BeautyDialogues

Welcome to the Beauty Dialogues!

This is a space to celebrate beauty - not just the beauty of form, but also those patterns of essential wholeness that go beyond the visible.

Wholeness dissolves the illusion that life and work are separate. So, while this is a "professional" blog in that I design online communications for a living and often write about design, communications & technology, it's also about everything else I see (in the world and in myself) when looking through a beauty-lens.

Commitment

The essence of my Summer Solstice celebration, as I have come to know it, is to take a few days every year at this time to be immersed in nature – both inner and outer, to acknowledge the gifts I've received in the last cycle of the sun, and to contemplate what's mine to give back as I go forward into the next cycle.

I do this in community, within a circle held by the good folks at Resonance, supported by those at Pathfinders & Heartland.  A circle with beauty at the center, always - this one an evolving work of art created by the translucent Sue Blondell:

At its core my Summer Solstice ritual is a commitment ceremony, and I want to share these words from Ken Carey's Return of the Bird Tribes that convey the strength a clear commitment can give:

"Creation does not take place
where there is a scattering and dissipation of energies.
Creation requires a gathering together and focusing
of your power within a circle of commitment —
like a seed, an egg, a womb or a marriage.

Consider wisely the ways in which you would
use your power and then around those ways
draw the sacred circle of commitment.

In the warm atmosphere of that circle, the power
of love builds like a storm above the wet summer
prairie until suddenly the circle can hold no more
and explodes in the conception of the new.

This fire is more powerful than any one of you."

And so I speak my commitment for this next year into the circle of this larger community, that holds me too:

In this next cycle of the sun I commit to hold myself lightly and speak my truth with confidence; to joyfully take leaps of faith when they are called for; and to continue to hone and refine the craft that carries our voices out into the world and nurtures connection and love between us.

If you too held the time of Summer Solstice in such a way, what would be your commitment for this next cycle of the sun?

American Beauty Dialogue

I was watching American Beauty last night and found myself once again mesmerized by that perfect scene where the young videographer-next-door shows his new love the "most beautiful thing" he's ever seen... footage of a plastic bag whirling in the wind, dancing with a pile of leaves.

Apparently it was this very image, which he experienced in real life, that inspired Alan Ball to write the screenplay, and Ball's words, Rick telling Janey about shooting the scene, carry the sensation:

"It was one of those days, when it's a minute away from snowing. And there was this electricity in the air. You could almost hear it. And this bag was just ... dancing ... with me. Like a little kid, begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That was the day when I realized that there was this ... entire life ... behind things. And this incredibly benevolent force who wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid. Ever.

Sometimes there is so much ... beauty ... in the world. It's like I can't take it. And my heart is just going to cave in."

The sensibility that went on to provide us with five seasons of Six Feet Under (probably one of the most profound treatises on death American popular culture has ever produced) ends his debut film script with an echo of this moment in a voice-over from Janey's dead father Lester, who's just been shot:

"I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me. But it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me, like rain. And I can't feel anything but gratitude."

I'm struck by the experience Ball describes twice in his film - of expanding with emotion, almost to the point of collapse - juxtaposed with this ephemeral image, which is repeated in the dying father's visual sequence as well.

It's like he's trying to make visible, audible, the sheer, unpredictable, and almost-impossible-to-bear beauty at the very heart of life.

Coping with Email

The always brilliant Beth Kanter posted about one of my own life issues in Beth's Blog - the challenge of coping with a significant amount of email input without becoming overwhelmed.

In it, she includes links to some excellent resources and articles - from Saturday's New York Times, and one early warning from Wired in 2004, offering the option of declaring "email bankruptcy".

I shared some of my own "slow work" solutions to the question in Beth's post's comments field, but/and I continue to be very curious about how other people manage. I want to learn more about this whole phenomenon, and how we are collectively holding it through the cultural changes we're going through, brought on by these relatively new communication technologies.

How about you? How are you coping with the increased demand/opportunities for connection and responsiveness that email brings? Is it even a problem for you?

How does this question appear when we look at it through a beauty-lens ... ?

Food

On my morning walks lately I've noticed more and more vegetables showing up amongst the flowers in my neighbors' gardens.

One neighbor, Grover, has been a leader in this movement for many many years with a whole front garden full of peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, beans, squash, onions, potatoes, kale and chard in constant rotation throughout the year. But now his influence appears to be spreading.

