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Archive for beauty – Page 14

VisionHolder

Another amazing VisionHolder conversation last night – these are the free phone sessions with some of the most exciting voices of our times that Heartland Circle produces every month. This time the visionary was Brian Johnson, founder and CEO of Zaadz.

This call was already going to be exciting for me, since I am a big Zaadz fan, but it exceeded all expectations. I felt like Brian had entered my dream, or more accurately perhaps it’s a collective dream we’ve both tapped into, but it felt remarkably synchronistic especially when he started talking about beauty. The words he used could have been coming out of my own mouth, and I have to tell you I don’t meet all that many people who know what I’m talking about, so this was unusual and almost swooning-level exciting for a number of reasons.

To hear this perspective being spoken by another who is first of all a man (the percentage of men who really know what I’m talking about in this area is very small), second a successful businessman, and to put the cherry on top, a successful businessman in my field who has taken the passionate dream I have for a transcendent technology and given it form, was absolute Heaven.

And it feels like the conversation has just begun…

Bits of Beauty

I was having an exceptionally wonderful day yesterday, and a song on the radio really captured the mood for me. I only caught a couple of lines, but they were exquisite: "There’s perfume burning in the air, Bits of Beauty everywhere…"

That seemed to sum it up for me – you know those days where the air is full of magic, and every direction you look seems suffused with beauty… there was nothing particularly exciting going on, I was just driving home from my digital photography class, looking at the pleasing symmetry of the California hills in front of me and listening to the radio turned way up loud.

I came home and Googled the song. It was a Leonard Cohen tune called Blue Alert, about that acute moment of wondrously frightening surrender; falling in love. Ahhhh. I seem to live my life on that delicious edge lately; my beloved beckons in every doorway and I rush to open the door and throw myself in.

Spark to the Fire

We just finished another amazing Thought Leader Gathering on Friday, produced by the west coast
Restoring Wholeness team of Heartland Circle, Resonance and myself –
this one was held in San Francisco, in the Golden Gate Officer’s Club at the Presidio.

Our conversation starter (so called because rather than a keynote
speaker or presenter, their words are truly a spark to fire the
group conversation) was Eamonn Kelly, CEO of the Global Business Network.

Eammon’s perspective about the state of the world (outlined in his excellent new book, Powerful Times) was in complete accordance with my own, but he used such a different analytical matrix to get there that it had the effect of blowing the top off my conceptual limits and letting in more light, illuminating my understanding with different hues than I am usually aware of. I heard variations of this opening and quickening in others as we engaged with Eamonn’s words in small group and whole circle conversations.

The group assembled for this TLG was one of our largest ever – 55 of us sitting in a circle around a centerpiece of beauty created by Pele Rouge of Resonance. We had to lean in a bit to hear each other at first, but with our ‘outdoor voices’ on it was soon effortless and the morning’s experience was extremely full and rewarding, in the unique way this event has of creating magic for us all.

I am continually awed by what happens in these sessions… it seems that no matter who the conversation starter is, who shows up, what the weather or external conditions are (we met the week of 9/11 in an almost unbelievable confluence, given travel limitations in the US at that time), there is always ‘something’ that occurs to make the morning seem like a special gift to each of us. I have the feeling this one will be reverberating in me for some time…

Trees

Trees

I’ve been appreciating trees – our ‘ent’ brethren – a lot lately. Perhaps it’s because of my recent time on the north shore of Lake Superior, where I met quite a few of them, or their part in the seasonal tableau of pagan beauty, but I’m very aware of their presence right now. Their grace and solidity; their sober vitality – I’m comforted by them.

Maybe that’s why I am so jarred when I see the abandoned Christmas trees start to show up on the side of the road & in empty lots. I shouldn’t be surprised – it’s the time of the year & no doubt there’ll be more of them. But I can’t help but see them as carelessly discarded bodies, homeless corpses ignobly thrown on the heap. I’d rather they were given a proper burial in the recycling chippie and sent back to the soil with a little dignity… if only in gratitude for their having blessed our homes with the smell of the wild.