For a variety of reasons, this class didn’t run. The good news is that a number of folks pointed to timing, as in the busy endings of a variety of academic calendars in May and June, as their reason for not signing up. The course will be offered again this coming Fall or Winter. Stay tuned!

From May 7 through June 17, I’ll be facilitating a six-week online writing course through the Transformative Language Arts Network (TLAN). The course description appears at the end of this post.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, along with her colleagues at Goddard College, ushered Tansformative Language Arts into existence as an Masters in Arts concentration some 12 years ago, and from that program grew the “Power of Words” Conference, which Goddard hosted through 2011. The 9th annual conference will be in Philadelphia October 26-29, 2012.

I was fortunate to both attend and present workshops at the 2005 through 2008 conferences, and while I won’t be in Philly in October, I highly recommend it.

The TLAN site describes Transformative Language Arts as “the intentional use of spoken, written, or sung word for social and personal transformation.  This includes community building, ecological advocacy, social activism, personal growth and development, health and healing, and spiritual growth.”

The May 7 – June 17 class will focus on the role of self-awareness in our moment-to-moment experience – with the intentional use of writing to nurture our ability to look at what we are currently looking through. We will rest in an underlying commitment to both fierce wisdom (seeing clearly) and deep compassion (loving ourselves and others as we are). Prerequisites: The course description makes sense to you, and you have a sense of humor.

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Integrally Informed Writing to Know the Self

“There is only self interest. What changes is the definition of the self.”

– Richard Barrett

You believe that writing is a valuable tool for understanding yourself and the world. Who is it that believes this – who exactly is the self this believer is attempting to understand through written language? With this question and Richard Barrett’s words as our points of departure, we will work to identify and befriend the lens(es) through which we view ourselves and the world, and we’ll take away, and deepen our relationships with, writing tools and processes that we can use in perpetuity, (even longer if you wish), as those lenses, and our respective worldviews, evolve. Our prospective avenues for exploration include the interrelations among intention, behavior, culture and environment (aka quadrants); sub-personalities; shadow; emotions; intentional change (and what prevents it); skillful means; life as and through metaphor; and anything we agree serves us as we move forward during our six weeks together—at our chosen respective levels of depth and (dis)comfort .

More Information and Registration.

In the previous post, I introduced “more views” by pointing to some more-or-less common examples: change the physical location/position from which you’re looking; change the state of mind you’re in while you look (are you curious, angry, blissful, desperate, frustrated…?); ask someone else for his or her view and really listen; develop yourself in some way that opens a perspective you’ve not previously held. Each of these is valid, and I’ll focus this post on the final one—the additional views (i.e. perspectives) that emerge as the result of ongoing development. As I use “development” here, I’m referring specifically to change that leads to a more comprehensive, balanced and complex awareness of oneself, others and the world at large.

Here’s a “real life” example: This morning’s national political news focused on the following: “I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign,” Eric Fehrnstrom, a longtime adviser to Mr. Romney, said in response to a question about pivoting to a matchup with Mr. Obama and appealing to moderate swing voters. “Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch a Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

Mr. Romney’s view of this led him to defend himself: “The issues I’m running on will be exactly the same,” Mr. Romney said. “I’m running as a conservative Republican, I was a conservative Republican governor, I’ll be running as a conservative Republican nominee — or, excuse me, at that point, hopefully, nominee for president.”

His opponents (who appeared holding those wonderful red-framed Etch-a-Sketches) used Mr. Fehrnstrom’s words to support their anti-Romney views. From Rick Santorum: “You take whatever he said and you can shake it up and it will be gone and he’s going to draw a whole new picture for the general election.” And from Newt Gingrich: “Etch a Sketch is a great toy, but a losing strategy.”

While these three (spokesperson, candidate, opponents) views differ, they effectively come from the same levels of awareness and complexity (and several other factors), i.e. adult white males who are committed to becoming or supporting the next Republican presidential candidate.

