"Sperm in the air!" - What's in your imagination?

When Freud was heading to London in 1938 he asked another Viennese intellectual what it was like, "London? How can you even mention London and Vienna in the same breath?", Zweig thundered, "In Vienna there is sperm in the air!"

I am beginning to sense another season of growth, innovation and the challenge of change and spirit of adventure for our Open Hand community from our small corner of the known world - 32nd and Delaware Street in Indianapolis.

It never ceases to amaze me. Somehow passionate folks (from all over the globe) hookup with one another, on our front porch, over a pint and simple meal.

What begins with a gesture of hospitality, sprinkled with opportune timing, commingles with laid-back open inquiry. The next thing we know, our collective imaginations are impregnated with the seeds of potentially innovative collaborations.

C.S. Lewis identifies this expansive condition as a freshly 'baptized imagination'. Apparently we can have multiple conversions. I know I have.

If I have learned anything from this fruitful process over the past thirteen years of intentional community its this: you bettered have a valid passport in your pocket, faith the size of a mustard seed and the ability to say yes rather than no, to very unreasonable opportunities about to come your way.

Strands of our original DNA were first articulated by Ann at the conception of our Open Hand community of faith. She, with Janet's confirmation, spoke out a promise from God that the nations would come and go from these properties on 32nd Street.

Part of our calling to live intentionally with a focus on global hospitality, has been to pry open a fertile space for emerging cross-cultural connections, and to keep it open. As Parker Palmer reminds us, we can't guarantee anything will happen. Fruit of the imagination (or the womb) is primarily a gift to be received.

As I told a friend recently, Open Hand is in the middle of a 25 year process of discovery. When I occasionally get a birds eye view and peer over the horizon I see nothing but wonderful challenges and opportunities ahead.

At last weeks Curb Your Anxiety Friday, I witnessed once again the global miracle of life finding a way, announcing another pregnancy from among passionate people. Amen.

What's in your imagination?

O'

Our Fuzzy Universe - Enjoy the Challenge

Here are a few challenging quantum notions to ponder the next time you encounter the fuzzy nature of this universe we call home. I have been wrestling with much of the material in the book MIRACLES by C.S. Lewis over the past weeks and can't quite seem to come to grips with all that he is saying. So much hovers on the tip of my brain, only to be lost as soon as I try to recall it in any meaningful manner. One moment I get a basic insight and the next moment it vanishes just like that. So I decided to copy this section in Rhino Rumblings so I can glance back at it and maybe absorb bits and pieces every now and then. Hope you enjoy the challenge also....cheers, O'

"...it is probable that Nature is not really in Time and almost certain that God is not. Time is probably (like perspective) the mode of our perception. There is therefore in reality no question of God's at one point in time (the moment of creation) adapting the material history of the universe in advance to free acts which you or I are to perform at a later point in Time. To Him all the physical events and all the human acts are present in an eternal Now. The liberation of finite wills and the creation of the whole material history of the universe (related to the acts of those wills in all the necessary complexity) is to Him a single operation. In this sense God did not create the universe long ago but creates it at this minute - at every minute."

"When we are praying about the result, say, of a battle or a medical consultation, the thought will often cross our minds that (if only we knew it) the event is already decided one way or the other. I believe this to be no good reason for ceasing our prayers. The event certainly has been decided - in a sense it was decided "before all worlds." But one of the things taken into account in deciding it, and therefore one of the things that really cause it to happen, may be this very prayer that we are now offering. Thus, shocking as it may sound, I conclude that we can at noon become part causes of an event occurring at ten a.m. (Some scientists would find this easier than popular thought does.)"

"The imagination will, no doubt, try to play all sorts of tricks on us at this point. It will ask, "Then if I stop praying can God go back and alter what has already happened?" No. The event has already happened and one of its causes has been the fact that you are asking such questions instead of praying. It will ask, "Then if I begin to pray can God go back and alter what has already happened?" No. The event has already happened and one of its causes is your present prayer. Thus something does really depend on my choice. My free act contributes to the cosmic shape. That contribution is made in eternity or "before all worlds"; but my consciousness of contributing reaches me at a particular point in the time-series."

