It’s our first Sunday back in South Africa
after a short break in the UK. I guess Sunday is a good day for confessions. I
confess. I own up. It’s true. A year ago I downloaded Kindle on to the ipad and…..well,
I’ve used it a lot. Living out of a suitcase for so long forces the issue to be
honest.
So what am I reading at the moment? And
what is helping me and what isn’t? Steve Miles put me onto Words To Live By (Easwaran) last week and Jane & I have loved
the breadth, simplicity and depth of these paragraph-a-day quotes and insights.
“We don’t have to say to Joy, ‘Excuse me, will you please come to my house’…when we seek a
higher goal for the welfare of others Joy
will come and put her suitcase down and say ‘I am going to be here, whether you
like it or not’ “
The
Intangibles Of Leadership (Davis) has so far taken me
through discussions on Wisdom, Will, Emotional Maturity and next will be
Integrity, a subject I have wrestled with deeply over the past few years. I
guess what I am doing even as I write about books I am reading is part of the
synthesizing and the getting of wisdom.
The
Power Of Now (Tolle). Finally, after years of
recommendation I have started this book. The fullness of my potential is
layered out by years of my ego-self. Tolle had a revelation of his potential
that for most of us would take a lifetime, but what it does is give him a clear
vision of our potential, what is possible, to call and steer others to.
Creative
Schools (Robinson) We love this guy and we are
especially awake to the issues of education with the development of our own
schools programme Lead Now. We started
reading this this morning as it was only published this week. What does he believe in?
- - the value of the individual
- - the right to self determination
- - our potential to evolve and live a fulfilled life
- - the importance of civic responsibility and respect for others.
So what is the purpose of education?
- - to enable students to understand the world around them
- - to understand the talents within them
- - to be fulfilled individuals
- - to be active, compassionate citizens
“To understand the world around them”…what
a creative approach to the curriculum and what a healthy frame to present to
pupils at the start of each lesson – “hey pupil, this lesson is here to add to your
understanding of how the world you are growing up in, works".
Revolution (Russell Brand). This is a much longer book than we expected, but we are constantly surprised by him in wonderful ways. It remains for us an intelligent, funny and movingly honest journey (Don’t judge this man by what you read in the papers. Please!)
The
Locust Effect (Haugen) remains for me the most
important book to be published in the past 12 months (Al Gore’s book The Future got my vote the year before). This has been so challenging to read. So
painful at times, we could only read small chunks. But he is writing about
where we live and work each day – the lives of the most poor and challenged
people. This book has definitely shaped my thinking more than any other about
what we do each day in our work and has focused my thinking about the role of
violence and security in the world of the poor. It has pushed me back to my old
friends Amarta Sen, Tim Jackson and Martha Nussbaum on security being one of
the major planks of human flourishing.
Overrated
(Cho) “Are we more in
love with the idea of making a difference, than actually doing something to
make a difference?” This says it
all really, doesn’t it? We keep on coming back to this question for
ourselves. Do we talk a better game than
the one we actually play?
Malcolm Guite’s books Word In The Wilderness & The
Singing Bowl unexpectedly, via the late Kate Gross and Late Fragments, led
us through Lent to actually having coffee with Malcolm in Cambridge exactly two
weeks ago.
The
Clapham Sect (Tomkins) has been such an enriching
journey. We all know of Wilberforce but not of the 3 generations of amazing
philanthropists that surrounded him.
Wilberforce’s commitment to social change over decades of patience just
never fails to inspire and challenge me about what is worth fighting for, is
worth a life times work. This book came
to me from a talk I heard where a man asked the question ‘how much do you need
to actually live on?..…then give away the rest’.
This was exactly how the Clapham Sect lived.
Architects
Of Poverty (Mbeki). The late Mbeki’s son challenges
the historic roots of poverty in Africa. The extractive drive of the colonials
was adopted by the new post colonial African leaders. The Brits filled their
pockets from Africa’s riches and now the new leaders are doing the same. You
reap what you sow. It’s a more personal perspective on a read two years ago of Why Nations Fail.
Mans
Search For Meaning (Frankl). I came back to this
book last month because I was reignited to follow through the thought about
Frankl’s (who survived Auschwitz) insight that the last human dignity is mans
ability to choose what he believes about him/herself. When all is stripped away
(as it was for Frankl), we still have our own thoughts, we alone can create meaning. No one can take that from us.
In a previous blog I talked about my
reading around the Quakers so I wont go into that again here. There are other
books I’ve started and have not yet finished – Pioneering the Possible (Elsworthy), In Gods Hands (Tutu), One
Taste (Wilber), A Path Appears
(Kristoff), Reconcile (Lederach), Coherence (Watkins)
So what do I see as I reflect on all of
this reading?
- A hunger for new thoughts, new
perspectives.
- People with big hearts and potential to
change a bit of the world, matched by their need to grow internally.
Reading is feeding, nourishing heart mind
soul and spirit.
Reading is a journey following a scent,
hints laid down like tracks in a forest, not sure where they are going, but the
scent has a life of its own. It calls me. It is like the river flowing, cutting
its own course. Reading is participating in a journey that is nourishing,
illuminating, enriching and yet unknown. But that’s ok. You can trust each book…
it calls you through.
Finishing a book is unimportant. Being
nourished, keeping the food fresh and alive, not stale, is what matters. A book
is just part of the thread – large or small – that I can complete or return to
when I need it and my soul instinctively knows when to go back and recover an
old passage, discover a new passage in an old book, or simply reach out and
reach forwards through a new book – undeterred by whether that book will help
or not. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. Park it. It may return another day
when its time is right – or it may not.
What is important is to stay in the river,
stay in the flow of the reading, stay inspiring, breathing in fresh air,
thinking new thoughts, having new insights, new horizons, new challenges and
stretch – or just go back for reminding and refreshing of some old words that
need hearing in a new way, or just old words, like comforting old socks, warm,
familiar, allowing me to recalibrate before moving on.
- TW
