Craig in the news today: Transformation 1963 to 2013

---

"I knew my life would be forever changed. I hadn't bargained on transformation in its very essence."

---

Letter of the Day (Aug. 28): March on Washington

I was a 17-year-old self-proclaimed “jock” from suburban New Jersey when a friend asked me to join her synagogue on a civil-rights march in Washington. With parental support, I ventured forth.

Our bus arrived early, so I walked the reflecting pool to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I witnessed the preparations and eventually the speakers and singers, and ultimately saw the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver the “I have a Dream” speech.

Separated from my group and hemmed into place by the crowd on the steps, I knew my life would be forever changed. I hadn’t bargained for transformation in its very essence.

As King spoke, I turned away to the watch the sea of people spreading across the mall and beyond, and I fixated on a man in a black suit, black tie and hat with a sign that I believe said “We Shall Overcome.”

My lasting impression was that this man and others dressed in their elegant best, with tears streaming down their faces, smiling and saying “amen” after each phrase. I knew at that moment that my life’s work would be for the sake of service to a dream of a better world.

CRAIG NEAL, Minneapolis

The writer is cofounder of Heartland Inc., a social enterprise organization, and is a former publisher of Utne Reader magazine.

---

This was passed on to Patricia by a friend on her 60th

Photo Credit: Craig Neal

---

Prophets of a Future Not Our Own

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view...

We all plant the seed that one day will grow.

We water the seeds already planted, knowing that they hold promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces efforts far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything.

---

Knowing this enables us to do something, and to do it well.

Our work may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way.

Our actions present an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are the workers, not master builders.

We are ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

Amen.

—Attributed to Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador (1917-1980), possibly original to Bishop Ken Untener

---

AoC Reviews

Photo Credit: Craig Neal

---

8/23/13: The Spiritual Collective Daily: Taste of Convening: scroll down to "Education"

8/6/13: Yorkshire Post: Business Diary: August 6
Have you ever been stuck in a meeting that went on for hours and achieved nothing? Well, Yorkshire-based leadership coach Tilla Brook says she is on a mission to banish unproductive, boring meetings.
She claims she is the “first certified convenor in the UK” – convening, as defined by Brook, is “the art and science of gathering and holding people for the sake of the best possible outcome”.

7/29/13 Kelly Castor @Velldr #FF Fantastic #Leadership resources from this week:@kevinjdean @mikemyatt @leadfearlessly @heartlandcircle

March 2013, CRISI E SVILUPPO MANAGERITALIA: The Art of Convening, or the art of managing meetings

---

Last minute discount! One more spot available...

Photo Credit: Craig Neal

---

Last minute discount! One more spot available >  

We are looking for one more father & son duo to join us on the next Fathers & Sons Wilderness Journey departing on September 1st.

We are willing to offer registration for this "Journey of a Lifetime" at "cost plus".

 Call or email us now to secure this incredible last minute deal:

Phone: 612.920.3039 (office)

Email: craig@heartlandcircle.com

 _________________________________________________________

 This is the perfect opportunity to join 3 other father & son duos who are on a lifelong journey of cultivating powerful, fulfilling and nurturing relationships with each other.

 http://heartlandcircle.com/MWJ-main.htm 

---

What has changed the course of your life?...

---

Craig was interviewed yesterday by Minnesota Public Radio for an upcoming program on the 50th anniversary of the "March on Washington, Aug. 28, 1963, which he attended as a 17-year-old, and was profoundly impacted by.

The interview prompted these questions for Craig to offer to you:

Conversation 1: Speak to a seminal event in your life that transformed you and/or changed the course of your life.
Conversation 2: Is that shift alive in you today and, if so, speak to how it is taking form in your life.
Conversation 3: How are you bringing your aliveness into the world at this time? What is the vehicle for your offering?

---

And the sun rose...

---

An offering from Craig: A Minneapolis/ Lake Calhoun sunrise ...

---

Heading North: Father/Son/Grandson Trip

PHoto credit: craig neal

---

Craig, Alec, and grandsons Henri and Charlie preparing for a long weekend in the BWCA. We will leave from Sawbill Outfitter, heading north on some of the same lakes and portages we will cover on September 1 for the 1st-ever Father/Son Journey.

6 fathers and sons are ready to journey September 1-7 (Craig/Alec, Jim/Jules, Joe/Justin). We invite one more Father/Son duo to join us.

