Finding our way back to the Garden of Eden

"The beauty of the female is the root joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god. To desire the desiring of her own beauty is the vanity of Lilith, but to desire the enjoying of her own beauty is the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes her own delightfulness." C.S. Lewis

Catholic theologian Ronald Rolheiser points out the..."fundamental task of spirituality is to help us understand and channel our sexuality." The word Sex comes from the Latin root = and the verb "secare" literally means to "cut off", "to sever", to "disconnect from the whole." Therefore to be "sexed" essentially means to be cut off, severed from, to be amputated from the whole.

He goes on to remind us that sexuality is an all encompassing energy inside each of us creating a drive for love, communion, community, friendship, family, affection, wholeness, consummation, creativity, self-perpetuation, immortality, joy, delight, humor, and self-transcendence. Sex becomes an energy inside us that works incessantly against our being alone.

Sex is an expansive energy and we are healthy sexually when we have all these things, not just when we are sleeping with someone. A person can have a lot of sex and still lack true love. We can be celibate and still have community, family, friendship and creativity. Sexuality is as much about having friendships as it is about having lovers. Indeed as Rolheiser states, "It may be painful to sleep alone, but it is perhaps even more painful to sleep alone when you are not sleeping alone."

The Greeks did not ask one aspect of love to carry all the others. Their understanding of "Eros" had six systemic dimensions:

1. Ludens - love's playfulness, teasing, and humor

2. Erotic Attraction - sexual attractiveness and desire to have physical union

3. Mania - obsessiveness, falling in love, romance

4. Pragma - sensible arrangement in view of family, life, home and community

5. Philia - friendship, soulmates

6. Agape - altruism, selfishness, sacrifice

"Mature sexuality is not simply about finding a lover or even finding a friend, its about overcoming separateness by giving life and blessing it. Its about giving oneself over to community, friendship, family, service, creativity, humor, delight, and martyrdom so that God can help bring life into the world. It is also the pulse to celebrate, to give and to receive delight, to find our way back to the Garden of Eden where we can be naked, shameless, and without worry and work as we make love in the moon light."

Rolheiser explains that..."all these hungers, in their full maturity, culminate in one thing: they make us into co-creators with God. Mothers and fathers, artisans and creators, big brothers and big sisters, nurses, and healers, teachers, and farmers and producers, administrators and community builders....Co-responsible with God for the planet, standing with God and smiling and blessing the world."

Here are four of his fundamental principles that I strive to live by and hope to pass on to the next generation:

1. Sex is sacred and never simply a casual, neutral act, it needs respect and it thus builds the soul as a sacrament and brings God's physical touch to us...conversely if not respected it becomes a perverse thing that begins to disintegrate the soul. In a committed, loving and covenantal relationship sex is sacramental and part of the couples Eucharist. A privileged vehicle of grace. (Casual sex is often destructive of true community, and often of the individual soul as well. It can never be casual, but it is either a sacrament or a destructive act.)

2. Sex by its nature needs to be linked to marriage, monogamy, and a covental commitment that is by definition, all-embracing and permanent. Sex outside of marriage is a schizophrenic act. By its nature it speaks of total giving, total trust, and total commitment. Thus, if real trust, commitment, permanency, and unconditionality are not present within the wider relationship, sex is partly a lie...it pretends to give a gift that it does not really give and it asks for a gift that it can't respectfully reciprocate.

3. Sex has an inner dynamic that, if followed faithfully, will lead its partners to sanctity = God's energy within us...sex leads people to sanctity. Young people initially want sex, yet love creates a new desire, and sexuality demands not just sex but intimacy, exclusivity and commitment as well, leading to marriage and children and how much they change our outlook! Children grow and community expands and adults continue to mature, mellow and ultimately bless...Sex followed in fidelity leads to sanctity. Desire, working through us, if followed faithfully, keeps opening us up further and further to gracious adulthood.

