Organizing retrospective 39

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?
I have spent this week reading Soulcraft and Wild Mind by Bill Plotkin. Bill Plotkin writes that contemporary society has lost touch with soul.¹ We call the outer nature wild. The soul is our inner wilderness. It’s the core of our human nature.² Our human souls consists of those aspects of self that are most natural, most of nature. Diminished human soul means diminished nature. The world cannot fully express itself without each of us fully expressing our selves.³ Soul is the primary organizing, sustaining, and guiding principle of living beings.⁴ Here is a post where Bill Plotkin talks about speaking in our true voice, singing our true song.

Artful Leadership by Michael Jones arrived this week. This is a wonderful book. Michael Jones goes beyond techniques into soul (although he doesn’t use that word). Leading is, for him, about developing our unique gifts, cultivating our connection with one another, our work, and the world. Michael Jones is a leadership consultant, improvisational pianist, and composer. His being with music has influenced his leadership work and way of teaching. He no longer teaches from models and concepts that others have created. Instead, he lets the words come from the same place from which his music comes. We need to find our own feeling and our own thought, which comes from being at home with the place of undivided wholeness within ourselves.⁵

What was good? What can be improved?
I found it remarkable that two very different books, by two different authors, using very different vocabulary, essentially are about the same thing. It’s about our unique way of belonging, and contributing, to the world. It’s a soul journey for Bill Plotkin and artful leadership for Michael Jones.

Notes:
¹ Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (New World Library, 2003), p.1.
² Ibid., p.15.
³ Ibid., p.16.
⁴ Foreword by Thomas Berry, Ibid., p.xiii.
⁵ Michale Jones, Artful leadership: Awakening the Commons of the Imagination (Pianoscapes, 2006), p.24.

Related posts:
Organizing in between and beyond posts