The next group Community Call is Mon. 8/26, 12-1pm Central.

If you are interested in knowing more or registering, Click here to email Craig or call Patricia at 612-889-5812!

---

Taste of Convening: your participation wanted

Click here to register

---

Dear Friends,

Join Craig and Patricia on any of the upcoming AoC Taste of Convening Maestro calls.

WHAT IS THE TASTE OF CONVENING? Each 1-hour informational Maestro conference call is a blend of interaction and engagement with Craig, originator of The Art of Convening Trainings. You will learn about how the 9 Aspects of the Convening Wheel can transform your engagements and relationships. Plus, learn new developments and opportunities in The Art of Convening Trainings and Graduate Community.

Aug 7 - Aug 12 - Aug 14 - Aug 20 - Aug 22

7-8am PT, 9-10am CT, 10-11am ET, 15-16 GMT

Click here to register and join us: http://heartlandcircle.com/AOC/aoc-taste-of-convening.htm

---

Patricia speaks at Business Book meeting

Photo credit: Daniel Scotton

---

Minneapolis Book Events: A Business Book Bonanza of Minnesota Based Authors

In January, we started something called the Business Book Breakfast — and groups of 25-50 exciting, high energy, curious and fun people have gathered at 6:45 AM the 4th Wednesday of every month, to share thoughts and ideas about five very amazing books.

I decided we needed something more relaxing for the last, hazy days of summer, so we’re now meeting from 4:30-6pm (with a cash bar, lovely passed hors d’ouevres, plus FREE parking). Up next:

Wednesday, July 24, 4:30 – 6pm

This month, Minneapolis Book Events will be featuring 5 local authors, each sharing short snippets of their books and allowing time for book signings (and buying). Included authors are:

Al Watts, 

Navigating Integrity

Ralph Jacobson, 

Leading for a Change

Gary Cohen, 

Just Ask Leadership

Manny Steil, 

Listening Leaders

Patricia Neal, 

The Art of Convening

• Location: The Minneapolis Club, Main Lounge on the 1st Floor
• 4:30-5:40pm  Facilitated session; 5:40-6pm  More time for informal conversations.
• Cost: $15-passed appetizers, cash bar, free parking. Prepayment required.
• Non-Club members welcomed!

RSVP: 

Online

 or Call the Club (612) 332-2292

Guests Encouraged.

---

I have to Shine!

Photo Credit: Craig Neal

---

Yesterday I awoke to take this breathtaking image of the sun rising through our front door over Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. May it and poem below inspire your day today!

Solar

On a gray day, when the sun

has been abducted, and it’s chill

end-of-the-world weather,

I must be the sun.

I must be the one

to encourage the young

sidetracked physicist

working his father’s cash register

to come up with a law of nature

that says brain waves can change

the dismal sky.  I must be the one

to remind the ginger plant

not to rest on the reputation

of its pungent roots, but to unveil

those buttery tendrils from the other world.

When the sky is an iron lid

I must be the one to simmer

in the piquant juices of possibility,

though the ingredients are unknown

and the day begins with a yawn.

I must issue forth a warmth

without discrimination, and any guarantee

it will come back to me.

On a dark day I must be willing

to keep my disposition light,

I have to be at the very least

on stray intact ray

of local energy, one small

but critical fraction

of illumination.  Even on a day

that doesn’t look gray

but still lacks comfort or sense,

I have to be the sun,

I have to shine as if

sorry life itself depended on it.

I have to make all the difference.

~ Thomas Centolella ~

(Views from along the Middle Way)

---

Good Morning! Being alive

photo credit: Daniel Scotton

---

We had an 8 inch snowfall here on Lake Calhoun yesterday. The grace of the sunrise this morning is a gift we share with you.

Craig & Patricia

---

Here comes the Sun! Gifts of the morning

photo credit: Craig Neal

---

I've been shooting sunrise photos thiswinter from our home on Lake Calhoun in downtown Minneapolis. And what to my wondrous eyes should appear each morning, but this miraculous sphere of energy that brings us such joy and sustains life. Here is todays gift, as shot through our icy storm window, along with a poem by Mary Oliver.

Craig Neal

Hello, sun in my face.

