Newsletters Words of EnCOURAGEment #3
Words of EnCOURAGEment #3
Harvest Time
A word from Co-Director Marcy Jackson
Fall 2007 has been an auspicious time of remembrance and celebration of a decade of good work. The publication of the beautiful 10th Anniversary edition of Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach, the release of the new poetry book, Leading from Within: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Lead, and the terrific book launch events to celebrate and bring greater visibility to our work have had us spinning and grinning this fall! And, we are celebrating a quieter event that took place ten years ago this month—the establishment of the Center for Courage & Renewal (previously known as the Center for Teacher Formation). My, time does fly when you’re having fun!
Sometimes in life and work we have a chance to look around, to stand at the edge of our own garden and, as the poet Marge Piercy says, “look at [our] work growing away there/ actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans/ as things grow in the real world, slowly enough" (from the poem Seven of Pentacles). This has been one of those times for us at the Center. I’d like to share with you how the breadth and depth of our collective garden has grown over the past ten years through the work of the Center and the hard and dedicated work of our facilitators.
On the Road Again
As readers of this newsletter may know, I’ve been on the road lately, traveling to various Courage & Renewal sites, as we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Center for Courage & Renewal and the tenth anniversary edition of The Courage to Teach. My pace is not quite as fast as Willie Nelson’s or Hilary Clinton’s. But my recent gigs in Seattle and Boston have been intense and uplifting experiences, leaving me with some strong impressions about where we are with Courage work these days.
First, many of the folks we’ve worked with over the past decade clearly feel themselves to be part of a movement, a community, even a family. The time they’ve spent in circles of trust has given them a sense of “home” to which they want to return. That’s why they come out in droves for these events, sometimes traveling considerable distances to attend and always investing themselves energetically once they get there.
Of course, the whole point of our work is to find that “home” inside yourself, a solid place to stand in a shifting and shifty world. You don’t need planes, trains and automobiles to get there! But we also know that being with other people who can help you find (and re-find) safe passage home is a crucial part of the journey. Many people are coming to these events to celebrate what it has meant to them to be in the company of such fellow-travelers, to rejoin them for a while, and maybe to be inspired to make the journey again.
Fall: Listening for your soul
by Courage & Renewal Facilitator Paul Michalec
How often do you give yourself the gift of pausing your professional activity long enough to listen for the wisdom of your inner teacher, doctor, lawyer, counselor, or pastor? I rarely do. It often takes either a sudden calamity that sends me diving for my books of inspirational poems or a full-scale retreat before I take the time to sit and listen to my soul. Thankfully though, wisdom plays the role of the trickster and mysteriously reveals itself in unexpected locations and in unanticipated ways in my life. Let me share a recent story about such a time and invite you to think about ways that your inner voice is waiting to offer guidance to you.
Just a few weeks ago a new book of poetry, Leading from Within – Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Lead, edited by Sam Intrator and Megan Scribner, arrived in my mailbox. The book is a collection of poems submitted by a diverse group of leaders; words of wisdom that have sustained, supported, and challenged the contributors during hard times. As I read through the book the following poem grabbed my attention.
Listening
My father could hear a little animal step,
or a moth in the dark against the screen,
and every far sound called the listening out
into places where the rest of us had never been.
More spoke to him from the soft wild night
than came to our porch for us on the wind;
we would watch him look up and his face go keen
till the walls of the world flared, widened.
My father heard so much that we still stand
inviting the quiet by turning the face,
waiting for a time when something in the night
will touch us too from that other place.
William Stafford
From A Scripture of Leaves, 1989
Courage in Kindergarten: An Interview with Andie Cunningham
by Courage & Renewal Facilitator Chris Love
“Who do I bring with me into the classroom?”
“Who do I want to learn more about within me?”
These questions sound like provocative prompts for reflection for educators engaged in a Courage to Teach retreat, but Courage & Renewal facilitator Andie Cunningham has posed them to a unique Circle of Trust: kindergarten students.