Taking a step back, here’s another perspective: Mr. Fehrnstrom’s comment was an accurate statement about the difference between running for the nomination within the Republican party, and what would be necessary to run for the Presidency. A different opponent in President Obama, and a different set of voters (all parties and independents) call for a different strategy. Mr. Romney, Mr. Santorum and Mr. Gingrich know this is true. Each of them wants to win, so, working from the same statement and in essential agreement on its strategic truth,  Romney defends himself and Santorum and Gingrich attack him.

Another step back and another perspective: Beyond Mr. Fehrnstrom’s statement and the various responses to it, all of the attention paid to this “incident” and other “misstatement incidents” is evidence of the superficial nature of this political campaign and the media coverage of it. If we (were willing to) rewind and listen to the Republican debates and each candidate’s campaign talks, especially when each was criticizing the other, we would find very little to qualify any of these folks to “lead the free world.”

And from another step back: Were this a Democratic rather than Republican primary, aside from some different positions on issues, the process would be identical–petty schoolyard finger pointing in an attempt to get to the helm, while standing on the deck of a ship that’s setting a speed record, using outdated charts and life boats, while heading straight for an iceberg.

I could go on, and won’t. Additional, more comprehensive views are available beyond these, and, I know, beyond the most comprehensive I can see right now. Increasing awareness—the ability to hold more and more perspectives over time and space, is essential whether you’re leading your kids, your school, your community, your company or your state. And to do any of this well, you first have to lead yourself.

This tag line, which appears beneath the ParadoxEdge logo is the six-word result of a several-month and many-word exploration of who we (think we) are, what we believe in, what we offer and what we think is possible. In the next three posts, I’ll develop each of them in a bit more depth—not as a final word, but as a current view of what they mean to us. First, a brief look at each:

More views. More ways of looking at everything, and more strategically, more ways of looking at the current focus of your attention. More views can emerge through a variety of means—change the physical location/position from which you’re looking; change the state of mind you’re in while you look (are you curious, angry, blissful, desperate, frustrated…?); ask someone else for his or her view and really listen; develop yourself in some way that opens a perspective you’ve not previously held.

New ways. New ways to do everything, and as above, new ways of doing the thing that currently has your attention. New  ways can emerge through trial and error; throwing what you have against the wall to see what sticks; “dumb” luck; serendipity; using what comes up after you’ve developed a new view or two (or more); asking others what they do and how they do it; acting as if something that currently seems not to be true were true.

Inspired Outcomes. Outcomes that, before they come out, may seem impossible, or at least, improbable. When this happens, more views and new ways are usually lurking in shadows nearby or leading the band at the front of the parade.

At ParadoxEdge we work (and play) in ways in which more views, new ways and inspired outcomes engage an interactive dance of cause and effect—where any one or two of them can lead to the other two or one. A new way can lead to more views. Another view can lead to a new way and an inspired outcome. An inspired outcome can lead to a another view. You get the picture.

Stay tuned. Next post will explore more views.

…For Hard Times:

On Monday, December 12, $3.00 from every sale of Christmas Fun will be donated to Radical Joy for Hard Times, a 501c3 non-for-profit organization based in rural northeastern Pennsylvania:

“Radical Joy for Hard Times is devoted to finding and making beauty in wounded places. Creating a thriving, sustainable future on Earth depends upon opening our hearts to the natural world in its brokenness as well as its splendor.”

While a $3.00 per sale donation pales in contrast with the $7.7 trillion that the Federal Reserve Bank secretly donated to the poor souls mismanaging large banks that are too big to succeed from a customer service perspective, casual observation suggests that $3.00 in the hands of Radical Joy founder and director, Trebbe Johnson, will contribute more to the greater good of life on the planet than has $7.7 trillion in the hands of Jamie Dimon, Ken Lewis or any of the other scoundrels who lied about their failures and their collusion with the Fed.