4. Sex requires a healthy chastity - which is not the same thing as celibacy. It doesn't mean that one does not have sex, nor that one is a prude. Chastity is first of all, not even primarily a sexual concept, though, given the power and urgency of sex, faults in chastity are often within the area of sexuality. It has to deal with all experiences - it is about the appropriateness of any experience...ultimately chastity is reverence and sin, all sin, is irreverence. To be chaste is to experience people, things, places, entertainment, the phase of our lives, and sex in a way that does not violate them or ourselves. To be chaste is to experience things reverently, in such a way that the experience leaves both them and ourselves more, not less, integrated. Conversely, we lack chastity when we cross boundaries prematurely or irrevently, when we violate anything and somehow reduce what is. Sex, because it is such a powerful fire always needs the protection of chastity.

Amen....enjoy the challenge!

O'

Adapted from Ronald Rolheiser's great book - The Holy Longing.

Hasta la vista baby......Annie is off to Spain!

Here is our Celtic Commissioning liturgy for Annie Reynolds - 16 January, 2011

"Community cannot take root in a divide life. Long before community assumes external shape and form, it must be present as seed in the individual self: only as we are in communion with ourselves can we find community with others. Community is an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, the flowing of personal identity and integrity into the world of relationships." Parker Palmer

LEADERSHIP: To be a leader one must have and embody a vision of where one wants to go..so it is not a matter of knowing or believing one is right; it is a matter of taking the first step.

MENTORS & APPRENTICES: They are partners in the ancient human dance of the spiraling generations, in which the old empower the young with their experience and the young empower the old with new life, renewing the fabric of the human community as they touch and turn.

AUTHORITY: It is granted to people who are perceived as authoring their own words, their own actions, their own lives, rather than playing a scripted role at great remove from their own hearts.

IDENTITY: Our identity is an evolving nexus where all the forces that constitute our lives converge in the mystery of self: our genetic makeup, the nature of the men and women who gave us life, the culture in which we were raised, the people who have sustained us and harmed us - in the midst of this complex field, identity is a moving intersection of the inner and outer forces that make us who we are, converging in the irreducible mystery of human beings created in the image of God.

INTEGRITY: This is whatever wholeness we are able to find within that nexus as its vectors form and reform the patterns of our lives. Integrity requires that we discern what is integral to our selfhood, what fits and what does not - and that we choose life-giving ways of relating to the forces that converge within us. By choosing integrity, we become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who we are.

DECLARATIONS OF COMMISSIONING (All in unison)

Annie will you embark on this journey to Seville, Spain, with a spirit of adventure, and as a steward of your unfolding vision to live abroad, while embracing a new culture, a new language, and a new people? I WILL

Annie will you continue your generational dance, and as much as you are able, apprentice yourself, while empowering with new life, those Spanish mentors that God gives you....and likewise accept personal empowerment from their collective experiences and wisdom I WILL

Annie will you continue to author your own words, determine your own actions, live your own life, refusing to play scripted roles, so that you may cultivate your God given authority? I WILL

Annie will you continue to explore the subtle dimensions of the complex identity of your life, and in this process of self-discovery seek to bring the inner and outer forces into harmony, at the intersections of your heart, mind and will? I WILL

Annie will you read avidly, and explore new and traditional works, embracing the challenges of being on the forefront of global trends in the marketplace, while creating new ways to do "old things". I WILL

Annie Reynolds, with God as our witness, we release you and we bless your....go with grace to Seville!

Let us pray (all in unison)

Almighty God....

Sun behind all suns,

Soul behind all souls,...

Show to us in everything we touch

And in everyone we meet

The continued assurance of thy presence round us,

Lest ever we should think thee absent.

In all created things thou art there.

In every friend we have

The sunshine of they presence is shown forth.

In every enemy that seems to cross our path,

Thou art there within the cloud to challenge us to love.

Show to us the glory in the grey.

