…). But at the base it will be one person and one action at a time because there isn’t anything else to work with.” (Page 72, THE SERVANT LEADER WITHIN).

Things haven’t changed much in the forty years since Greenleaf first wrote that essay, and his suggested solution to the problems of his day is also the solution to the problems that remain and have grown with us today – we as individuals need to take our individual actions to get the ball rolling. In his parable “Teacher As Servant”, Greenleaf pointed out what I believe is a key factor for individuals to grasp if they have any hope of being successful in taking the actions that are needed to turn our society towards a better path: “I can only urge that you ponder those wonderful lines from Hermann Hess (but I cannot tell you where they are in his writing): ‘It is only important to love the world,’ he said, ‘… to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration, and respect.’” (Page 138, THE SERVANT LEADER WITHIN)

And so as our world completes another circuit around our Sun, I would encourage you to reflect on the question and some other thoughts posed by Margaret Wheatley in her book TURNING TO ONE ANOTHER, that can lead us towards becoming more loving toward our world, so that we can take actions to become more loving towards our society.

“What is the relationship I want with the earth? Other species don’t have the same challenge as we humans. They participate with their environment, they watch, they react. We humans, in contrast, dream, plan, figure things out. Because we have consciousness, we create our own set of rules rather then submitting to the laws of nature that govern all life. We use consciousness to try and bend the world to our own purposes.”

“There’s a principle in ecology that nature always has the last word. And that’s what’s happening now. We believe waste could just accumulate, but polluted air and poisoned water are teaching us this is not true. We believed we could grow as large as we dreamed, but the ungovernable nature of huge organizations and the devastated lives of those in mega-cities are teaching us this is not true. We’ve invested in science to manufacture life to suit ourselves, hoping we might even overcome death, but frightening pandemics and new diseases are teaching us that we live in a web of interconnectedness, and that death is a part of life.”

“We need to learn how to be good neighbors. I believe the easiest way to become partners with life is to get outside, to be in nature and let her teach us. About half of us no longer have this option. Half the world’s population live in large cities, breathing polluted air, unable to see the stars, never knowing peace or quiet. I grieve for those of us who cannot know the feel of wild places, the sound of the small stream, the shade of a grove of trees. But for those of us who still have nature available to us, it is even more important that we get outside. We need to experience the power and beauty of life on behalf of all humans who no longer can do this themselves.”

“If we can do these things, we will fall in love with life again. We will become serious about sustaining life rather than destroying it.”

“We have to take care of everything, because it’s all part of the same thing.”

Love

There seems to be a lot of talk about love during the holiday season. Typically I would think that would be a good thing, but it seems that there is much lacking in this talk.

One example of love is portrayed in a commercial that is getting much airtime this holiday season. The commercial casts a series of couples in various scenarios telling their partners “I love you”. The last and most dramatic example is of a man and a woman walking down a nighttime street. The man pulls out a small package from his pocket, dramatically presents the gift to the woman, and then tells her “I love you”. The ad concludes with images of diamond jewelry with a voice reminding viewers “This Holiday, say ‘I love you’ like never before.” Love here means you are willing to buy someone an expensive gift, which I think has been tried many times before.

I came across another definition of love on the sign in front of a church that said,
“Love: putting someone else’s best before your own”. At first glance this definition seems more meaningful then the first, but on further reflection I had some issues with it. This version of love requires that you give up yourself for someone else. It means you cannot be true to yourself, but must be true to someone else. I do not believe that achieving my best is the result of someone else’s efforts, but my own. Others can help me, but unless I strive for it, it is not going to happen. This type of love tends to elevate us above others, in that it assumes they are not capable of achieving their best, except through us. I don’t have issues with helping someone out, but if it means I have to give up myself, then I don’t think that is in anyone’s best interest.

I heard the third definition while listening to the Death Cab For Cutie song “What Sara Said” , which was “Love is watching someone die.” This definition seemed to hit on a deeper meaning of love, but as I thought about it I wondered, so all I have to do is wait for someone to be on their death bed and then show up and watch them die. So where was I the rest of their life? Being present to someone’s struggles certainly can be about love, but there seems like there should be more to it then just that.