Be that as it may, Christmas Fun may be the best way to bring your family, friends and colleagues together for an interactive interlude of laughter, animal voices and, well, plain old fun. And at under twenty bucks, considering you can use it for the rest of your life, it may be the best bargain of any kind, anywhere, ever. Is that hyperbole? You decide.

If you decide it is hyperbole, then you’ll have to buy a copy simply because you want to contribute to the inspirational vision of Radical Joy for Hard Times.

Don’t return to work after the holidays to discover that all of your colleagues engaged Christmas Fun, and you didn’t.

Since either paradox or edge alone can provide more fun than anyone can stand (see November 2 and October 26 posts), the opportunities they might provide together may border on the sublime. Or the ridiculous.

Every paradox carries with it an edge—the tensions that arise when holding apparent contradictions simultaneously.  Working on, at or with a particular edge inevitably brings us to, and requires us to work with, some paradox—an often disconcerting, frustrating and apparently irreconcilable set of facts or opinions.

Holding the paradox at our personal or professional edge requires the move from “either/or to both/and” perspectives. I believe those quoted words are overused and that they’re appropriate here. Your particular worldview and state of mind will determine how you respond to them along the continuum from, “du-uh, tell me something I don’t already know,” to “the prospect of ‘both/and’ simply can’t apply to what I’m dealing with right now.” Either response can be appropriate. Both are valid. And both are incomplete.

Half a lifetime ago I heard a gifted educator say publicly that he was both “pro-choice and pro-life” regarding abortion. My immediate inner response was that I aspired to what he said, but didn’t know how or if it was possible—I felt a powerful tension. His statement made sense to me, and in the moment I heard it, I did not know and was unable to feel how to manifest that sense. I was unable to hold the paradox.

I could, and won’t, write pages here about intention, language, meaning-making, context, and the respective blessings and curses of the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” positions. What I will say is that holding the “pro-choice/pro-life” paradox, once an apparently impossible task for me, is now a “comfortable” and essential worldview that embraces and transcends the dug-in positions on both sides of the issue and honors the underlying intentions of each—for me.

Holding paradox does not necessarily (and usually won’t) resolve an issue. What it does is open us up to a broader, deeper and more complex view of some person, issue, the world and/or ourselves—from which we are able to see and feel into more perspectives than we previously thought we could, behave in ways that had not previously occurred to us, and produce truly inspired outcomes.

What is your current edge? What is that border you’re not sure you can or should cross, or that place, circumstance, issue or event that arouses in you a palpable sense of discomfort? Whether you’re on edge, on the edge, at the edge, trying to avoid going over the edge, or trying take the edge off, the edge is inevitably intense—where things, and you, can truly change. It’s where you can feel simultaneously stuck, passionate, scared, smart, depressed, stupid, exhilarated and lost because the status quo is no longer effective. It’s both the point at which the flowing river becomes the roaring waterfall and your horizontal boat turns vertical, and where you’re through the worst rapids and enter the calm, tranquil waters that will finally bring your journey to fruition.

You, your team, your organization and your industry each has its own edge, the demarcation between today and tomorrow—this moment and the next. Some individuals and groups seek, and thrive at, their respective edges—willing to risk what’s familiar for what’s neither certain nor known, and others avoid their edges at all costs—more comfortable with the devil they know than with the greener grass in their neighbor’s yard. Still others teeter on the edge of horribly mixed metaphors.

The edge is unavoidable, present in every developmental move through infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood and the defining events therein: new families, jobs, promotions and initiatives, new homes, cities and cultures. The essential, foundational edge that accompanies every turning point, dividing line, and border is that edge, the crossing of which both allows and requires you to experience yourself and the world through broader, deeper and more complex lenses than you previously thought possible, and to do this again and again.

At ParadoxEdge™, Steve Benson, Kent Frazier and I explore our respective edges, and we’re ready to learn with you how to explore yours. Our coaching and training programs are designed to learn how your current worldview both serves and limits you, and work with you at your edge to develop in a way that keeps what serves, transcends what limits and allows you to adapt to increasingly complex circumstances.

