A Test of Center

Centering tests come in many shapes and sizes. My latest is a government solicitation for some human resource work that our company has been involved in. The federal government decided that a list of consultants would be drawn up based upon responses to a solicitation and contracts for the next five years would be awarded from this list. I received a heads up of this new way of doing business in early November. The solicitation was to be issued within a week and due in, at that rate, before the holidays.

Just the prospect of having to go through such a process was enough to slightly ‘uncenter’ me. I waited patiently for a week, two weeks, and then more. As I realized that I wasn’t likely to even see what would be involved until much closer to the busy holiday season, I could feel my anxiety rising.

The entire scenario degenerated as the days stretched out. The solicitation not only was late in being issued but had a number of conflicting directions and undefined terms in its 60 pages. As I write, deadlines are extended and everything is on hold while the Feds attempt to publish answers to the multitude of questions asked.

What is amazing and has helped me to often regain my center is what has happened in the midst of this process – the emergence of an actual online community around the preparation of this solicitation. An enterprising individual set up a wiki back in November and a core group of consultants impacted by this decision began sharing information and interpretations. We quickly learned that we were not alone in our experiences. When one person would voice a frustration, another would come forth with a more positive perspective or possible solution.

While I am sure that this process still has many mini tests of center left to throw at me, it is heartening to also find in it a reaffirmation of the power of connection and relationship in grounding oneself in the midst of chaos.

Power and Love - In Honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Part of celebrating MLK Day for me is thinking about how he was able to combine seeming opposites in ways that spoke to all of us. One of my favorite of his quotations is from a speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967. Adam Kahane bases his new book, Power & Love on the premise. I cite the quotation here in hopes you'll enjoy reading it and begin to think about its applications in your relationships and communication.

• Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. ... Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites — polar opposites — so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love.
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  It was this misinterpretation that caused Nietzsche, who was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love. It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to reject the Nietzschean philosophy of the will to power in the name of the Christian idea of love. Now, we've got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on. What has happened is that we have had it wrong and confused in our own country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience.
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  This is leading a few extremists today to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they have justly abhorred in whites. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.

Have a great week!
Judy Ringer

George Leonard--thanks and good journey

Yesterday morning Sensei George Leonard passed away. He was a brilliant thinker, a gifted aikidoist, teacher, author and musician. And he was kind, thoughtful, joyful and a gentleman. I feel very blessed to have trained with him and to have had my horizons expanded by reading his books many years ago. He contributed a huge amount to the world of aikido and to the exploration of consciousness and human potential.

Thank you, George, and good journey.

For a tribute to George by Paul Rest, from today’s San Francisco Examiner, follow this link: http://bit.ly/91arvF