Awake for us thy presence in the very storm

Till all our joys are seen as thee

And all our trivial tasks emerge as priestly sacraments

In the universal temple of they love. Amen.

BE THOU MY VISION

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art -

Thou my best thought by day or by night

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou by wisdom, and Thou my true word,

I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;

Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;

Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Riches I need not, nor man's empty praise,

Thou mine inheritance, now and always,

Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,

High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won,

May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's Son !

Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,

Still be by vision, O ruler of all.

We all love you Annie!

Red Rover Red Rover Send Annie Over - Seville, Spain

Please join our Open Hand community for a pitch-in feast, Sunday, January 16th at 5:30pm, as we commission Annie for her upcoming I.U. Spring semester abroad in Spain.

Bring a side dish or desert and we will provide the rest including Spanish wine and meats. We will be celebrating at the Crane's - 3174 N. Delaware - our inaugural community gathering in their historic and recently updated home. (Thanks Jeff and Leah - can't wait!)

As they say in Seville,

Que corren los toros!!!!!!

Leadership and the Role of the Social Architect

The Social Architect's task "is to design and bring into being organizations and communities that serve both the marketplace and the soul of the people who live and work within them. Where the architect designs physical space, the social architect designs social space."

According to author Peter Block, the role of the Social Architect is to create service-oriented space (in business, organizations, governments, schools) by giving those involved the necessary space and freedom to act on what matters most to them.

Three design criteria for Social Architects (and other leaders) as they line up the organizational structures / conditions necessary for promoting and acting on what matters:

1. Is vision, hope, idealism, energy fostered, promoted, encouraged?

2. Is intimacy, collaboration, open process made possible and held open?

3. Is there adequate space (emotional process) and allowance for depth, dialogue, exploration and a sense of adventure and risk allowed?

4. Is there room for failure in the midst of positive movement?

It seems that today's bias is toward more control rather than more freedom, more practicality than idealism, barter rather than intimacy, and greater speed rather than depth.

As responsible citizens and community members we are all called to show up and accept an invitation to participate, to create, to function as co-designers. Acting on what matters is an act of leadership that is not dependent on the response of those around us whom generally say "no we can't" rather than "yes we can try".

Leadership is about creating space for people around us to act on what matters while having the will to action, believing that it is possible to bring about change, growth and positive momentum.

Here are some of the essential capacities of the Social Architect / Leader in supporting and acting on what matters:

1. Convening: with a focus on all aspects of how people come together, the quality of the contact we make with each other, knowing the future is created as a collective act that requires attention to physically arranging the room appropriately, structuring the interaction and dialogue, allowing for open debate, focusing on capabilities (strengths) rather than on the needs (weakness) inherent in the gathering. Some key elements of convening include:

a. Leadership here is about creating an environment that knows what matters and fosters the ability to act upon it.

b. Care for the physical space of the gathering - including the aesthetic qualities of the room, making it conducive for group dialogue, for peers talking to one another in intimacy and openness.

c. Include high-interaction activities - we can't act on what matters alone and we need to make contact and encourage participation as we enter into context, content and agenda of the challenges and opportunities ahead.

d. Design airspace so that all voices can be heard - giving enough airtime is important, especially for the most doubtful and concerned...allowing for doubts to be expressed publicly, makes commitment possible for all and doubts do not have to be answered, only heard.

e. Aim at capacities and strengths - prioritize the discussion around people's strengths and gifts rather than focusing on their limitations.

2. Naming the Question: A leader (Social Architect) has the obligation to define the context, or the playing field and then help define and determine the right questions to start the conversation. Picking the right questions is a way of naming the debate. The Social Architect works within the community's requirements - including the concerns of funders, customers, and other stakeholders, opening the process by which compliance/achieving goals is measured and achieved.

a. Finding the right questions - and having them open-ended enough to engage everyone personally and organizationally while asking for ways to increase people's freedom so that better decisions can be made. How fast to grow, what are the challenges of growth...the person who names the question generally carries the outcome and we can't get bogged down answering too narrow a question.

b. Broadening the questions - Leaders job is to keep broadening the questions as this is what engages people, creating room for idealism, hope, and depth. We may need to stay with questions of purpose, feeling and relationships which require postponing the how? (Questions of methodology will never disappear and they don't need our nurturing.)