Hello, you who make the morning

and spread it over the fields

and into the faces of the tulips

and the nodding morning glories,

and into the windows of, even, the

miserable and the crotchety—

best preacher that ever was,

dear star, that just happens

to be where you are in the universe

to keep us from ever darkness,

to ease us with warm touching,

to hold us in the great hands of light—

good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day

in happiness, in kindness.

Mary Oliver

---

Wednesday Wisdom (or Wit) from Heartland: Your Life Catches Fire

---

John Squadrea, from The Compass of the Rose

When you die to what

you thought was true

everything in your life catches fire.

You are the instrument

not the music

If you think you are the music

you will stop at

the final bar

If you become an instrument

for the music,

you will go on playing

no matter where you are

or who’s conducting

the gig is never over. 

The heart is always singing

Yes.

The mind is always shouting

No. 

Between the two

we come and go

safe on the solid shore of maybe. 

---

Wednesday Wisdom (or Wit) from Heartland: Love and The Art of Convening

Photo Credit: Craig Neal

---

Love and The Art of Convening

by Cindy Wold

I started a graduate program this fall and am interested in carrying “love” as a scholarly topic of study and as a theme for my program. As I research this topic I am finding many others who are taking love as a serious phenomenon worthy of understanding for the sake of human wellbeing and effective relationships. The time seems right to dig deeper into this subject.

I find myself, still, passionately interested in studying the meaning and practice of love. I say “still” because this is not a new interest. It has its roots in many life experiences, in reading and study and, surprisingly, in the co-authoring of The Art of Convening!

Many years ago I read Erich Fromm’s classic book, The Art of Loving. In the book, Dr. Fromm posits that love is a not simply a sensation we may or may not be lucky enough to feel, but is indeed an art which one must study and practice to master. In the book he gave advice on how to both recognize and practice the art of loving.

When I collaborated with Craig and Patricia on writing The Art of Convening book, I began to think about one of the practices of loving that Fromm presented in his book: the quality of concentration.

According to Dr. Fromm this meant attending very deliberately to what one was doing in the moment, and multitasking as little as possible. He also took it to mean that we avoid, as much as possible, what he labeled “trivial conversation.”

Avoiding trivial conversation doesn't mean that everything we talk about has to be of grave or overarching importance. It means that what we talk about be genuinely of interest and meaningful to us and our conversation partner(s) and not just an exchange of pithy clichés or memorized talking points. In other words, we are urged to bring our conversations into the realm of truth, genuineness and recognition of the other.

I began to realize that The Art of Convening was a book that described a detailed method for bringing exactly this condition of concentration into our conversations. So, to me, as I have practiced the Art of Convening in my life and work, I consider that I am also practicing love. And I think that whether we intend it or not, we all bring a practice of love to our meetings, gatherings and conversations when we use the Art of Convening to create the quality of authentic engagement.

Do you have an experience of bringing the quality of love to your everyday work and life? Are there practices that you have discovered? Has the Art of Convening made a difference in the quality of your relationships? I'd love to hear from you and, if you're interested, would be happy to send links to some of my research.

Cynthia (Cindy) Wold is a Co-author of "The Art of Convening: Authentic Engagement in Meetings, Gatherings, and Conversations"

---

Miracle of a Single Flower

Bedside-roses

---

"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change."

---

~ Buddha

via www.beautydialogues.com

From friend Amy Lenzo, Beauty Dialogues

---

Wednesday Wisdom (or Wit) from Heartland

Photo Credit: Craig Neal

---

"Reading and writing poetry can exercise that capacity, improving one's ability to better conceptualize the world and communicate it — through presentations or writing — to others."

---

HBR Blog Network
The Benefits of Poetry for Professionals
by John Coleman  | November 27, 2012

Wallace Stevens was one of America's greatest poets. The author of "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"and "The Idea of Order at Key West" was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955 and offered a prestigious faculty position at Harvard University. Stevens turned it down. He didn't want to give up his position as Vice President of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company.

This lyrically inclined insurance executive was far from alone in occupying the intersect of business and poetry. 

Dana Gioia, a poet, Stanford Business School grad, and former General Foods executive, notes that T.S. Eliot spent a decade at Lloyd's Bank of London; and many other poets including James Dickey, A.R. Ammons, and Edmund Clarence Stedman navigated stints in business.