The two questions formed “the bones of our year,” says Andie, remembering the kindergarten classes she taught for five years at Harold Oliver Primary School in Portland, Oregon. Each fall she invited her kindergartners, whom she calls “friends,” to begin their year by painting, telling and writing stories and reading books about whatever “expert knowledge” they brought with them into school. Her goal for her students was to “link what they know in life to this new-to-them academic world.” Each year she, in turn, tapped into her collective student “expertise” for themes and topics to give life to the deep reading comprehension and community-building activities that formed the core of her curriculum.
A Poet on the Road: An Introduction to Parker Palmer
A speech given by Diana Chapman Walsh, October 4, 2007
On behalf of all of Boston – no, all of the Northeast (how’s that for a sweeping claim?) -- I want to express our gratitude to this traveling road show for making us the second stop on their historic tour.
They launched it a mere two weeks ago, in Seattle, home base for the Center for Courage & Renewal, and already they have come to us, with seven more stops to go, ending in Minnesota in April. Jossey-Bass, the publisher of the 10th anniversary edition of The Courage to Teach, believes that this is a national book tour. But we know better than that.
This is Parker’s opportunity to live out his boyhood fantasy of being a rock star, taking the show on the road. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and we have heard and read many comparisons of Kerouac’s era with ours – and his mood with ours. Are our times better or worse?
What a ridiculous question, Parker -- the poet -- would help us see. Parker the poet is using language to create worlds that never were. He is singing new songs of possibility for our culture, inventing original language and concepts that will enlarge our horizons and invite us to cleave together and imagine into being a safer and saner future on a more human scale.
Leading from Within:Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Lead
A new collection of poetry to inspire and nourish the hearts of leaders
Like fraternal twins, each pair of facing pages introduces you to magically close companions-an inspired practitioner and a poet who lit the leader's fuse or touched his or her soul. Each touched a deep place in the leader within me.
These words by Dan Mulhern on the inside flap divulge the secret of Leading from Within: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Lead, edited by Sam Intrator and Megan Scribner. As was the case with their prior collection, Teaching with Fire, Sam and Megan have created a book to inspire and nourish the hearts and souls of leaders of all kinds.
In early October Courage & Renewal Northeast facilitators hosted a program for readings from the book at the historic Boston Public Library. It was a powerful evening of leaders reading poems and speaking honestly about their determined efforts to lead with integrity. The enthusiastic audience response demonstrated the widespread hunger for hearing-and yearning to support-leaders who humbly and courageously seek to tell the truth.
We encourage others to organize similar community programs with Leading from Within. And we all owe a debt of gratitude to Sam and Megan for producing this lovely and powerful book.
A Physician's Skills of the Heart
<An interview with David Leach, MD, CEO of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Eduction (ACGME)
Why do you think it is important for physicians to connect their inner lives with their work in the world?
It turns out that healthcare is better if the whole doctor shows up. One of the problems with healthcare is that it requires such intellectual rigor that frequently just the intellect shows up. While we have honed the skills of the head and of the hand, we need to pay much more attention to the skills of the heart. Courage & Renewal retreats honor the heart and create a safe space for the heart to emerge. People get used to, and develop, a disciplined approach to the skills of the heart. It dramatically improves health care.Patients need more than sympathy. They need a doctor’s objectivity but also the doctor’s subjectivity to be fully present. This work makes better doctors because it enables the whole doctor that has the hands and the heart to show up at the bedside.
How are the principles and practices of Courage & Renewal work applicable in medicine?
Throughout medical training, you come to accept the frenzy of modern healthcare that doesn’t enable or even permit a deep feeling, therapeutic relationship with patients. You come to accept patients not being treated in ways that are fully respectful. The principles of Courage & Renewal work restore that space. It creates a space in which you can actually have a healing relationship with a patient, where you can deeply respect and understand their needs and your own abilities and your own limitations.
Parker speaks of institutions being not external to ourselves but rather, projections of ourselves. To the extent that our institutions are rigid or uncaring it’s because my heart is rigid or uncaring. When an individual can be fully present, an institution can ultimately be fully present and fully supportive. It is terribly important work – as important or more important than the wonderful advances in genetic engineering and in imaging techniques and so on, because it gets at the missing dimension of healthcare.