Organizing retrospective 14

This is a post in my series on organizing ”between and beyond.” Other posts are here. This is a retrospective of what has happened during the week. The purpose is to reflect on the work itself. Here is my previous retrospective. Here is my next retrospective.

What has happened? What needs to be done?
This week, the following books arrived (from left to right): Panarchy edited by Lance H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling, Flourishing Enterprise by Chris Laszlo and Judy Sorum Brown, Poiesis by Stephen K. Levine, and Future Sense by Malcolm Parlett.

During the week, I also reviewed two books. Here is my review of Christopher Alexander’s The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle Between Two World-Systems. And here is my review of Giles Hutchins’ Future Fit.

I was struck by the fact that both Alexander and Hutchins write about love at the end of their books. Here is what they write:

“Try to be aware, every waking day and every minute, of the love that lies in your heart. … At every moment, remain wakeful and aware of your love for the earth and for the Universe around you. … love and reason … is the most powerful bond we have to the Earth, to our fellow-beings on the Earth, and ultimately to ourselves.”
— Christopher Alexander¹

“We busy ourselves patching up symptoms while neglecting root causes. … It’s time to stand up for what we know in our hearts to be right. … Every moment opens up the opportunity to attend to life with love or fear, with greace or dis-ease. How we attend to the world shapes our world in-turn shaping us.”
— Giles Hutchins²

The battle for Life, standing up for what we know in our hearts to be right, is ultimately a question of Love — for Life Itself!

• Next, week I will continue reading Robert Rosen’s Essays on Life Itself.
• I will also start reading the books which arrived this week.

What was good? What can be improved?
My inquiry has so far been rational-analytical. This week, I realized that I also need to include the perspective of the heart as well.

“The wisdom of the heart … is of a wholly different order
than the intellectual insight we synthesize
through deliberate rational thought.”
— Maria Popova³

• How can my heart in-form my continued work?

Notes:
¹ Christopher Alexander with HansJoachim Neis and Maggie Moore Alexander, The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle Between Two World-Systems (Oxford University Press, 2012) p. 488.
² Giles Hutchins, Future Fit (The Write Factor, 2016), p. 259.
³ Maria Popova, Proust on Love and How Our Intellect Blinds Us to the Wisdom of the Heart | Brain Pickings (2016-08-12) (accessed 2016-11-05).

Related posts:
Organizing in between and beyond posts