We’re delighted to share, for the first time, a contribution from one of our PIA Practitioners, Laura Kinsler, who describes a poignant experience with her father about love in the lead-up to Christmas.
”I told him that this was the best present he could have ever given me”
Click here to read the full story.
In Potent Alchemy this month I write of my Dad, his dying and what that means for me. I also write about love:
“But what does Love have to do with work – to us in our professional lives? Being a part of the emerging Presence in Action (PIA) Community-in-Practice has been opening me up to the boldness of love and the strength involved in loving practice. It is uncommon to talk about love in a professional context… and yet, this, I believe, is what has been growing in me and between us as our PIA praxis has evolved.”
I am in awe of and deeply humbled by those people I accompany and who accompany me. We have been forging new landscapes of human transformation; flowing through and forging new channels of exchange; learning and loving learning in and through each heartfelt encounter.
A while ago I found myself writing the poem below, following a flurry of POPIA trainings and Community-in-Practice gatherings. Once again this year, amidst a similar phase of activity, I have found my heart once again cracked open wide. I am moved to share my poem as a testament to what is unfolding and enfolding between all of us each time one of us upholds another ‘on the mat’.
I want you to know
I want you to know I love you
Not because you cracked through the self-protective shell of me.
Not because you reached in and soothed the throbbing hurts in me.
Not because you tended the wee girl’s broken heart in me.
Not because you held the needy, victim stray in me.
And not because you lovingly attended me.
I want you to know I love you
For awakening me to what I’d failed to comprehend in me.
For evoking emotions, exposing overlooked beliefs in me.
For calling out my wiser self to tackle what was playing me.
For charging me to lay to rest what has hitherto unravelled me.
And for helping me to ground myself to safeguard my integrity.
I want you to know I love you.
Not in the clawing, cloying way that strangles out of need.
Not with desire raiding each waking hour we be.
Not with favours stained by conditionality.
Not duped by delusions of eternal surety.
And not chained by threats demanding ‘else or me!’
I want you to know I love you.
Not for what you give
but for who you clearly are.
Not for what you do but for what in you shines through.
Not for how you play life’s game but for how you hold the space.
Not for your agile mind and frame but for how you flow with grace.
I want you to know I love you
for daring to be you;
for boldly being more true;
for setting free the loving you
who’s loving me –
so you can see
the you I see,
reflecting
back through
me.
I want you to know
this Love is of the Divine.
I want you to know,
through me – it’s you it finds.
I want you to know
such Love is
ours, not
mine.
I want you to know
I want nothing from you.
I want you to know
I want everything for you.
I want you to know
I am here for you.
I want you to know
my loving you,
is purely,
simply
Love.
© Louie J N Gardiner, 14th October 2017
I shall never forget the day Innocence returned to my life. Her (re-)birthing came on Friday, 23rd March 2018 in the hamlet of Caux, Switzerland. She came in service to a small group of people gathered to prepare and plan for the Caux Forum, due to take place in The Caux Palace, 28 June – 5 August 2018. The Caux Forum consists of a series of themed, conference gatherings destined to bring people from across the globe to grapple with and respond to some of the most troubling challenges and issues of our time.
I was first invited to Caux as a conference contributor in 2010. I have volunteered every year since then, supporting the creation and delivery of conferences ranging from ‘Leading Change for a Sustainable World’; ‘Trust and Integrity in a Global Economy’; ‘Living Peace’ and ‘Seeds of Inspiration’. It was in this place that I found my tribe, ‘Initiatives of Change’ (IofC). My connection is fulfilling, passionate, earnest, joyful, expansive and humbling.
Innocence and Eddie
Imagine, though, my very great surprise, in this context of worthy serious endeavour, when someone new showed up to play her part. She came to invite a roomful of grown-ups (some open-minded and some moderately resistant) to play with her.
Click the following link to read how I came to be in the In the Presence of Innocence 2018-03-29
In preparing for delivering at an upcoming conference in April, I was asked to send in a short video of 20-30 seconds so that conference participants could get a flavour of what they might experience if they were to join in the session I am to host with the three Pioneer Practitioners of the P6 Constellation… 60 mins later, finally I end up with a finished cut! Ironic as the the conference theme is “A cut above the rest”… and in that regard my attempts at video recording clearly needed a lot of support, feedback, chiseling and polishing…
I hope you enjoy these two cuts which emerged part way through when hysteria usurped my early dry, cardboard cut-out attempts!