"The following question may be asked: If we can reasonably pray for an event which must in fact have happened or failed to happen several hours ago, why can we not pray for an event which we know not to have happened? e.g. pray for the safety of someone who, as we know, was killed yesterday. What makes the difference is precisely our knowledge. The known event states God's will. It is psychologically impossible to pray for what we know to be unobtainable; and if it were possible the prayer would sin against the duty of submission to God's known will."

(AT THIS POINT SOME READERS MIGHT WANT TO LOOK AT SCHROEDINGER'S CAT WHICH IS A CLASSIC THOUGHT PROBLEM IN QUANTUM PHYSICS. If I am not mistaken this sheds some light on the role that 'knowledge' plays in determining reality. But I may be wrong.)

"One more consequence remains to be drawn. It is never possible to prove empirically that a given, non-miraculous event was or was not an answer to prayer. Since it was non-miraculous the sceptic can always point to its natural causes and say, "Because of these it would have happened anyway," and the believer can always reply, "But because these were only links in a chain of events, hanging on other links, and the whole chain hanging upon God's will, they may have occurred because someone prayed. The efficacy of prayer, therefore, cannot be either asserted or denied without an exercise of the will - the will choosing or rejecting faith in the light of a whole philosophy."

"This impossibility of empirical proof is a spiritual necessity. A man who knew empirically that an event had been caused by his prayer would feel like a magician. His head would turn and his heart would be corrupted. The Christian is not to ask whether this or that event happened because of a prayer. He is rather to believe that all events without exception are answers to prayer in the sense that whether they are grantings or refusals the prayers of all concerned and their needs have all been taken into account. All prayers are heard, though not all prayers are granted."

"We must not picture destiny as a film unrolling for the most part on its own, but in which our prayers are sometimes allowed to insert additional items. On the contrary, what the film displays to us as it unrolls already contains the results of our prayers and of all our other acts. There is no question whether an event has happened because of your prayer. When the event you prayed for occurs your prayer has always contributed to it. When the opposite event occurs your prayer has never been ignored; it has been considered and refused, for your ultimate good and the good of the whole universe."("For example, because it is better for you and for everyone else in the long run that other people, including wicked ones, should exercise free will than that you should be protected from cruelty or treachery by turning the human race into automata.)

"But this is, and must remain, a matter of faith. You will, I think, only deceive yourself by trying to find special evidence for it in some cases more than in others."

C.S. Lewis MIRACLES

AMERICA

Between 1499 and 1502, Italian banker Amerigo Vespucci sailed further south than those before him and he discovers the Amazon river. He writes up his travels and because he includes lurid details of exotic sexual practices to spice his adventures, his travelogues sell like wildfire. They make his name well known, and as a result Amerigo has half the world named after him.

Rabbi Ed Friedman A FAILURE OF NERVE - LEADERSHIP IN THE AGE OF THE QUICK FIX

12 October 1492

"I went to sea at an early age, and there I have continued to this day; the same art inclines those who follow it to wish to know the secrets of this world....I have sailed everywhere that is navigable...Our Lord found this my desire very proper....He opened my understanding with his hand, so that I became capable of sailing from here to the Indies, and He set fire to my will to carry this out, and with this fire I came to your Highnesses." Columbus to the King and Queen of Spain

Open Hand welcomes Carson R. Crane 09/09/09

Carson Robert is the newest member of our Open Hand international community. He is a robust little guy ready to challenge Hugo, Simeon, Jordan and all the other kids. Well done Jeff and Leah.

I Dare You

The word 'risk' derives from the early Italian risicare, which roughly means "to challenge or dare", and in this sense, risk is a choice rather than a fate.

The actions we dare to take, which ultimately depend on how free we are to make choices, really define what it means to be a human being.

As always, I challenge you!!!! Let it rip, risk it all....

I dare you,
O'
Again and again and again.....Amen!

"Mid-brain Crisis"

I have noticed over the past few years that several of us middle age folks have experienced what I would call a 'mid-brain' crisis as opposed to the more common garden variety 'mid-life crisis'.