So what does Robert Greenleaf have to say about love? In his essay that started the servant leadership phenomenon, “The Servant As Leader”, he wrote:

Love is an undefinable term, and its manifestations are both subtle and infinite. But it begins, I believe, with one absolute condition: unlimited liability! As soon as one’s liability for another is qualified to any degree, love is diminished by that much.

Institutions, as we know them, are designed to limit liability for those who serve through them. (…). Most of the goods and services we now depend on will probably continue to be furnished by such limited liability institutions. But any human service where the one who is served should be loved in the process requires community, a face-to-face group in which the liability of each for the other and all for one is unlimited, or as close to it as possible to get. Trust and respect are highest in this circumstance, and an accepted ethic that gives strength to all is reinforced. (…). Living in community as one’s basic involvement will generate an exportable surplus of love that we may carry into our many involvements with institutions that are usually not communities: businesses, churches, governments, schools.

Without trust, respect, and acceptance – no gift, giving up of self, or watching someone die – can substitute for being in community, for being in love.

No Impact Man

Colin Beavan wrote a book about his one year experiment in trying to be “No Impact Man”. The book highlights his attempts at living a more sustainable life by attempting to avoid the production of waste, avoid motorized forms of transportation, eating locally produced foods, minimize energy consumption, along with some other interesting efforts.

During the year, he came to some insights about our society that relate to my last post on sustainability and how it relates to being a servant-leader. What follows is an excerpt that points out the need for a servant leadership type philosophy in our institutions to be implemented by us.

On the street, people tell jokes. They say excuse me if they bump into each other. They help each other. Our institutions don’t reflect our human kindness. We allow our corporations to focus only on profits. We allow political institutions to focus mostly on reelection. We must insist that our institutions reflect the full truth of the humanity they are supposed to serve. We must, in our roles within those institutions act the same way we would act when we find an old person crossing the street.

As individuals – as product designers and accountants and CEOs, for example – we all make crucial decisions that affect the world. We cannot wait for the system to change. We individuals are the system.

We need to pick a new model of engaged citizenship and realize the way that we live affects everyone around us. We need to find new ways to take up and assert our responsibility. We need to take “participatory democracy” to a new level, where we don’t just vote for the leaders who will bring us the culture we want, but where we take responsibility for making the culture ourselves.

And what we get in return is the feeling of a life fully lived, in a world where we are not victims of the system but leaders of it. Where we choose instead of inherit. Where we stride purposefully instead of sleepwalk. Where we are the true masters of our destiny.

Visit the No Impact Man Blog for more on Mr. Beavan’s insights.

Sustainability in our lives and our institutions is essential to becoming the masters of our destiny.

Sustainable

In my last post, I asked the question -- what kind of sustainable world do you want to live in? I got a couple of comments in regards to that post that I thought I would expand on. The first comment was in regards to what does it mean to be sustainable. The second commenter suggested that the Bible has guidelines on how to live sustainably. Both responders raised some good questions and suggestions.

Regarding the Definition of a sustainable community, I like an explanation that can be found at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency website. Some highlights from it follow:

A sustainable community can persist over generations, enjoying a healthy environment, prosperous economy and vibrant civic life. It does not undermine its social or physical systems of support. Rather, it develops in harmony with the ecological patterns it thrives in.
A sustainable community is one that:

• Acknowledges that economic, environmental and social issues are interrelated and that these issues should be addressed "holistically."
• Recognizes the sensitive interface between the natural and built environments.
• Understands and begins to shift away from polluting and wasteful practices.
• Considers the full environmental, economic and social impacts/costs of development and community operations.
• Understands its natural, cultural, historical and human assets and resources and acts to protect and enhance them.
• Fosters multi-stakeholder collaboration and citizen participation.
• Promotes resource conservation and pollution prevention.
• Focuses on improving community health and quality of life.
• Acts to create value-added products and services in the local economy.