I've written in the past about how business leaders should be readers, but even those of us prone to read avidly often restrict ourselves to contemporary nonfiction or novels. By doing so, we overlook a genre that could be valuable to our personal and professional development: poetry. Here's why we shouldn't.

For one, poetry teaches us to wrestle with and simplify complexity. Harman Industries founder Sidney Harman once told The New York Times, "I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers. Poets are our original systems thinkers. They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand." Emily Dickinson, for example, masterfully simplified complex topics with poems like "Because I could not stop for Death," and many poets are similarly adept. Business leaders live in multifaceted, dynamic environments. Their challenge is to take that chaos and make it meaningful and understandable. Reading and writing poetry can exercise that capacity, improving one's ability to better conceptualize the world and communicate it — through presentations or writing — to others.

Poetry can also help users develop a more acute sense of empathy. In the poem "Celestial Music,"for example, Louise Glück explores her feelings on heaven and mortality by seeing the issue through the eyes of a friend, and many poets focus intensely on understanding the people around them. In January of 2006, the Poetry Foundation released a landmark study, "Poetry in America,"outlining trends in reading poetry and characteristics of poetry readers. The number one thematic benefit poetry users cited was "understanding" — of the world, the self, and others. They were even found to be more sociable than their non-poetry-using counterparts. And bevies of new research show that reading fiction and poetry more broadly develops empathy. Raymond Mar, for example, has conducted studies showing fiction reading is essential to developing empathy in young children (PDF) and empathy and theory of mind in adults (PDF). The program in Medical Humanities & Arts (PDF) even included poetry in their curriculum as a way of enhancing empathy and compassion in doctors, and the intense empathy developed by so many poets is a skill essential to those who occupy executive suites and regularly need to understand the feelings and motivations of board members, colleagues, customers, suppliers, community members, and employees.

---

"As [I rose] in business ... I felt I had an enormous advantage over my colleagues because I had a background in imagination, in language and in literature."

---

Reading and writing poetry also develops creativity. In an interview with Knowledge@Wharton, the aforementioned Dana Gioia says, "As [I rose] in business ... I felt I had an enormous advantage over my colleagues because I had a background in imagination, in language and in literature." Noting that the Greek root for poetry means "maker," Dana emphasizes that senior executives need not just quantitative skills but "qualitative and creative" skills and "creative judgment," and feels reading and writing poetry is a route to developing those capabilities. Indeed, poetry may be an even better tool for developing creativity than conventional fiction. Clare Morgan, in her book What Poetry Brings to Business, cites a study showing that poems caused readers to generate nearly twice as many alternative meanings as "stories," and poetry readers further developed greater "self-monitoring" strategies that enhanced the efficacy of their thinking processes. These creative capabilities can help executives keep their organizations entrepreneurial, draw imaginative solutions, and navigate disruptive environments where data alone are insufficient to make progress.

Finally, poetry can teach us to infuse life with beauty and meaning. A challenge in modern management can be to keep ourselves and our colleagues invested with wonder and purpose. AsSimon Sinek and others have documented, the best companies and people never lose a sense of why they do what they do. Neither do poets. In her Nobel lecture "The Poet and the World," Wislawa Szymborska writes:

The world — whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence ... is astonishing ...

Granted, in daily speech, where we don't stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like "the ordinary world," "ordinary life," "the ordinary course of events" ... But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.

What if we professionals cultivated a similar outlook? We might find our colleagues more hopeful and purposeful and our work revitalized with more surprise, meaning, and beauty.

Poetry isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to every business problem. There are plenty of business leaders who've never read poetry and have been wholly successful. But to those open to it, reading and writing poetry can be a valuable component of leadership development.

---

Wednesday Wisdom (or Wit) from Heartland

Photo Credit: Craig Neal

---

Innovation Anyone? 
The word innovation derives from the Latin word innovates, which is the noun form of innovare "to renew or change," stemming from in—"into" + novus—"new". 

Heartland programs are often considered an innovation or imagination super-boost. 

How are you allowing time for your imagination and innate innovation to emerge?

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
Albert Einstein

Going forward, we are convinced, the world increasingly will be divided between high imagination-enabling countries, which encourage and enable the imagination and extras of their people, and low imagination-enabling countries, which suppress or simply fail to develop their people’s creative capacities and abilities to spark new ideas, start up new industries and nurture the own “extra.”  America has been the world’s leading high imagination-enabling country and now it needs to become hyper-high-imagination-enabling society.  
That Used to Be Us by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, 2011

---

"US employers rate creativity/innovation among the top five skill that will increase in importance over."

