Blog
Reflections by Walk Outs
Updates, Observations and Questions
Safety Nets of Learning
I found an incredible video of a young guy committed to climbing harder rock climbs without a rope – and yet wanting to stay safe as he learned. He innovated by learning over rivers, so that if he fell, he would fall into the water. Yet, in wanting to take his learning inland…he innovated and engineered a huge, highly responsive safety net that he precisely positioned under the climb! See http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/fringe-elements/a… This speaks to me of the spaces such as Axladitsa, the space we are seeking to create in Athens…and the temporary tent villages that rise and fall, based on need and right timing – to be the places where we can learn safely. As the caption says below the video…”the consequences of a free solo fall reverberate through families, friends, and the greater community. Which camp do you fall into? Can an act be both beautiful and foolish? […]
Wholeness of Economy
Yesterday I received a question from someone on a Ning network, who had clearly read my profile page and blog entries….“ Sarah…How are you systematically shifting your own financial system…or is that a question too far…?” To which I replied…”Fundamentally – thank you for asking…x” “Sarah…fundamentally is a big call, where do you start or where did you start…?” It got me thinking, that perhaps I needed to become conscious and harvest my learning journey to date. […]
Violence at Syntagma on 3 September 2011
Here is my harvest from Saturday, 3 September 2011 in Syntagma… * * * On 3 September, I witnessed such violence in Syntagma that it broke my heart open and now I am left wondering – wondering – what I am really meant to be doing with my life? There was a call for people to begin gathering again in Syntagma – to continue to show our resistance and say ‘not in our name’ – as well as continue to talk about what else we can do. We had spent the day with Anthi and Odysseas planning our work out for the Autumn (interesting dynamics there too) and then our plan was to go to the centre to see what was happening. Sarah, Stella, Anthi and I went. There were people – quite a few – but not like before the summer – and it was clear there are two main groupings – the top of Syntagma, right outside the Parliament Buildings and down in the square. The people in the centre were in the middle of the people’s council (that they have continued to do all through the summer) and the people at the top some were just hanging out and talking and others were chanting, etc. […]
All is not lost
On the face of it, its hard not to lose heart. Yet, in a sense, the situation here in Greece is getting more real – with the deeper layers of culture exposed through the events these past months. It has informed our conversations within our local field here and shown the nature of the real challenges ahead. So we, Anthi, Odysseas, Maria and I met these past weekend – sensing into the call for our work here – now. It is taking slow, deliberate effort and regular connection – both in person and virtually – exploring the edges of our own passions, trust, safety, fears – our own operating systems, practices, forms, blind spots, wounds. Also, and importantly, we are sharing knowledge of cultural nuance of place and people – as indigenous citizens and ‘others’ who now see this land as home. Perhaps we are prototyping the learning journey necessary to re-weave the fabric of a highly creative, powerfully influential, proud and relational people – now shamed and demanded to conform – and as a result, losing hope in themselves and their own abilities to re-balance their own lives – a wound that runs deep. […]
What might be possible today in Zimbabwe?
Recently, I went to the first TEDx Harare event. I had been asked to speak and said yes. A week before the event I still had no idea what I was going to speak on. Having been out of Zim for four years, and then returning earlier this year to a busy project in Harare, I was for some reason finding it incredibly difficult to return home and be clear as to what I wished to share. It turned out to be a difficult but also incredibly rich week of remembering my work and the songs of my heart. A week of long walks on the land. The TEDx event was an opportunity to finally land back home, and to reconnect to what is important to me, to what I believe in, and to what stirs my soul. […]
Fitting a Square Peg into a Round Hole
Recently, my friend Manish Jain asked me to write some reflections about the relationship between resilience and jugaad, a Hindi term for ingenuity, an invitation to the imagination to play and invent new solutions using whatever is right in front of you. It brought to mind for me a scene in the movie Apollo 13, when the NASA engineers realize that they have to construct a carbon dioxide filter using only materials available on the spacecraft—and that they’ve got a mismatch between, literally, a square peg and a round hole. They dump a mass of random material on the table, and the lead engineer says, “The people upstairs handed us this one and we gotta come through. We gotta find a way to make this [square cartridge] fit into the hole for this [round cartridge] using nothing but that [materials on the table].” […]
Search :
Most recent posts
Authors
