Sunday, October 21, 2007

Want to be interviewed?


Hi! I'm beginning to research a new project on the dynamics and effects of conversation. I've created a simple survey--would you be willing to participate? It shouldn't take more than 5 minutes. All responses are confidential (I don't ask anything scary, anyway) and if I choose to quote you, I'll send you an e-mail message asking your permission first.

Here's the link, and thanks for helping!

Click here to take the Conversation survey

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Seed and Surround


It occurred to me this morning, as I was thinking about the big, orange-yellow cosmos that have replanted themselves in a new area of the flower bed, that for all the magic and wonder that a seed contains, it can't grow itself without an environment.

The seed contains all that miraculous oak-in-a-molecule amazement, but it will just sit there, on your desk, quiet and self-contained, and not growing, until you (or somebody, or nature) put it in the moist dirt and cover it safe and snug. The potential for life and growth, and maybe life itself, in some kind of coded, genetic possibility, exists in the seed, but it doesn't take on a sense of real life, growing and changing and pushing up through the soil, until it has an environment that supports it.

This thought is a new one for me, and really powerful. Maybe until we have a supportive environment, an environment that's condusive to our growth--physically, emotionally, spiritually--we are just coded for possibility but not able to manifest it. I see how this has been true for me--so many ideas, so many desires, so many hopes, but few realized the way I envisioned them, maybe because I didn't understand the missing ingredient: an environment supportive to their growth. I can see why the last few years of my life have been about creating a nurturing, honoring, peaceful space. I see how vital that is in a completely new way today. Thanks, God!