Learning Together. Building Community.

A single act of kindness can light up a dark day. Recently two strangers, different as snowflakes, met each other on the street. They could have easily passed on without a word, but a kind offer changed everything. Here is the story my friend Leslie shared with me… Stuck in the Cold and Dark In February 2021, almost a year into COVID-19, the power went out in my neighborhood during an ice storm. I was literally alone in the dark for days, a pod of one during this COVID time.T

How do we develop a learning mindset? It’s not possible to know everything, so obviously we’re going to have to learn as we go. But how do we get ourselves into a learning mode? So often I get defensive when I run up against my own ignorance. Or when I make a mistake. Or when I inadvertently say or do something that causes pain for someone else. But defensiveness is the antithesis of learning. I can’t actually learn anything when all my energy is marshalled into defense mode.

What happens when we live a lie for generations? What does it do to us when we pretend we are better than others? What happens to us when we build structures and institutions to keep the lie in place? Racism is damaging all of us—White, Black, Brown and everyone in between. When we buy into a lie, we become separated from ourselves. We become strangers to our souls. We begin to believe that this world is all there is and this is all that matters. We come to occupy a smaller a

As we learn to embrace diversity at all levels of society, it helps to have examples of what inclusion looks like. I recently talked to Ruhiyyih, who shared her story of being accepted and included despite difficulties and differences. Facing Medical Difficulties After a near-death experience in Tibet and an extended hospital stay, Ruhiyyih slipped into a severe depression and decided to return to the U.S. to live. She had been living and teaching in China for nearly 10 years

A Universal Village The musical Fiddler on the Roof has a very special place in my heart. When I was about 12, our little town put on a full production of the show, thanks to the genius of our high school drama teacher, Dana Brown. He magically recreated the village of Anatevka on the stage of our middle school gym. He transformed a sheep farmer into the fiddler and the mild-mannered wife of the middle school principal into the shrieking ghost in Tevye’s dream. It was an incr

It's about reframing Do you often find yourself churning over something, worried about whether it will turn out alright? How do you get past this? I heard something in a class I’m taking that really struck me: Fear, doubt and anxiety are all symptoms of belief in a negative future. Wow. This is from Shariff Abdullah, who did an interview for this blog a couple years ago. He then he went on to say that it takes just as much energy to think about a positive future, so why not d

I’m finding myself in more and more conversations with people who have different belief systems, different world views, different experiences from myself. How do you have a conversation with people who disagree with you? The easy thing to do is just drop the topic and back away. I guess that’s better than getting into an argument. But we miss so much! There’s so much we need to learn from one another. So how do we have conversations with people who disagree with us? Here’s wh

My daughter turned 18 last March. This fall she headed off to college and has embarked on her own life adventure. As I look back, I realize… I didn’t raise a child; we raised ourselves together. These past 18 years have been a learning journey on which we have traveled side by side. Very early on, I discovered that when I tried to focus on her and guiding her behavior, I failed miserably. But when I focused on fixing my own behavior, my daughter did just fine. It took me awhi

I made a mistake. And it was horrible. Actually, it was a constellation of mistakes, because there never is just one. But I realized something, finally, after all these years… It wasn’t the mistake that made it horrible, it was how I beat myself up about the mistake. I’ve been re-reading John Heider’s The Tao of Leadership and came across a passage about simply observing: The wise leader pays respectful attention to all behavior. Thus the group becomes open to more and more p

This article is part of a series on “Learning About Learning.” Have you ever felt overwhelmed at the beginning of a project? Or frustrated trying to explain something to a new team member? Beginnings are not easy, especially for those of us who get our energy from completing things. But beginnings are precious; they hold an essential but fleeting treasure—the ability to see things with fresh eyes. I was walking down the street one day and ahead of me was a two-year-old with h

We live with so many masks—some we create for ourselves and some we perceive in others… I was on the train the other day (the MAX, Portland’s light rail) when a man got on and sat down in the seat in front of me. He was African-American, his hood pulled up and was talking to himself. I was instantly alert. But It soon became clear that he was actually on the phone. The hood and his stocking cap completely obscured his ear phones. I was struck by how much I’d assumed from his

Last night I witnessed the most amazing thing: a gathering of love so strong it sent chills up my spine. Some months ago, Glaucia Martin-Porath found a building for the Women’s Plaza. Her vision is to create a place where women can work right alongside their children and go see them any time of the day: read them a story, have lunch together, comfort them when they need it. A space where women can get support and advice from the women working next to them. It looked like she

On November 22, a few people got together to Start a Vision Discussion. We began with the quote below and focused on really listening to each other and letting go of our views once we’d expressed them, offering them to the group as a whole. Essentially, we were practicing the art of consultation. There were so many wonderful thoughts shared, they won’t all fit in one post. So I’m sharing the first set of insights here. Stay tuned for the next set. Feel free to add your though

In doing these interviews on prosperity, I’m learning so much about listening. This American culture knows a lot about talking, but not so much about listening. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to describe what I’m learning. This morning the words started to flow. It’s like stepping into someone else’s world for a moment and experiencing what the world looks like in their shoes. But not really in their shoes, exactly. It’s more like standing beside them. We each see a dif