"Getting Well With Food and Nutrition" www.integrativemedicineconference.com
Trevor's work at making our meeting reach the world
Monday, June 16, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Goodbye to school
Well, my two years of learning have come to an end. I'm on to new projects, new patterns, new pathways of life. I will miss putting up my papers (except the boring ones on case studies etc). It is likely that this blog will now become nothing but a scrapbook, however, I may still put up ideas or conversations regarding business issues now and again. I'd like to conclude my school experience with a quote from my textbook The Strategy Process: Concepts, Contexts, Cases by Mintzberg, Lampel, Quinn and Ghoshal.
They quote from Eva Luna in Allende, 1989 pp. 187-188)
'I began to wonder whether anything truely existed, whether reality wasn't an unformed and gelatinous substance only half-captured by my senses... I was consoled by the idea that I could take the gelatin and mold it to create anything I wanted...a world of my own populated with living people, a world where I imposed the rules and could change them at will. In the motionless sands where my stories germinated, every birth, death, and happening depended on me. I could plant anything I wanted in those sands; I had only to speak the right word to give it life. At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of the imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.'
The modern word is 'vision', and its overtones of dreams are appropriate. Imaginations of the future are stronger and more lasting than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around us, and that power protects exploration from its enemies.
As Eva Luna reminds us, intellectual passions for reasoned intelligence and constrained imagination have never entirely extinguished a human aesthetic based on fantasy. A commitment to arbitraritly imagined worlds has elements of beauty in it... from this perspecitve, the occasional argument between those who imagine individual organizations as changing and enduring and those who imagine them as rigid and disposable is an argument not only about the truth, but also about the beauty and justice of possible fantasies of human existance, thus perhaps worth taking seriously." (pp. 470-471)
They quote from Eva Luna in Allende, 1989 pp. 187-188)
'I began to wonder whether anything truely existed, whether reality wasn't an unformed and gelatinous substance only half-captured by my senses... I was consoled by the idea that I could take the gelatin and mold it to create anything I wanted...a world of my own populated with living people, a world where I imposed the rules and could change them at will. In the motionless sands where my stories germinated, every birth, death, and happening depended on me. I could plant anything I wanted in those sands; I had only to speak the right word to give it life. At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of the imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.'
The modern word is 'vision', and its overtones of dreams are appropriate. Imaginations of the future are stronger and more lasting than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around us, and that power protects exploration from its enemies.
As Eva Luna reminds us, intellectual passions for reasoned intelligence and constrained imagination have never entirely extinguished a human aesthetic based on fantasy. A commitment to arbitraritly imagined worlds has elements of beauty in it... from this perspecitve, the occasional argument between those who imagine individual organizations as changing and enduring and those who imagine them as rigid and disposable is an argument not only about the truth, but also about the beauty and justice of possible fantasies of human existance, thus perhaps worth taking seriously." (pp. 470-471)
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Conversation with Chris Pervis at Common Grounds
Chris says she and Jack always liked the UCC organizations overseas. You make friends. If your friend is interested in your other friend Jesus, you introduce them. Then you stay the heck out of the way.
She regrets thinking that problems have to be solved. Some problems have to be lived with, she says.
Too may times she was the person who got stuff done, who solved the problems, but sometimes she didn't care who she ran over in the process.
She wonders who she hurt in the quest to solve.
Don't push people. Don't stomp on people to solve problems. What other people do to solve their own problems need be none of your concern.
Chris highly recommends the book Go to Africa, Save Your Marriage.
She regrets thinking that problems have to be solved. Some problems have to be lived with, she says.
Too may times she was the person who got stuff done, who solved the problems, but sometimes she didn't care who she ran over in the process.
She wonders who she hurt in the quest to solve.
Don't push people. Don't stomp on people to solve problems. What other people do to solve their own problems need be none of your concern.
Chris highly recommends the book Go to Africa, Save Your Marriage.
Conversation with Dick McGarrety and Morey's
why do we need to grow, Dick? what is all this nonsense about how if we don't grow, we lose, we die? -Wendy
and I paraphrase
Because growth maintains demographics. people die and are replaced, but they are replaced at a faster rate than they die. the world is growing, populations are growing, industry, growing at such a rate, that to stand still is to fall behind. there is contraction and expansion, but the expansion is going more ferociously.
But, Dick, there has to be an end. resources come to an end. projects come to an end. -Wendy
Yes, there is always an end. There are circles, ripples of expansion going out and eventually they touch the borders of other projects, competitors, new realities, and their expansion stops and eventually they disappear. the whole time there are ripples going both ways, in and out, yet the out reaches beyond the borders until the borders touch the end, the other borders.
what happens when we hit that "end" and shouldn't we be trying to predict it, even control it? what would happen if we choose it ahead of time and build our reality around the control of growth? maybe that would be more sustainable. -Wendy
You know, many people have tried to do that. its called utopia. people try to predict and control the future to create the best possible long term experience for future generations. what happens is you just can't always predict how people will want to live, will choose to live as time goes by. whenever you have people trying to make "the best" decisions for future people, there is usually trouble and disagreement. it has to be a more organic process.
and I paraphrase
Because growth maintains demographics. people die and are replaced, but they are replaced at a faster rate than they die. the world is growing, populations are growing, industry, growing at such a rate, that to stand still is to fall behind. there is contraction and expansion, but the expansion is going more ferociously.
