Courage | Curiosity | Creativity
Notes and Musings from Dr Judy Brown and guests writers circling the topics of leadership, stewardship, poetry, creativity, diversity, dialogue and appreciative inquiry and renewal.
Dear One and All,
Here are three poems, often mentioned, or quoted during our time together at Bread for The Journey, Kirkridge. And then a couple of my own that emerged at Kirkridge—that I shared with some folks in small groups, and that I wanted to share with everyone. (Head's Up, we plan to offer this program again in 2014-15.)
Read MoreA few months back, we got an oblong box in the mail. Out of the blue. Unexpected. Heavy. Curious, I opened it very carefully. It was a tomahawk. Beautiful. Very sharp. Full sized. Weighty. Later, on reflection, I was glad I had opened the box very carefully, on the end with the handle, not the blade.
Read MoreFeatured as today's poem on Panhala daily poetry posting. I'd like to share it with you as well., in honor of my brother, David. And perhaps you'll be moved to sign up for the daily poetry post yourselves. To sign up for the poetry from Panhala, send a blank email to: Panhala-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Wooden Boats
I have a brother who builds wooden boats,
Who knows precisely how a board
Can bend or turn, steamed just exactly
Soft enough so he, with help of friends,
Can shape it to the hull.
The knowledge lies as much
Within his sure hands on the plane
As in his head;
It lies in love of wood and grain,
A rough hand resting on the satin
Of the finished deck.
Is there within us each
Such artistry forgotten
In the cruder tasks
The world requires of us,
The faster modern work
That we have
Turned our life to do?
Could we return to more of craft
Within our lives,
And feel the way the grain of wood runs true,
By letting our hands linger
On the product of our artistry?
Could we recall what we have known
But have forgotten,
The gifts within ourselves,
Each other too,
And thus transform a world
As he and friends do,
Shaping steaming oak boards
Upon the hulls of wooden boats?
~ Judy Brown ~
(The Sea Accepts All Rivers & Other Poems)
This last week a group of twenty-five of us met for the third and final week together in our leadership program. As has been our tradition, we began and ended our gathering with a check-in/check-out process, what we have begun to call a "fire circle". Round-robin, one at a time, we listen to each others musings, and reflections on what is most on our hearts and minds.
Read MoreWe just returned from a remarkable conversation, my White House Fellows classmates and I, with President and Mrs Carter. (This would qualify as not a typical Friday!) Somehow the last lines of this poem speak of how those two remarkable people, now in their 80's, have served the world since leaving office. And the words of the two fortune cookies in the poem also serve as encouragement to every one of us in our own life. To move forward with energy and hope.
Read MoreRecently I was co-facilitating a weekend retreat at Pendle Hill on the theme of The Undivided Life. My co-facilitator, Carol Kortsch had brought along a collection of natural materials from woods and garden—items that are beautiful even in the winter, simple, natural. Rocks. Branches. A turtle shell (her favorite). And a complex twist of roots and twigs bleached out into a single piece of driftwood. That was my favorite.
Read MoreI’ve made a commitment to travel lighter these days. Take with me only what I will really use. Still my suitcase is often heavier than it needs to be. Which means on most trips, I have to check a bag. Which is what put me at baggage claim at the Sacramento Airport last month. Gawking at a remarkable piece of public art: An enormous pillar of baggage.
Read MoreAs a group of us are looking forward to a gathering in April focused on the renewing power of poetry, I’ve begun to think about how poetry has found its way into my life, and why it has turned out to be so handy, so practical, so useful. As a practical, native Michigander from a farming family, poetry has often been far from my mind. In fact, when a wonderful mentor of mine, John Gardner read my book
The Choiceand said it was a fine policy book on end of life decision-making, but that I was a poet and my poetry should be published, I remember being dismayed at the idea.
Read MoreSo many of my friends are in the midst of one transition or another, and in many ways, so am I, as I muse on how to set a healthy pace for this time in my life. As I ask friends (and strangers) how they see “the third thirty years” of life, I find myself drawn to images of openings, and closings—the picture of this gate, on the nearby property of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center is a favorite such image.
Read MoreThe reported excitement of children who were snowed out from attending school these last few days, reminded me that all of us need an occasional surprise time-out from the regular responsibilities and duties that we carry. A pocket-holiday akin to the tiny pocket-parks that have developed in cities. Tiny but hugely appreciated. Renewing.
Read MoreThe last note to friends was about PQ and CQ—passion quotient and curiosity quotient. The little furry caterpillar accompanying that note (he was on the table at lunch and I took his picture!) seemed to suggest nature’s version of curiosity. A living thing holding on to the edge of the table, still wiggling to see more, reaching further. Extending himself.
Read MoreThe January 30th NY Times had an intriguing article by Thomas Freidman suggesting that something called PQ and CQ could be more important than IQ in a world in which increasing numbers of folks have open and low-cost access to information, education, and news via I-phones, IPads, and I-everythings. (Not withstanding the observation you and I could make that people of struggle may not have the I-everythings to access all this abundant resource.)
Read MoreIf you have goats you will have goat problems.
Last year my friend Grace said in passing, when I was worrying out loud about something or other, "Well if you have goats, you will have goat problems." Not that I had goats, but she had spotted that I seemed to talk a lot about problems. Problems associated with various things in my life. My schedule. My travel. The ability to meet deadlines. And I was working very hard at problem solving about those things.
Read More
Dear Friends,
I’ve been thinking about these words:
That’s a chapter title in my book, The Art and Spirit of Leadership. And since almost always when I write something, I have learned that I am supposed to pay attention to it myself, I’ve been thinking about it.
I must admit that I don’t know where that title came from. One day it just popped into my mind. And it kept returning. As is my practice as a poet, I took note of it. I listened. And I continue to ask myself what it has to teach me. What it asks of me. What does make my heart sing? And what does that song ask of me?
Read MoreThe question of how to lead people through the uncertainties and fears of tough times has long fascinated me. It is an inquiry which I have carried across all sectors, many fields. So I particularly appreciate the invitation to share with leaders in the field of aging services, what seem to me to be a dozen critical leadership practices for such times.
Read MoreA friend tells me that when there are no words and still we know we must persist, we are in the presence of the transcendent. That is perfect territory for a poet, for whom words are at the heart of the matter, and yet for whom the act of writing is always, like following the tracks of a small animal in fresh snow, an effort to point toward the elusive, the paradoxical, the transcendent.
I ask you to join me in that process.
Read MoreJanuary 2, 2012
Dear One and All,
A few days back, my friend Mary Parish and I spent some quiet time together musing about what we might be sensing for ourselves, and for each other, in the year ahead. Not New Year’s resolutions, so much as a dissolving of the constraints of old ways of thinking, old expectations, old demands we place on ourselves.
Read More©Judy Sorum Brown 2012. Website designed by Lisa Brookfield