If that sounds worthwhile, contact us. We’ll explore how you function and if we’re a fit.

It’s just a matter of time until your network is up to 400G and cutting edge capsules, geltabs and podpads will have sent your current iPad or other over-the-counter tablet the way of rotary phones and wars to end all wars. The volume of information, the speed at which you can access it, and the amount of work you’re expected to do with it continue to increase exponentially. Leadership gurus and self-proclaimed sanity savers of every ilk appear armed with the antidote to all this speed and information: slow down, be present to other human beings, do one thing at a time – the mythic, 20^th-century multitasking god has fallen from the sky. Huh?

Speed up more effectively by slowing down? Get more done by doing one thing at a time? What’s next, trying to optimize the bottom line by actually caring about colleagues, clients and customers rather than using their deeply held desires and dilemmas as leverage points to get your way or close the deal?

We believe that the ability to hold paradox—to simultaneously understand, honor and act on apparently contradictory information, goals and strategies—is an essential tool, among others, for successful adults in the 21^st century. We act on that belief every day, and it works.

Oh, you say, your situation is unique—no one really understands the level of contradiction that renders resolution of your current dilemma impossible to imagine, much less enact. Well, prior to 2000 you couldn’t carry thousands of songs and photos in your pocket; prior to 1969 no one had walked on the moon (as far as we know); and prior to 1920 women were ineligible to vote in the land of the free. There are more examples, but you get the idea.

What is impossible is holding paradox within the framework of a worldview that believes holding paradox is impossible. It’s okay to reread that.

Our coaching and training programs are designed to learn how your current worldview both serves and limits you, and work with you to develop a new one that keeps what serves, transcends what limits, and allows you to adapt to increasingly complex circumstances.

Steve Benson, Kent Frazier and I are pleased to introduce our partnership. Click on the logo below or above to visit our temporary web page.

Charles M. Blow’s September 2 Op-ed column in the New York Times, “In Honor of Teachers,” brought back memories and motivated me to revisit a piece of writing that has appeared, most recently, I believe, in 2005, in various iterations on opinion pages since 1978.

Here it is, again—new and improved for 2011:

How have members of a noble profession found themselves so maligned, and, when compared with many other professions, so poorly paid? The complex answer is at least partially rooted in familiarity, timing and the art of teaching.

Teaching is the most familiar profession. Everyone deals with teachers in elementary, middle and high school.

If familiarity breeds contempt, it’s easier to find fault with and criticize teachers after 12 years of ongoing contact than it is after only occasional dealings with other professionals.

Teachers affect us while we’re going through the challenges of childhood and trials of adolescence, when we think we know it all, but when we know very little – at most, less than we ever will again. They give us work to do when we would rather be doing something else.

Most other professionals provide services that help us with specific, limited problems. We go to them for help when we think we need their expertise; we go to teachers when we’re told to in order to learn everything our culture and society believe we need to know in our early years.

Our perception of the student-teacher relationship is often one of forced compliance. Teachers require that we read, write essays, solve equations, interpret history, experiment with science, learn to think for ourselves, speak in public, and behave appropriately whether we want to or not (feel free to add anything I left out of that list).

The salary issue is a direct result of the perception that some adults, many of whom still rely on basic skills developed during those first 12 years of formal schooling, have of teachers’ worth and importance. This perception results directly from the above-mentioned familiarity and timing.

We create a cycle: Teachers “harass” us while we’re young. We perceive them as necessary evils rather than the door openers they are. Who cares if they’re respected or well paid?

“What about the lousy teachers?” you ask. “We have to admit there are lousy teachers.”

Absolutely. They’re out there with the lousy doctors, lawyers, accountants and nurses, and with the second-, third-, and cut-rate politicians, police officers, plumbers, cashiers, truck drivers, salespeople and telemarketers.

You name it, and someone, somewhere is doing it poorly. That’s humanity, not teachers.

Although, if we consistently gave them the compensation and respect they deserve, rather than leave to take jobs that pay more in order to feed their families, more good teachers would stay in the classroom.

