Artist-Leader

I posted the first blog as The Sustainist exactly one year ago.  Fifty-two posts later, I am still writing.  As I revisit the year of sharing with my readers, I realized I was trying to describe something that is not yet fully realized.  I could see the connections here and there and I shared them, but I have not yet able to see the full picture of this “Spirituality for Sustainable Communities in a Networked World.”  

Here are some of the blog posts’ titles from last year: Do More with Less, Waste=Resouce, Network Globally-Connect Locally, Ancient-Future-Now, Facilitate like Water, Darkness Is Not Dark, Fear-Miner, Holy Currencies, GracEconomics. As a writer, sometimes I arrived at ideas that the conventional English language does not have existing words to describe.  So, I create new words by connecting words that had not be coupled or combined before.  The presence of hyphenated words and intentional coupling of previously un-related words are indications of the emergence of something new - new concept, idea, identity, experience, organization, community that is so new that we have to invite new words and phrases to describe.

Matthew Fox in his classic book, A Spirituality Named Compassion: and the Healing of the Global Village, Humpty Dumpty and Us, wrote, “The very heart of being creative is seeing relations between matter and from that no one has ever imagined before or that people deeply want and need to see.” 

Jesus was an artist in that he connected the concept of the messiah with suffering and dying and giving up of himself for others.  When he spoke of these connections, even his friends were not able to accept it until the whole gospel story was lived out. This is the risk an artist-leader takes.

In this sense, I have tried to be an artist-leader this last year by seeing and sharing the relations among people, resources, technologies, money, concepts and ideas that would create sustainable community. In other words, I am trying to describe the sustainist which, in itself, is a vision that is not yet fully described.  And I hope these are things that people want or need to see. I am still still writing weekly because there are many more connections to be made.  

 

Invite members of your community to gather and explore new connections. Invite participants to brainstorm a list of things that they are doing well within their community. Invite them to brainstorm a list of places where people gather in the neighborhood/town/city. Select randomly one item from 1) and one item from 2) and invite participants to create a new vision of how they can share what they do well with others in the neighborhood. Do a few more and invite participants to be as creative a possible without worrying about financial and other constraints. Invite participant to consider the following question: As a result of attempting to make connections today, what am I called to do?

Reflection Questions for 2nd Sunday of Lent (Year B) Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16    How did you learn from this story about covenant with God? Psalm 22:22-30   What are the reasons for us to pray God as expressed in this psalm? Romans 4:13-15   What does it mean to have faith? Mark 8:31-38   How does this story challenge your idea of a savior?

Eric H. F. Law
Kaleidoscope Institute
For competent leadership in a diverse changing world
www.kscopeinstitute.org

Come to Los Angeles in 2012 to study with The Sustainist, the first  two opportunities: February 27–March 2, 2012 Kaleidoscope Winter Institute Holy Currencies Conversations on Money and Sustainable Ministry March 14–18, 2012 Face to Face Seeing and Hearing Each Other . . . Knowing God Creative liturgy & music for a diverse and changing world An ecumenical gathering of church leaders to create worship experiences that are authentic, relational and missional

Comments

[Wendy Maclean]

Eric, I love the way you are open to the playfulness of random connections. THANK YOU for naming the risk the artist takes--and imagining Jesus as an artist. Gerard Manley Hopkins paired odd words together to ctreate marvellous images and musical phrases that transcend orderly ideas. A "sustainist" would have to know how to make something new out of failure or mistakes--and the artist knows the messiness is part of the process. During this season of Lent we have a glimpse of something not yet fully realized--but it is gleaming, like a puddle in the desert after rain--("to see the world in a grain of sand") Thank you, Eric, for your work, and for sharing your reflections.