---

that next five years, and stimulating innovation/creativity and enabling entrepreneurship is among the top 10 challenges of U.S. CEO’s.
Ready to Innovate New York: Conference Board, 2008

Increasingly in the twenty-first century, what you know is far less important than what you can do with what you know.  The interest in and ability to create new knowledge to solve new problems is the single most important skill that all students must master today.  All successful innovators have mastered the ability to learn on their own “in the moment” and then apply that knowledge in new ways.
Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner, 2012

This is our generations Sputnik moment…We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially in clean energy technology –an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people…In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives, it’s how we make a living.  We need to outinnovate, outeducate and outbuild the rest of the world.
2011 State of the Union Address, President Obama

---

Martin Luther King

Photo credit: Jeronimo Bernot

---

Lord, who can be trusted with power,

and who may act in your place?

Those with a passion for justice,

who speak the truth from their hearts;

who have let go of selfish interests

and grown beyond their own lives;

who see the wretched as their family

and the poor as their flesh and blood.

They alone are impartial

and worthy of the people's trust.

Their compassion lights up the whole earth,

and their kindness endures forever.

(A Book of Psalms, translations by Stephen Mitchell)

Thank you to Panhala

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive <http://www.panhala.net/Archive/In_Memory_of_MLK.html>  

---

Wednesday Wisdom (or Wit) from Heartland

Photo Credit: Craig Neal

A friend sent this link not long ago. It's a light touch to a serious subject.

Follow the Frog

---

You don't have to go to the ends of the Earth to save the rainforest. Just Follow the Frog! The Rainforest Alliance is a nonprofit conservation organization that holds Charity Navigator's highest rating of Four Stars.

What's behind the green frog seal? Only farms that meet rigorous sustainability criteria earn the right to use the Rainforest Alliance Certified seal. These criteria address all of the three pillars of sustainability -- environmental protection, social equity and economic viability -- and farms are evaluated by independent, third-party auditors. Learn more about Rainforest Alliance Certificationand its impacts.

---

The Art of Opening the Circle to be in Essential Conversation

Photo Credit: Craig Neal

---

Continuing the journey around the Convening Wheel, we find ourselves at the 7th Aspect, Essential Conversation, which allows for meaningful exchange in an atmosphere of trust and lays the groundwork for the 8th Aspect, Creation, to be possible.

We are now ready for something new to emerge from the authentic engagement of the group.

• Margaret Wheatley says, “Conversation is how humans think together.” "Opening the circle," by allowing for reflections and comments from anyone in the group who feels compelled to speak, we can process what we have heard and allow something that is more than the sum of the parts to emerge.  Conversation is most powerful when personal story telling and deep listening are present.  It is also about surfacing all that arises out of the listening and sharing process in a mindful and respectful way:

- We can sense the “questions that lie beneath the questions” to let emerge what is essential.

- We can become aligned with what is at the Heart of the Matter as a collectivegroup – expressing shared core values and vision. 

• In Opening the Circle we are continually evoking a WISDOM that comes through our collective consciousness.
• We are also in a practice of mirroring back what it is that has touched us deeply in what was shared.
• This is also a time for participants to feel heard, to learn how their words have “landed” for another and to have thoughts reflected back to them from a different perspective (or several different perspectives).
• It is also in this type of respectful conversation that the creative process blossoms and takes flight.  We build on each other’s word offerings and something magicalhappens.

Guidelines for Essential Conversation:

#1: When someone wishes to speak have them introduce themselves beginning with, “I am... (insert their name here)”

#2: When the person speaking is done speaking have them notify the group by saying, "I am complete" or "I have spoken."

#3: Interruptions are not allowed in this form.

#4: Ask for deep listening so the group can hold the space for differences. This is the primary function of this type of conversation.

#5: Be attentive to the pace of the conversation, allowing for silence and pauses between speakers. Silence can seem uncomfortable to many, but the absence of noise also has the potential to be an incredibly generative space for new ideas to take shape.

This structure reinforces our sense of safety, and gives us the freedom toexplore new ways of thinking and being together and ultimately allows for creation to occur.

---