Who knows? Children might grow up with healthier minds, bodies and value systems, thus lessening the crime, broken families and war that result from unbalanced beings. Law enforcement officers, soldiers, therapists and doctors might get to do more preventive and less remedial work, encouraging positive behavior and health, rather than “repairing” negative.

Of course, many excellent teachers choose to stay in education despite the money and the misconceptions. While they know the science behind learning, they recognize the art of teaching as well.

Their palettes, in addition to the subject matter, include a heart of humor, a mound of morality, an abundance of ethics, a canister of communication, an understanding of understanding, a dose of discipline, an order of authority, a lot of love and a genuine interest in civilization and the responsibility that all children shoulder as they grow in their attempts to continue it.

That’s a tall order, but every teacher who understands the true meaning of his or her title believes that the children are worth it.

Still not convinced? Walk into a room of 25 first-, seventh- or twelfth-graders. Teach them for a year (sorry, a one- or two-day visit without any responsibility won’t cut it).

Some of the students you meet are academically gifted, some have severe learning difficulties, some love school, some abhor it, some are abused or ignored at home, some are loved, some horribly spoiled.

Some first-graders can read a bit and write some words or sentences. Others cannot read at all, and a few have no concept of the alphabet.

The seventh-graders are caught, physically, emotionally and intellectually, between childhood and young adulthood. Their bodies, minds and hearts are in flux and often on fire.

The twelfth-graders are facing work, war or college in a year, some lack basic literacy and mathematical skills, and most can argue at least as well as you can, regardless of who’s right or wrong.

In varying degrees among the grades, some are atheists, some agnostic, some nominally religious, and some guided strongly by religion. Some hunger to learn, and some see no value in school.

Some embrace their parents’ conservative, moderate or liberal views, and some are rebelling against their parents and everything else that crosses their paths.

Some smell bad, and some are impeccable. Some dress in such a way that you’d like to fail their parents for letting them out of the house—but you recognize that that’s as much about your taste and values as theirs.

Some will be easy to like, and some, it seems, will be impossible to tolerate. Some have drinking or drug problems. One has had an abortion and another may soon, but you don’t know who they are yet. Either one of them might open up to you if she feels safe.

You must provide all of them what they need to learn within their respective learning needs and styles, at their current developmental levels across multiple intelligences. You might have once believed that everyone learns the way you do, but you were wrong, so you have to do whatever it takes to reach each kid, not where you wish he or she were, but where he or she actually is.

You go home frustrated at times when you do your best and come up short; guilty at times when you feel you haven’t done your best; and elated at times—when hard work, luck, grace, and openness intersect in the moment.

Some observers will judge your competence based on standardized tests that assume the individual children you teach are identical assembly-line products. Some parents support you wholeheartedly, especially with the first-graders; some show a passing interest; some you never see; and some treat you with disdain.

You work 45-60 hours a week (if you have to ask, ask a teacher), you have papers to grade and lessons to plan over Thanksgiving, Christmas and spring breaks, and you enrich your own skills and knowledge over the summer across both specific content and developmental issues.

You understand fully what you do, and you won’t complain. But you won’t be a doormat either.

You teach.

Everything.

That’s the short answer. Of course, you’re probably wondering what the antecedent to that final, ambiguous “It” is, and the answer is, well, everything.

See if you can find yourself in one, two or all three of these views of love:

From M.Scott Peck, in The Road Less Traveled: Love is: “The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”

From Brother David Steindl-Rast, in Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer: Love is “the joyful acceptance of” or, stated differently, “a wholehearted ‘yes’ to” belonging.

And from A Course in Miracles: “Love is the absence of fear.”

So whether you’re currently paying attention to personal, familial, local, national and/or global issues, and whether you believe the weather, the economy, the government, the collective unconscious and/or the local cable TV programming is where the essential action of your life is, the question remains: What’s love got to do with it?

