Leading From Within: From Discernment to Action

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting27 July 2011

Leading From WithinPYM one book, one yearly meeting

What calls us?

What motivates and inspires us?

What to do when sometimes we ache?

How can we pay attention?

How can we lead together?

Context: Infinite Love

Leadership, like love, is relational.

In the late 1600s, William Penn established the colony of

Pennsylvania dedicated to the Quaker principles of:

religious toleration

participatory government

enduring love

from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “The Drum Major Instinct.”

If you want to be important – wonderful. If you want to be recognized – wonderful. If you want to be great – wonderful.

But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s your new definition of greatness… it means that everybody can be great. Because everybody can serve.

You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve…. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve….

You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

We cannot eliminate hunger, but we can feed each other.We cannot eliminate loneliness, but we can hold each other.We cannot eliminate pain, but we can live a life of compassion.

Ultimately, we are small living thingsawakened in the stream,not gods who carve out rivers.

Like human fish, we are asked to experience meaning in the life that moves through the gill of our heart.

There is nothing to do and nowhere to go. Accepting this, we can do everything and go anywhere.

[Mark Nepo, “Accepting This”

Listening with our hearts and minds

QUERIES:

What stands out to me in this poem - words, images?

What in this poem speaks to my own experience, to my life now?

The Neurobiology of “WE”

The 3 Gs of Leadership

G

Gratitude is the Ground

Within ourselves,

and in relationship with our ground

of being,

how do we discern, develop, and

take action?

Fork in the road:Gratitude or Grumpiness

In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.

– Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast

From Mary Oliver “What I Have Learned So Far”

… All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.

Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of – indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

Generosity opens the Path

Within our monthly meetings, within Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,

and in relationship with the Light in one another,

how do we discover leadership and support emerging leaders as we respond to the challenges and opportunities we face?

from George Fox 1656 cited in The Works of George Fox, 1831

Be patterns, be examples in all countries,

places, islands, nations wherever you come;

that your carriage and life may preach among

all sorts of people, and to them; then you will

come to walk cheerfully over the world,

answering that of God in everyone; whereby

in them you may be a blessing, and make the

witness of God in them to bless you.

John Wesley1703 – 1791, Christian theologian,

founder of the Methodist movement in England

Do all the good you can

By all the means you can

In all the ways you can

In all the places you can

To all the people you can

As long as ever you can.

From Marge Piercy “The Seven of Pentacles”

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.

Live a life you can endure: make love that is loving….

Live as if you like yourself, and it may happen:

Reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.

This how we are going to live for a long time….

Grace bears the fruit

Within the human community and collectively as the Religious Society of Friends,

and in relationship with the Source of all creation,

how do we provide spiritual leadership in our world for peace, justice and an earth restored?

How do we “make of ourselves a light?”

Through discerning the leadings from within the ground of our being and within our spirit-led community with patience, and gratitude.

By embarking on leadership action with kindness and generosity toward all others.

And, by knowing, resting in, renewing in the larger context of God’s grace and infinite love.

“The Avowal” by Denise Levertov

As swimmers dare to lie face to the sky

and water bears them,

as hawks rest upon air and air sustains them,

so would I learn to attain freefall, and float

into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,

knowing no effort earns

that all-surrounding grace.

From Reinhold Niebuhr‘s “The Irony of American History”

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;

therefore, we are saved by love.

From Gary Snyder’s“For the Children”

stay together

learn the flowers

go light.