3. Initiating New Conversations for Learning: Technology can support relationships but we need to keep implementing high-contact and human being-based face to face conversations as much as possible, keeping all the voices involved over time. We foster positive change when we create the time and space for heartfelt unique conversations that discuss values, recognize doubts, and affirm feelings and intuition.

4. Sticking with Strategies of Engagement and Consent: Implied is that positive engagement is the design tool of choice. It is how social and cultural change occurs over time,

a. Complex challenges - when we face these difficulties, especially when we create systems that go against the default culture, dialogue itself is part of the solution. Productive conversation is an action step, not only a means to an end, but it is also an end in itself.

b. Chosen not mandated - keeping our intentions and will to live on the margins of culture requires that we talk through the implications and challenges of our choices with intentionally. We are looking to create a future that is chosen and not merely mandated.

c. Conversation - commitment and accountability can't be bought and sold, they have to be evoked, which happens as we dialogue over time. We become engagement managers helping decide who needs to be in the room at various stages and what questions they should confront while keeping to the ground rule that questions of intent and purpose precede questions of methodology.

5. Designing Strategies That Support Local Choice: We want to create social systems/ communities that people want to inhabit, so their input and collaboration is necessary. At a minimum members can begin to define and describe their requirements for participation. A Social Architect/Leader enables this participative design, and it may take a bit longer, but the alternative is to choose a plan/direction that may not be supported.

Here are some design elements necessary to construct a high functioning social system:

• What is the mission of the system? Who decides this? Who are we really here to serve?
• How do we construct the job of leadership? Who decides this?
• What measures have meaning to us? Can we choose these collectively and limit their number to a few high priority ones - maybe three to five?
• What learning and training is needed? Who decides this? Can different levels learn together in order to help overcome the social distance between levels?
• What constitutes reasonable, transparent, just rewards? Who makes these choices?
• How do we improve quality and introduce change? Who makes these choices?
• How do we stay connected with our marketplace and those we are here to serve? How does everyone get involved in doing this?
• What is our belief system about people's motivation? How does it fit with the values we came here to live out?

Who decides? Who is in the room? These are key elements in answering these questions. We are promoting activism and we intend to keep technology, barter and speed in perspective. It requires faith in our own capacities and the willingness to stop focusing on our weaknesses. Our weaknesses are always hanging around while our strengths have hardly been touched.

Summary:

1. Focus on strength - and we confront ourselves with our freedom and other people with theirs...which is so much more powerful than the usual deficiency-oriented view which only limits us and reminds us of imaginary boundaries.

2. Support local control and local capacity - try placing as many choices as possible as close to the work as possible helping them understand the economics of the business while becoming financially literate.

3. Be undeterred by failure - learn from it, hold steady, continue to support local choice while remaining on the side of challenge.

4. Care for the whole - all statements of purpose reinforce the lives of those in the communities served.

5. Be willing to be vulnerable - take the heat, admit failure, no rationalizations, no forced optimism, just dogged determination to move forward in the midst of doubt.

6. Value the human system first - people who do the work are the business, the community is the focus, highlight and tell their stories (not the leaders or funders).

7. Name the debate - carry optimism and idealism out in front of the institution/organization/community with faith in people as primary motivation, with a commitment to foundational ideals that transcend the daily grind of work and responsibility.

Something only has to happen once in the world, and then we know it is possible, and that it can be possible for us in our own situation....it can be translated into our own context.

Social Architecture generates an image, fostering imagination, a position and role for each of us to help co-create. Acting on what matters for one person happens in concert with those around them, as individual effort will not be enough if we don't encourage others to find their own meaning, their own voice. Without them we will not be able to sustain our own.

