As summer heats up, I’m thinking ahead to the fall and Leading as Sacred Practice (LASP), the week-long conference that Gisela Wendling, Alan Briskin, Holger Scholz and I will be facilitating this October 23-27 (2017) at IONS’ Earthrise Retreat Center in Petaluma, California. Last year’s gathering in Germany was exceptional and some are coming back a second time, so I’m looking forward with anticipation. But it’s taken on some new meaning and urgency.stringofbeads

I began to feel strained several weeks ago supporting the launch of The Grove’s Global Learning & Exchange Network (GLEN) while simultaneously starting a year-long Leading Change Program in Minnesota for a cohort of 20 participants from several agencies in the Metropolitan Council. This last program ended with an inspiring “stringing-of-the-beads”; more on that later.

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Life After Death—The Gift of Consciousness - David SibbetMy life mate of 46 years, Susan Herron Sibbet, passed away three years ago today. She died in my arms, with our children side by side. Our house had become a sanctuary.

Today, amazingly, she lives on in the form of two books that are being published. One, announced today by Sixteen Rivers Press, is called Great Blue and is a compilation of 52 poems from the whole span of Susan’s writing career, lovingly curated by her writing circle. Her friend Carolyn Miller’s painting is on the cover.

Synchronistically, today is also the day Susan’s “imagined memoir” about Henry James’ amanuensis, Theodora Bonsanquet, It’s called The Constant Listener and will be out in the fall.

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For the past six months two seemingly different circumstances have been “working” me. The first is a commitment that Gisela Wendling, Holger Scholtz and I made last summer to organize a special retreat at his family farm, the Beuerhof (in the Vulcan Eifel region of Germany East of Cologne). We are calling it Leading as Sacred Practice. You can infer from the name that this is moving into new territory.

The second circumstance is moving from San Francisco after 40 years!
The Sacred Life of Boxes

 

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Crucible - Crucibles of Change: Learning to Love TransformationCrucibles are on my mind. A crucible, as you may know, is a container that can stand a lot of heat and is used in chemistry and metallurgy to combine elements into new forms. As a student of metaphor, I love applying the image to change. It points so aptly to the fact that humans need containers and heat to melt down and transform old habits and thinking so something new can emerge.

Those who know me can infer why crucibles might be on my mind. I’ve been in one, and am just finding out about the new me that is emerging. Might these circumstances qualify as being personal crucibles?

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