Beyond the hilarity, I realise there is profound point here…. NONE of us begins being really good at anything that is new to us! We have to learn by failing and falling. We have to try and try again and again. Ask any artist, expert, sports person or sophisticated practitioner/ facilitator and you will get a similar response. Our best performances, presentations and service come only with years of dedicated practice. A wonderful elder and teacher of mine – Brad Brown – used the phrase “practice, practice until it becomes your practice.” It resounds in my mind almost daily.
This is a commitment that we in the P6 Constellation ‘Community in Practice’ (CiP) embrace wholeheartedly as we come together in community gatherings, in group supervision sessions and in supporting the trainings we run for people new to the P6 Constellation. Just as my little experiment with this video demonstrated to me (again): reaching levels of fluency and artistry in our chosen fields or disciplines comes through practice. Artistry comes not only by repetition but by succumbing to the wild, haphazard learning processes that evoke the full range of human emotions. Yes ALL our emotions have a place; all serve a purpose and to deny any of them is to deny ourselves the delights that come from fully accepting all that makes us who we are so that we can become all we have the potential to be.
So, when things don’t quite go according to plan – yes let the tears of disappointment and rage roll; because soon the tears that accompany your laughing with childlike abandon will also flow. This is what it means to be human. This is what it means to be more fully ourselves, learning to be even more fully ourselves. And when we are, we can quite literally be part of changing the world around us; bringing it into the kind of balance that attends to the well being of all… as did these wolves, when reintroduced to Yellowstone Park.
My message to you is simply this:
SHOW UP
and
BE MORE FULLY AND WHOLEHEARTEDLY YOU!
and be ready for all that might flow to and through and from you.
After nearly three years away immersed in life, work and PhD… finally I emerge with something to say and something to offer to the world! Although I have not finished writing up my PhD, I am happy to say I am well on the way. I hope you enjoy the read and my poems….
Changing the world – starting with ourselves
When I first was invited to deliver a daily contribution in a week-long conference called ‘Leading Change for a Sustainable World’ in Caux, Switzerland I did not know anything much about Initiatives of Change. I have been involved ever since – every year in Caux and increasingly within the fellowship in the UK. I knew when I first walked into this building that I had a place amongst this global community and that there was something for me to be doing to support it and the people in it. Each year I contribute to different conferences and each year I meet many, many amazing people – who, in their own ways and communities, are helping to make our world a little bit better.
Caux 2010 Leading Change for a Sustainable World (LCSW) – Louie Gardiner
Caux 2010 LCSW – response-able leadership moving in tune with others
Paradox of PhD and Poetry
How very odd! As I turned to re-enter the highly constrained academic container to commence my doctoral journey – amidst other personal and professional challenges – I found myself writing poetry. I did not decide to. I did not yearn to. I simply followed juicy little threads of words and found many tumbling forth. This was the first to arrive sitting in post-graduate room at Hull University Business School:
Whether we gaze out through heavens to the stars
or drive our eyes into the Particular
abyss for answers of the universe; do
we not simply perceive what we are apt to
see? Patterns of imagination? Defined
manifestations made so by eyes and minds
that cannot not craft worlds of explanation?
Is ‘all in all’ our most profound delusion?
Perhaps, matter and matters of scale are nought
but orderly illusions made real by thought;
by those who meddle in realms beyond their Selves
in search of truth which lies in etheric shelves?
What consummate distraction by magician
minds who avert our gaze by reaching out and
out; and down and down, to what? For what? Where is
THE place these searching souls don’t dare to quiz?
As jet black nights fuel our fears, deluded minds
with unrelenting pace, drive us wild with blind
demands to play the tunes; so devilish hands
can pull our puppet strings and command our dance.
Those veiled rampant powers that yank our clanking chains
have us trip and choke and burdened by our shame,
for what we did and did not do. Shocked. Bemused.
Caught by fear of blame. Bewildered and confused
that once again – to make the change, we fail.
So on, on and on we chase horizon’s tail –
to catch the holy grail of hidden truths.
And so the mirage beckons; teases sleuths
who’ll be seduced by promises of fame
and grandeur. Make your name! Court worldly acclaim!
Or choose the Noble Quest: Risk ruthless enmity
over fame or vapid anonymity?
© Louie J N Gardiner 15th October 2014
Here you can hear from one of the P6 Constellation’s Pioneer Practitioners…
The P6 Constellation came into view in its current form in late 2012 after 30+ years in gestation in Louie. Coaches who Louie supervised sense there was something in Louie’s practice they wanted for themselves and called her out: “When are you going to offer training – so we can learn to do this for ourselves?” It took about 12 months from that invitation for Louie to synthesise and find a form that was completely coherent with the complex dynamics she (we) experience within and between ourselves as human beings. Hear what Ro has to say in her early days of coming to learn how to use the P6 Constellation for herself.