But, Dick, there has to be an end. resources come to an end. projects come to an end. -Wendy
Yes, there is always an end. There are circles, ripples of expansion going out and eventually they touch the borders of other projects, competitors, new realities, and their expansion stops and eventually they disappear. the whole time there are ripples going both ways, in and out, yet the out reaches beyond the borders until the borders touch the end, the other borders.
what happens when we hit that "end" and shouldn't we be trying to predict it, even control it? what would happen if we choose it ahead of time and build our reality around the control of growth? maybe that would be more sustainable. -Wendy
You know, many people have tried to do that. its called utopia. people try to predict and control the future to create the best possible long term experience for future generations. what happens is you just can't always predict how people will want to live, will choose to live as time goes by. whenever you have people trying to make "the best" decisions for future people, there is usually trouble and disagreement. it has to be a more organic process.
STILLNESS AND SORBET
By Michael A. Halleen
"Be still, and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10)
Fine restaurants have the right idea. After each course, they serve a small sorbet, something to clear the palate. It is a timeout, a minute or two to let go slowly of what has been and to allow the tongue--and mind--to prepare for the pleasures to come. Too often we live at a fast food pace, moving from one experience to another without reflection, from one encounter to the next without clearing the head. Our lives need more sorbets.
It is in those in-between times that we can put things in perspective, reflect on what has occurred, let the flavors subside before moving on to the next course. I encourage my business clients to take time to celebrate, if only for a minute, a victory of the past week, congratulate one another and consider what contributed to that success, however small. We benefit from contemplating for a moment the conversation we have had before rushing ahead to the next call. And we gain something by allowing ourselves to acknowledge a mistake or missed opportunity, even to feel the pain of a loss, before plunging into the next minute of the day-or phase of life.
Some monastic orders, I am told, have a practice called statio. It means they stop one thing before beginning another. Rather than rush from one activity to the next, they pause and recognize this time between the times. It is an idea which I try to communicate to churches I serve as an interim minister. The gap between pastor leaders can be a beneficial time of reflection and refreshment for a congregation. The Psalm writer suggests that it is in pauses--stillness--that we recognize the reality of God's presence, both in what has passed and in what is yet to come.
The father of cellist Yo-Yo Ma lived in Paris during World War II, holed up alone in a garret during the years of German occupation. In order to restore sanity to his world, he practiced violin pieces by Bach during the day, and through the long night hours of blackout, he played them again in the dark from memory. His son Yo-Yo took up his father's advice to play a Bach suite from memory every night before going to bed. "It isn't practicing," he says, "it's contemplating. You're alone with your soul."
Sorbet...statio...Bach suite. Stop for a moment. Experience stillness. God is there.
"Be still, and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10)
Fine restaurants have the right idea. After each course, they serve a small sorbet, something to clear the palate. It is a timeout, a minute or two to let go slowly of what has been and to allow the tongue--and mind--to prepare for the pleasures to come. Too often we live at a fast food pace, moving from one experience to another without reflection, from one encounter to the next without clearing the head. Our lives need more sorbets.
It is in those in-between times that we can put things in perspective, reflect on what has occurred, let the flavors subside before moving on to the next course. I encourage my business clients to take time to celebrate, if only for a minute, a victory of the past week, congratulate one another and consider what contributed to that success, however small. We benefit from contemplating for a moment the conversation we have had before rushing ahead to the next call. And we gain something by allowing ourselves to acknowledge a mistake or missed opportunity, even to feel the pain of a loss, before plunging into the next minute of the day-or phase of life.
Some monastic orders, I am told, have a practice called statio. It means they stop one thing before beginning another. Rather than rush from one activity to the next, they pause and recognize this time between the times. It is an idea which I try to communicate to churches I serve as an interim minister. The gap between pastor leaders can be a beneficial time of reflection and refreshment for a congregation. The Psalm writer suggests that it is in pauses--stillness--that we recognize the reality of God's presence, both in what has passed and in what is yet to come.
The father of cellist Yo-Yo Ma lived in Paris during World War II, holed up alone in a garret during the years of German occupation. In order to restore sanity to his world, he practiced violin pieces by Bach during the day, and through the long night hours of blackout, he played them again in the dark from memory. His son Yo-Yo took up his father's advice to play a Bach suite from memory every night before going to bed. "It isn't practicing," he says, "it's contemplating. You're alone with your soul."
Sorbet...statio...Bach suite. Stop for a moment. Experience stillness. God is there.
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