Right across the street from him, folks have built raised beds in the narrow strip of ground between sidewalk and street and planted corn and tomatoes in them. And they're just one example of the front-yard vegetable gardens popping up all over the area.

Whether it's an instinctive response to the rising gas prices or the beginning of a zeitgeist shift back to basics, it feels real good to have food in the neighborhood.

Annie

What stays with me from Annie Leibovitz' photographic exhibit (and the book it illustrates: A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005) is her decision to integrate her personal and professional photography into a seamless whole. As she says, "it is one life, not two".

Perhaps being married to Susan Sontag and having close personal ties with many famous people has helped blur her line between intimate and public, but I think it is more to do with the level of her gaze, that seems to see pretty much everything with the same measure. There were many stunning portraits among her collection, but the ones that stood out for me were the ones where it seemed her subjects met this gaze head-on. Here are Annie's photographs of Mark Morris, Eudora Welty and Sarah Cameron Leibovitz, to show you what I mean:

Slow Work

The other day a couple of friends and I were talking about the difficulties of maintaining a healthy life/work balance, which as you know dear reader has been one of my personal challenges. It was extraordinarily helpful to hear the details of other people's struggles with this increasingly prevalent  modern phenomenon, and draw on their solutions.

SlowWork, a concept with connections to the SlowFood movement, is another positive response to this cultural addiction to speed. It's not about going backwards or doing things "at a snail's pace", they say, but about changing gears and finding a way to work that's less driven and destructively focused on quanity rather than quality; giving ourselves the space to cultivate our professional relationships, the time for the rest and recuperation that's needed to support our physical and mental health so that we can do our best. In other words, bringing a different quality of presence to our work.

During my walk this morning I was listening to a podcast from Oprah's Book Club, where Eckhart Tolle was talking about opportunities to bring more mindfulness into our everyday work practices. He suggested two simple exercises. One, take something that occurs all the time; the phone rings, say, and instead of racing to pick it up, let it go for an extra ring or two. Take that time as a reminder to be present with this moment, and begin the call from that place.

Tolle's other suggestion was one of my own favorite "tricks" - keep something beautiful next to you on your desk - a flower, perhaps - and periodically look up from the computer screen to rest your gaze on it.

Another thing I do is to light a candle before phone calls with my clients. They might not even know I'm doing it, but it reminds me that the person I am speaking to is holy, a human being worthy of my utmost care and attention. For some clients, this is a ritual they partake in as well, and we start our calls with a moment's silence followed by a brief 'check-in' so that anything that would distract or effect our work together is spoken and shared openly. It also helps to create the intimacy and connection that feeds creative collaboration and produces extraordinary results.

Do you have practices to help you stay centered as you go about your work? What are they?

Mary Oliver's Poetry

Las night I went to hear the legendary poet Mary Oliver read. It warmed my heart to see the hall packed for this white-haired woman whose philosophy after all is so simple - kindness and attention to beauty are its main principles.

When asked about her daily practice, Oliver said she wakes every morning to witness (my word) the dawn and give thanks for another day, then she eats breakfast, takes a walk with her dog Percy, and works for 3-4 hours, at which point she is tired. Hers sounds pretty much like a perfect life to me.

Mary Oliver is one of those old-fashioned wordsmiths who doesn't use a computer - she writes her drafts and revises them on a notepad before transcribing the finished work on a series of old typewriters (if they stop working she lets them rest under her chair for a few weeks, when, she says, they are almost always miraculously healed and ready to go again).

From her latest volume, Red Bird, "Invitation":

Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude–
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in this broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

The red bird motif runs through this sweet book of love like a red thread of inspiration, ending finally with the poem Red Bird Explains Himself.

Dreaming

Last week about this time I emerged from a four-day Dreaming ceremony in the Santa Cruz mountains I have been doing every year with FireHawk and Pele of Resonance.

This time has become very important to me, as a way to re-calibrate myself with the natural rhythm of nature and the seasons and give myself a chance to re-align with my own internal pace. Entering this dance with time gives me a rare opportunity to slow down and reflect, to remember who I am beneath the busi-ness of my everyday life.

Co-Creation

The always delightful Barbara Marx Hubbard has an intriguing theory about why we sometimes "click" with each other in such profoundly generative ways ...

I've often experienced the thrill of creative communion she talks about, and I love the provocative twinkle in her eyes when she names it as she sees it. Of course we'd all be feeling pretty good too, if we'd stimulated as much vocational arousal in the world as she has. :-) What a Beauty!