Modern science shows us that the body-mind connection is very powerful and active, especially in the middle age of human life. Jung called this crisis "an updraft from the unconscious" seeking some type of resolution in what he called the 3rd stage of life. Something stirs (growls) and we become irrationally motivated by the hidden mid-brain to seek a resolution to the mysteries that make us each unique. For some unknown reason these unresolved and hidden hauntings and abrasions that are uniquely part of our biology find a way to work themselves upward into our conscious awareness via the cortex. But then what?

Following quickly comes the pain, the infection, the discomfort, the crisis. I guess we are naturally wired as human beings to finally process (or not) this extreme body ache that accompanies our deep remembering (awakening). This invisible gravitational field that pulls us into unexpected and often unplanned orbits is not to be denied and you can see it in the very biology (body language) of the one so moved. It's as if the mid-brain is locked and loaded. I suppose its kind of like when an object in space gets too close to a gravitational force field and is sucked into a different orbit. There is no turning back.

Anyway, I don't know what I am talking about, but Jung did. The good news is that many of us don't deny the force field, but cooperate and go along for the ride, not knowing where it is taking us. We allow the neo-cortex (and our creative imaginations) to calm, collect and soothe the mid-brain during this jarring journey. The danger for some of us is that we impatiently get side-tracked into a mindlesss 'mid-life crisis' and allow the primitive brain to simply run wild like a naked two year old at the beach.

When we give ourselves and others permission to ride the currents of this updraft, the end result is often that we come home a changed person, more at peace, healed (somewhat), challenged (a lot), resurrected (unconscious brought to consciousness), and ready for life's next adventures.

The Chinese pictures for 'crisis' are two symbols - the first is the one for 'danger' and the second is one for 'opportunity'. Combined they tell the story of a person having a measured response (powerful words) to life's challenges and emerging from a cocoon environment to a rebirth. Amen!

I say well done to those who have been through this 'mid-brain crisis'. Nothing get easier in life, just our ability to be more fully present and accounted for. We may lose weight (and sleep) on this challenging journey, but actually become heavier. Space travel through strong gravitational fields has a way of adding mass while re-arranging our chemistry. We will never be the same......

Enjoy the Challenge,
O'

Dealing With Your Shadow

'Beware of the saint who is not aware of his dark side, for it will emerge in direct proportion to his good deeds.....
C. Fleetham quoting from Carl Jung

'If everything on earth was rational, nothing would ever happen.'
Fyodor Dostoevsky


Dealing with your Shadow:

1. identify the most common elements of your shadow (listen to others and the more defensive you are about them, the more likely you have surfaced your shadow)
2. find a friend who can speak into your life and tell you the truth about yourself - who can tell you when you are not wearing any clothes....warning - don't chop of their head
3. whenever you start to consistently blame a 'them' for your problems, you can be pretty sure that your shadow has trapped you
4. avoid all efforts to achieve perfection - especially managers - be purposefully inefficient, be consciously chaotic, creatively rebellious....
5. be a champion of the parts of the organization that you tend to shun.....

Resurrection and the Healing Imagination

Imagination - lives and shapes our persons, making objective reality alive and interesting to us because or our imaginings about it...still for all that, we know that our pictures of God, personal or traditional, do not equate with God - the unfathomable mystery of deity abides....

Religious imagination - though we honor the different primordial lenses through which the invisible becomes visible in different ways to different people, we can't say it does not matter which lens we use, that all these pictures are relative to person or group or context, that one will serve as well as another...

Two reasons this will not do:

1.) the first is that such an attitude is too careless about God...when God comes to us, it matters very much how and to whom and in what form and where....a hallmark of religious experience is its specificity, even to the exact time and date - there is nothing vague or general about such an event....it is concrete, particular and it rips time in two and thenceforth everything is marked as before or after...it becomes a central date and moment....we gain our history from it...and our subsequent imaginings about the experience arrive in specific images and order not only our history, but all our shared history with others, delineating all we know as community.

2.) the second reason a loose relativism about god-images will not do is that it ignores the reality of the imagination...imagining is always rooted in the body, in time, in history...we make use of our instincts, of our active experiences, of the languages native to our own particular culture...we are finite and particular and must use what is most immediately available to us...the event invades and reorders us: altering the entire force field in which we live, making something new of us, not simply offering one among several alternative directions to us...