And regarding use of the Bible as an answer to what is sustainable, I would advise extreme caution. Many acts that are not at all in line with the concept of sustainability described above have been and are committed based on Biblical teachings.

One obvious example as quoted from the King James version of the Bible:

Genesis 1:27-28. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Thomas Berry has written much about the negative impact biblical teachings have had on the earth in his books. A few excerpts follow.

While none of our Christian beliefs individually is adequate as an explanation of the alienation we experience in our natural setting, they do in their totality provide a basis for understanding how so much planetary destruction has been possible in our Western Tradition. We are radically oriented away from the natural world. It has not rights; it exists for human utility, even if for spiritual utility. Because our sense of the divine is so extensively derived from verbal sources, mostly through the biblical scriptures, we seldom notice how extensively we have lost contact with the revelation of the divine in nature. (THE DREAM OF THE EARTH, Page 81.).

To alter this primordial sense of continuity throughout the universe seems to have been the basic purpose of biblical revelation. Within the biblical context, the continuity of divine presence with the natural world was altered by establishing the divine as a transcendent personality creating a world entirely distinct from itself. […] These discontinuities became exaggerated over the centuries, especially through emphasis on the personal redemptive experience communicated to the human , not a redemption out of our autistic status into a more abundant life of intimacy with the Earthly community, but redemption of an elect people into a trans-Earthly divine kingdom. Our true home, our true community, was not in this world. (EVENING THOUGHTS, Page 51)

So, based on the above, and assuming our future does involve spending time in this world, what would your sustainable future look like, particularly in regards to how we treat the rest of the world?

Vision Questions - Home

I wanted to follow-up on my recent post titled “Visions” . I plan to post a series of questions based on Donella Meadows essay “Envisioning a Sustainable World” in the coming days. I put the questions together to use as a guide for a small group of folks I meet with to help us develop a personal vision for our future. I thought they might be useful for leaders to use to help develop your own sense of what you would like the future to be.

The questions delve into how you see your future -- Home, Community, Work, Nation, and Worldview. Use them to help answer the question “What kind of sustainable world do you WANT to live in?” Don’t get hung up on how you would make it happen or constraints of our present world that get in the way of your vision of the world. Don’t worry about what others may think about your vision; it’s your vision so dream big. Skip questions/topics that aren’t relevant, add those that might be missing, and skip around – there is no order to how to build your dream.

I would appreciate any suggestions you have or insights you would be willing to share on your own vision.

YOUR HOME

What do YOU want for yourself; your children, grandchildren, parents, grandparents, neighbors?

What would your home be like in a sustainable world?

What do you need to thrive – what would your clothing needs be, hobbies, education, what “stuff” would you need?

What would it feel like to wake up in the morning?

Who else would live there; how would it feel to be with them?

Where would energy, food, water, and other goods come from?

What kinds of wastes would be generated and where would they go?

When you look out the window or step out the door, what would it look like, if it looked the way you really want?

Who else lives near you (human and non-human)? How do you all interrelate?

Principles of Spiritual Leadership

Principles of Spiritual Leadership

Condensed version of an adaptation of a presentation given by Will Keepin at Schumacher College, Totnes, England, July 17, 1997

1. Motivation transformed from anger and despair to compassion and love. We seek to work for love, rather than against evil. The Dalai Lama says, "A positive future can never emerge from the mind of anger and despair."

2. Non-attachment to outcome. To the extent that we are attached to the results of our work, we rise and fall with our success and failures, which is a path to burnout. Failures are inevitable, and successes are not the deepest purpose of our work.

3. Integrity is your protection. The idea here is that if your work has integrity, that will tend to protect you from negative circumstances.

4. Unified integrity in both means and ends. Integrity in means cultivates integrity in the fruit of one's work; you cannot achieve a noble goal using ignoble means. The end does not justify the means.

5. Don't demonize your adversaries. People respond to arrogance with their own arrogance, which leads to polarization. The ideal is to constantly entertain alternative points of view so that you move from arrogance to inquiry, and you then have no need to demonize your opponents.

