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Close: Ceesay Kunda (pt. II)

Mark Erickson, April 7 2012

Open: Ceesay Kunda

Gimbala Village is a place where people live simply, work hard everyday on the fields and experience the darkest of nights. At night, the moon has such a presence. I visited during passover, while the moon was full. The sun set as the moon was rising, and the sun rose at the moon was falling. It was as if one was chasing the other, all the while mimicking each other, following the same path. I was in awe of the night and its brilliance.

-Mark Erickson, April 7. 2012

Close: Close to Home…

The cruel glaring sun -

The torrent’s bone soaking chill -

The cut of the gale -

The resting thrush is silent

while each cures an ill - balance

-Jordan Baylon 4/29/2012

Open: From Afar…

last step to summit

you stand on stone rooted feet

and dance with the earth

-Jordan Baylon 4/4/2012

Open/Close: “Why I Waited”

I blew east nestled among a soft tangle of shared breaths
Cooing

I set down where the earth seemed to lean me into the sea
A burly father wearied by the swaddled clump
A mother’s rocking arms
Echoes of their hush between

I set down there upon sleeping feet
Stumbling into your garden
Into your golden wash
Into your dream

And found my sleeping heart could cast no shadows in your light

Warmed
I plied clumsy fingers
Carving tiny trees from memory
Blindly shaping sight into river ripples and alpine vistas

Soon my waking eyes filtered a drowsy morning from your noon
The shine that fed the crop I couldn’t see to

I started wide-eyed amid dusk-gilded grain
Found my beloved brother nodding
Sated in the grass
The work already done

For this unexpected mercy
For hopes transparent to the sun
For love that can be shared
I flew west to a silent orison

And speak only now
Having waited for your laurels to bear spring green

Jordan Baylon (4/4/2012)

Close: Listening to Shame

On change and the third thing:

Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. To create is to make something that has never existed before. There’s nothing more vulnerable than that. Adaptability to change is all about vulnerability.

On where we have to go:

I want to walk you in to shame. Jungian analysts call shame the swampland of the soul. And we’re going to walk in. And the purpose is not to walk in and construct a home and live there. It is to put on some galoshes and walk through and find our way around.

On finding our way back to each other:

We have to understand and know empathy, because empathy is the antidote to shame. If you put shame in a Petri Dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive. The two most powerful words when we’re in struggle: me too.

And so I’ll leave you with this thought. If we’re going to find our way back to each other, vulnerability is going to be that path. And I know it’s seductive to stand outside the arena (because I think I did it my whole life), and think to myself, I’m going to go in there and kick some ass when I’m bulletproof and when I’m perfect… But the truth is that never happens. And even if you got as perfect as you could and as bulletproof as you could possible muster when you got in there, that’s not what we want to see. We want you to go in. We want to be with you and across from you. And we just want, for ourselves and the people we care about and the people we work with, to dare greatly.

Brené Brown, TED2012 March 2012

Open: The Power of Vulnerability

On the “whole-hearted”:

The original definition of courage, when it first came into the the English language, is from the Latin word cor, meaning “heart” - and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and - this was the hard part - as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do for that connection.

The other thing they had in common was this: they fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn’t talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating… They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, “I love you” first, the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees, the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They’re willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental.

Brené Brown, TEDXHouston June 2010

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Open/Close: Tàiyáng 太陽 (Great Yang)

We are something different from scholars, although it is unavoidable for us to be also, among other things, scholarly. We have different needs, grow differently, and also have a different digestion: we need more, we also need less. How much a spirit needs for its nourishment, for this there is no formula; but if its taste is for independence, for quick coming and going, for roaming, perhaps for adventures for which only the swiftest are a match, it is better for such a spirit to live in freedom with little to eat than unfree and stuffed. It is not fat but the greatest possible suppleness and strength that a good dancer desires from his nourishment — and I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his art, and finally also his only piety, his “service of God.”

Friedrich Nietzsche. On the question of being understandable. 381. Book Five. The Gay Science.

(Thank you for your sensitivity and erudition seeyoulateraggregator)