Ann and Barry Ulanov

Craigslist Add

Steve,
I have read your response and am wondering about the house rules and things like that. Youth With A Mission is religion-based if I'm not mistaken. I want to be honest with you and let you know that I am not an avid church-goer. Do you have students rent from you who are not involved with YWAM? While I am not too familiar with it, I do not judge it either. Let me Know. Thanks.
Prospective Renter

Our organization is named Open Hand - and meaning all that implies. Currently only two of the eleven folks that live in our homes are connected with faith based YWAM. The rest found us on Craigslist just like you. We have no rules and each home creates (or not) its own structure. We have had over 100 internationals living in our homes and everyone is free to participate as much or little as they want in our extended community life. But it would be best for you to see the homes and meet some of the roommates to better answer any of your questions. I have no idea of the faith / or lack thereof for our folks from Burma, Mexico, Japan, Russia, and Korean currently living here. Monette and Evelyn would consider themselves Christian. I have a Butler student moving in in May - Anthropology and Physics - and he wants to live with internationals and learn Japanese.

Anyway, you are welcome to respond accordingly. The address of the homes are 215 E. 32nd Street and 3174 N. Delawares Street.

My wife is a MFT and we study and apply Bowen Theory in our mental health work. We will be at the Bowen Family Life Center on the campus of Georgetown University next weekend for a conference. We also will be traveling for a Board meeting in Barcelona in May - Mana Deschisa Romania. This is our outreach / ministry to older street folks from Bucharest. We have many properties and projects in Campina (one hour north of Bucharest) and are combining our non-profit faith-based ministry with global business.

Lots of fun! I would beware though - it is very challenging for some folks to live in the midst of our community. The house at 215 has the "spirit of marriage" on it - as for told by a Kenyan pastor many years ago and now we have had over a dozen marriages from men and women that have met and lived in that home. (I married a couple two years ago - they were from Teach for America and started out by not getting along very well. The next thing I knew they were coming over for couples therapy and then asked me to marry them.)

So beware and
Cheers,
Steve

Friedman on Leadership

Notes from our Open Hand processes meeting 3-9-09

Agent of change = is our "Being" (Presence) rather than specific roles
1.) engage without being reactive
2.) teach a new way of thinking
3.) stimulate without rescuing
4.) observe without willing the other's head to change
5.) the nature of one's Being - becomes transitive

Coach
Coaching people to be more self-defined
Teaching people to be more objective about themselves (in their environment)
Tutoring people about principles of relationships (triangles)
Encouraging people to learn about their multi-generational emotional histories
Helping people go back and face issues they have fled
Networking family cutoffs
Teasing out and challenging or encouraging the emergence of self

Challenge - is the way to promote growth without increasing dependency and subjectivity

"Emotional process is what actually creates problems - not the actual content of the issues...and to the extent that a leader can contain their own reactiveness to the reactivity of the followers, principally by focusing on their own self-functioning, rather than by trying to change the functioning of others, intensity tends to wane, and polarization or a cutoff that, like a tango, always takes two, is less likely to result." Ed Friedman

Process of change = we don't promote catharsis, because it often times is merely manipulation, and takes away an important stimulus for change - PAIN, catharsis can be a very manipulative way of preserving the status guo....

Summary of differentiated leadership:
1.) fosters independence without encouraging polarization
2.) allows interdependence without promoting cults
3.) promotes togetherness but not at the cost of progress
4.) normalizes transitions, less susceptible to cutoffs.
5.) reverses the pull and drain of dependents who normally gain power from the expectation (indeed belief) that their demand to be included at their price and pace will always be satisfied
6.) focus is on the leaders own being - giving them more leverage
7.) reduces conflicts of will and triangles
8.) fosters less guilt among followers because it does not go in the direction of increasing dependency
9.) primarily focused on leaders own positions, it automatically answers questions about the distance a leader should try to maintain
10.) less load-bearing and more self-expressive, it minimizes the influence of the factors that contribute to burnout