This is a great explanation for the project I am working on right now… Looking at the reality that systems are living organisms and operate like living organisms. What can we thus learn from what we already know makes an organism healthy and vibrant? How can we apply that knowledge towards social organizing, action and innovation?

Risk-taking and Creativity

“Fostering risk-taking and creativity in children can ensure that they learn the basics of economics and independence—and develop a mentality of innovation.”

How do you foster risk-taking and creativity in your own life and/or in the lives of children or other adults? Please share.

A couple of organizations focusing on entrepreneurship with youth referenced in this article:

Rediscovering My Voice

I’ve lost my rhythm for writing.
Where did it go?

The multitiude of ideas, concepts, observations and experiences in my life begin to stack up. One on top of another. Time and energy begin to feel scarce as the possibilities of their use lie before me. How to not only synthesize for myself but to stop and bring stillness so that coherent language might shape its way around the abstract and birth forth a form that can be held by another? That I can hold myself?

How to stop and bring stillness?

What voice do I want to use? This weblog has been through so many incarnations. Depository of interesting nibbles in the web world; journal of self-expression and exploration; synthesizing tool for weaving together perspectives from different conversations and disparate reading materials. What now? How can it serve me and my current development? What value might my words upon thoughts upon images upon expression have to share beyond the confines of my swimming brain and bulging heart?

And how do I organize all the content. When I started writing publicly in November of 2003 there weren’t so many options for organizing and categorizing and purposizing my wanderings. There are now. Which I value and appreciate…. and have yet to discover my order for pages, categories, tags and topics.

Again I ask… what wants to emerge? How do the pages want to be filled?

And so the journey begins… again… re-turning… emerging… discovering… stepping into a voice that has something to say and is ready to speak. What music will get played? How will I be moved? Who will join me in this dance?

Stacked books photo by Wonderlane

Mimi dancing is my grandmother!

Sequoia Prayer

MY SEQUOIA PRAYER

When I feel tiny, weak and trembling
Or pulled this way and that by swirls of change,
Too insignificant to be of service,
Too “uprooted” to hold my ground,
.     I pray my Sequoia prayer.

Sitting quietly, breathing normally, becoming centered in the present moment–
in this holy instant —
My mind’s eye gradually forms an image of a giant Sequoia.
My Sequoia prayer takes form in my heart and soul
As the image forms and fleshes out to fill my being.

Centuries-old roots so wide and deep they have become part of the earth.
Supporting enormous, gnarled trunk that soars into the sky,
Eternity wrinkles carved into its surface, holding character markings for the ages,
Thick, porous bark skin covering the body, letting the trunk breathe,
protecting it from the fires that must come to support its growth.
Green leaves gushing out the top, reaching to the heavens,
Nurturing birds and other beings, offering up limbs as if in prayer.

Awareness of God fills my soul.
Sequoia image fills my being.

Spreading
.     Down into the Earth,
.     Deep into the Soul,
.     Strong into the body,

Breathing calmly. sitting quietly, praying trustingly, becoming
.     Grounded in humanity,
.     Rooted in God,
.     Striving ever upward,

My Sequoia prayer fills my cells, my lungs, my heart, my brain,
my soul, my being.

.     With love, grace and light.
.     With joy and hope.

.     With the strength of God I need to go on! Thank you, God!

Amen

~Dr. Monteen Lucas From Women’s Uncommon Prayers, an Episcopal Women’s Prayer Guide