Imagine joyfully accepting—saying a wholehearted “yes” to yourself—your body, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, values, behaviors…all of you. And then imagine clearly seeing any emotions, thoughts, beliefs, values and behaviors that are grounded in fear, and exploring that fear in its most subtle, nuanced manifestations, seeing it for what it is and is not, and gradually, when it feels okay to do so, letting it go.

Imagine next that you have the will to, and actually do, act courageously, take some risk—extend yourself so that you may continue to develop, evolve and emerge into an increasingly comprehensive, inclusive and balanced view of the world.

Can you stand it? You feel as though you belong in a larger, deeper, more complex way than ever before. Your past fears are transformed and clarified—perhaps even reduced or eliminated. And you’re willing to commit to doing the work required for an ever-deepening sense of belonging, an ever-clarifying relationship with fear, and an awe-inspiring intention to do what has to be done for your own spiritual growth.*

Now imagine extending this sense of belonging, letting go of fear, and willingness to act courageously beyond yourself, first to the familiar, and then to perceived strangers, competitors, opponents, scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells—not in the sense of agreeing with or endorsing every agenda and worldview, but with the intention and ability to accept it as it is in this moment.

Love is something like that—albeit both infinitely simpler and extraordinarily more complex.

Stay tuned.

*As I use it here, “spiritual growth” refers to increasing clarity into true identity—who you think you are.

In their most recent book, Immunity to Change (2009), Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey demonstrate that each of us has a psychological and behavioral “immune system” that resists specific change—even and especially change we feel committed to—much the same way our physiological immune systems resist specific change in our bodies. Briefly, we behave in ways that obstruct our conscious commitments to change because we have hidden competing commitments that are deeply important to our sense of safety. If we’re willing to do some work, we can uncover some big assumptions we hold (also hidden) that underlie the hidden commitments that lead to the bewildering behaviors that thwart our attempts change.

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In “Slow Learner,” the introduction to his most recent book, Washington Rules (2010), Andrew Bacevich shares with us his own two-decade-plus assumption-testing journey.  No small act, and while not overtly engaged in Kegan and Lahey’s process, Professor Bacevich’s courageous disclosures evince a level of deepening self-awareness and complexity that speak to his own, each of our, and our country’s immunity to, and prospects for, change.

Bacevich, a West Point and Princeton educated, retired U.S. Army Colonel, Vietnam veteran, Boston University professor, author, and father of four—including First Lieutenant Andrew John Bacevich, killed in action in Iraq, May 13, 2007, begins: “Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me, I know. A young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable….Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility” (1).

He continues:
By temperament and upbringing, I had always taken comfort in orthodoxy. In a life spent subject to authority, deference had become a deeply ingrained habit. I found assurance in conventional wisdom. Now I started, however hesitantly, to suspect that orthodoxy might be a sham. I began to appreciate that authentic truth is never simple…. The powerful, I came to see, reveal truth only to the extent that it suits them….

I came to these obvious points embarrassingly late in life….And so, at age forty-one, I set out, in halting and haphazard fashion, to acquire a genuine education.

Twenty years later I’ve made only modest progress. (3-4)

My reading is that the author’s “genuine education” calls for a relentless and inevitably discomfiting examination of current worldview (i.e. assumptions) and consequent behaviors; holding them up alongside observable events in the manifest world; discerning among worldviews that are factual, ideological, and assumptive; and doing the ongoing work required to bring and keep one’s way of seeing and being in the world into alignment with “authentic truth”—observable events in any given moment and set of circumstances. No easy task, but an invaluable one.

Bacevich’s writing, in this volume and in his earlier work, embodies an evenhanded, fierce wisdom, a continually deepening self-awareness, and an increasingly comprehensive perspective that exposes and deconstructs the foreign, military and economic policy posturings of both political parties in the United States since the end of World War II.

As he continues to challenge assumptions—his own, his government’s, and ours, his personal story is an exemplar for change, and his historical-political voice is essential in the national and global conversations on sustainability.