Adapted from the great little book, The Answer to How is Yes by Peter Block

Enjoy the challenge,

O'

Overcoming the Darkness 23 degrees - 26' - Open Hand Winter Solstice 2010

Join us this Sunday at Sunset - 5:38pm sharp for our annual Overcoming the Darkness Winter Solstice Celebration when the Earth's axial tilt is farthest away from the sun at its maximum of 23 degrees 26 minutes.

Reynolds home with a Yuletide Fire Liturgy, grog and chili dinner to follow.

The myth of answering to our boss - stop it!

What power are you giving your boss that is interfering with your own purpose?

We tend to make the boss powerful because we falsely believe that without their support and approval we can't do our job. Our ambitions and dreams are held hostage as we become dependent on their support and approval. Here are four myths to consider:

1. They hold my future in their hands

2. They are key to my growth and I need to learn from them

3. They determine my work environment, morale and well being

4. They have the insight and wisdom I need to accomplish my job

It is actually foolish to believe that our boss will provide the keys to our future. There is no rational process guaranteeing a promotion, and despite attempts to be competent, judgments are merely subjective opinions. Their feedback has little to do with who we are and how we are actually doing our job.

Giving our boss power actually becomes an obstacle to learning. Our development and success is in our hands and it needs to stay there. They may wish to be helpful, but usually aren't.

Much of our difficulty comes from accepting the opinions of others rather than listening to our own internal guidance system. We have to light our own fire instead of placing our purpose in the hands of another.

By surrendering our functioning to others we automatically lose our freedom. And in doing so we forfeit our responsibility in creating our own culture by bringing the qualities we want into the world we inhabit.

They are not going to change. And we need to stop expecting that our boss will eventually understand us. They are not going to get it and even if they did there is no guarantee that they would want to help us get ahead.

There is no one to blame. We tend to think our boss is the problem and we want to fix them. They are merely expressing a symptom of the work system. Once they are gone another boss will step up and continue missing the point. We need to stay focused on our own behavior and get on with acting on what matters.

Jung reminded us that acts of disobedience are the first step toward consciousness. We are not here to fear or please our bosses. But our disobedience or betrayal can be a fuller expression of our own unique humanity. By disappointing authority we may be claiming the ground we stand on as our own. By choosing adventure over safety we are living into existential guilt instead neurotic guilt.

Neurotic guilt is symptomatic of an inauthentic life and stems from our fear of disappointing the expectations of others. We end up choosing to live a life chosen for us by others.

Existential guilt propels us toward deeper levels of personal integrity and challenges us to lean into our full potential. It is the ultimate redemptive value of betrayal and often will not be appreciated by those around us.

Betrayal can be a true gift that allows bosses to work through their own transformations while bringing emotional balance into our relationship systems with those in authority. It is a powerful stimulus for change especially when we can maintain contact rather than cutoff or alienation.

When we affirm our freedom and commitment to an organization, we can look past the behavior of our boss and instead respond to their intent. Our freedom and satisfaction come from acting to create what we believe in. And we can choose this independently of whether they support or reward or even want this from us.

The next time you find yourself wavering before your boss, remember that you are putting your future in someone else's hands. So stop it!

Take charge,

O'

Highlighted from The Answer To How Is Yes - Acting on What Matters by Peter Block

Curb Your Anxiety Friday - A Swiss Christmas Celebration

Join our Open Hand community for a special - Curb Your Anxiety Friday Swiss Christmas Celebration at our home - Reynolds 3173 N. Delaware St - December 10th from 5:30 - 7:00pm.

Enjoy a Swiss German Christmas Liturgy around the fireplace, with a Latino twist - led by Oscar Clavel, and including a Swiss French Gruyere fondue with white wine, fresh baked Italian bread and steaming garden veggies. Amen!