6. Love thy enemy. Or if you can't do that, at least have compassion for them. This means moving from an 'us-them' consciousness to a 'we' consciousness. The 'them' that we talk about is also us.

7. Your work is for the world rather than for you. We serve on behalf of others and not for our own satisfaction or benefit. We're sowing seeds for a cherished vision to become a future reality, and our fulfilment comes from the privilege of being able to do this work.

8. Selfless service is a myth. In truly serving others, we are also served. In giving we receive. This is important to recognize, so we don't fall into the trap of pretentious service to others' needs and develop a false sense of selflessness or martyrdom.

9. Do not insulate yourself from the pain of the world. We must allow our hearts to be broken-broken open-by the pain of the world. As that happens, as we let that pain in, we become the vehicles for transformation. If we block the pain, we are actually preventing our own participation in the world's attempt to heal itself.

10. What you attend to, you become. If you constantly attend to battles, you become embattled. On the other hand, if you constantly give love, you become loving. We must choose wisely what we attend to, because it shapes and defines us deeply.

11. Rely on faith. Cultivate a deep trust in the unknown, recognizing the presence of "higher" or "divine" forces at work that we can trust completely without knowing their precise agendas or workings. It means invoking something beyond the traditional scientific world view.

12. Love creates the form. The mind gives rise to the apparent fragmentation of the world, while the heart can operate at depths unknown to the mind. When we bring the fullness of our humanity to our leadership, we can be far more effective in creating the future we want.

In closing, as we enter the third millennium, we are urgently called to action in two distinct capacities: to serve as hospice workers to a dying culture, and to serve as midwives to an emerging culture. These two tasks are required simultaneously; they call upon us to move through the world with an open heart-meaning we are present for the grief and the pain-as we experiment with new visions and forms for the future. Both are needed. The key is to root our actions in both intelligence and compassion-a balance of head and heart that combines the finest human qualities in our leadership for cultural transformation.

Vision.

Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Proverbs 29:18 as quoted in SEEKER AND SERVANT by Robert Greenleaf

I have been able to attend a number of conferences recently where the major topic has been the state of the world around us, particularly the natural state of the world. If you have looked at this state lately, it is not a good one. The consequences of a warming planet pose serious threats, our water is polluted and in many areas scarce, and the quality of our air makes it dangerous to breath at times, and our world if filling up with more and more people.

I have gone to these conferences hoping to find some good news, some hope for the future, but instead I only learn more about the details of how badly we our treating our planet. The only hope I heard was that our technology would solve our problems -- that we could all install low flow toilets, or use energy more efficiently via such technological advances as the compact fluorescent light bulb, or that we could all drive hybrid cars. Unfortunately, I believe it will take much more than simply buying new fangled merchandise to clean up our mess.

What I finally realized that what was missing from these talks was a hopeful vision for our future. There seemed to be little if any talk or description for what our world could look like if we decided to treat it with respect, instead of treating it like a limitless garbage dump. We need vision. When I mistakenly shared my disappointment with my wife about the lack of vision in the speakers, she reminded me that perhaps it was me who needed a vision.

The dictionary defines vision in several ways: “something seen in a dream, trance, or ecstasy; and object of imagination; a manifestation to the senses of something immaterial” to name a few of the more unflattering definitions. It might be the focus on that fantasy quality or the un-achievable of the vision that has resulted in our being a very blind society when it comes to describing a future we would like to inhabit.

At least that has been my experience lately as I view the world through my own cynical eyes. So after moping around for several weeks, I came across a presentation by Donella Meadows titled ENVISIONING A SUSTAINABLE WORLD . Her discussion on what keeps us from being a visionary and how to overcome is a worthwhile read.

Greenleaf asks in his essay “Towards a Gentle Revolution”, “Far too many of our institutions – and of course, far too many people – are failing to serve at a level that is reasonable and possible for them. If the main reason for this deficiency in both people and institutions is, as I believe, that they are not inspired by a sufficient vision of greatness, then what is the remedy?”

It seems our task for the short-term future is to begin work on coming up with our own vision for the future.