09.23.07

leader as listener??

Posted in formation, leadership at 7:07 am by len

I woke this morning, lying in bed in a very cool house, thinking about leadership, spirituality, and change.

I woke from a dream where Bruce Cockburn was sitting at my table. He had these huge Celtic sideburns. And it was as if he was there incognito. I recognized him and he laughed and said, “Yeah, well, I am supposed to be at this gig but really I just wanted a good conversation and a meal.”

Lying in bed snuggling with my wife, appreciating the warmth of our bed while the house was cold, and the gift of the moment as I listened to the rhythm of her breathing…

I thought, “leader as listener?” Poppycock. What nut will buy this idea?

Leadership — so obviously — is about change. That involves action and risk and direction. Leader as listener?

But the connecting point is this: we don’t know much about change. Yes, we know a little. Part of what we know is that there is rarely a one to one correspondence between our acts and the effects. In the post Einstein world of Heisenberg and Schrodinger, in the world of probabilities and uncertainty, change is more a mystery than ever. As soon as we nail down the position of a particle, we no longer know its speed; as soon as we measure its speed, we can no longer know its position. Practical realities, these…

So, in between cause and effect is mystery. In between leadership and change is a shadow and a gap. In that place between the sea and the foam.. we need spirituality. We need the ability to embrace mystery, and a level of comfort with paradox. We know that it is not our efforts that will bring the kingdom — that our part, while important, remains mysterious and small. We know that Oscar Romero was right. We know that Dag Hammarskjold was on to something. We know that Dame Julian was right when she said, “All manner of thing shall be well..” and that TS Eliot was right when he wrote, “At the still point, there is only the dance.”

And I remember a lesson I learned as a fishing guide. There is a way to catch a fish with your hands, and it involves paradox. Hold too tightly and you activate the slime on the scales and it swims away. Grip too loosely and it slips between your fingers. There is this way between cause and effect, between meditative and calculative, and it is the way of love, or the way of prayer. It is the way of the Spirit in the world.

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