Balance – Page 3 – Bartels' Universe

May 19, 2019May 19, 2019

Signal Path… Logic Path

A signal path is that set of connections to allow the origin to get to the receptor.

The logic path… is a set of decisions that may support this set …

The two are not the same. Yet, often, we use a planning logic path to describe a set of signal path connections…

Without understanding the rest of the story.

Emphasis … on the wrong tool for the project at hand.

So… surprise, the tool and the project are at odds. The administrators of the tool and the administrators of the project speak in languages foreign to each other and the outcome is a set of language where the project and process become expert at being for what it is against.

Rinse and repeat.

A mime walked into a bar and asked for a beer… the barkeep said… huh?

April 10, 2019April 10, 2019

Narrative Riptide and Shifting Tides

Listening to the narrative of so many. Voices speaking in the best and of ways … the life experience of so much narrative. Tides running this way and that… Rolling over, pulling under… the twisting rip of tide. A story made up for me … then a narrative of life experience as lived. The two, at times as a rip across a rising or receding tide.

Waking one morning, butt in chair, writing. Writing as a spilling waterfall. The fingers dancing over the keys and, as water, filling up and spilling over. Pouring as story. Pouring in narrative. Pouring down the steep mountain side and splashing in the rising and receding sea.

That same sea, slow tide rising, slow tide receding. In cycle with moon and sun… in cycle with spinning earth. Caps melting. Caps forming… a different sequence of tide. Belching gases… increase and decrease tide. The livingness of all creation… in pulse of tide. This sea narrative. This belching narrative. This caps forming and caps melting narrative. The heat of the air… making of a blast in storm… yet another narrative. A child born… a narrative. A dying down … another narrative. The experience of this or that… each a narrative. These tides of narrative… rip, and shift…

An image of sudden taking up. The story, laid down in years of telling. Suddenly in a living person, taken up. No longera story told … this moment a story lived. That narrative taken up. In the rising tide of taken up…

So, in this musing, the narrative of a breath taken. The narrative of a breath let out. The beating heart. The ticking clock… each sweep… another narrative. And all, the cacophony…

Should. Would. Could. In this moment, the still small voice speaks yes/and. A hand offered. A greeting of morning. A moment of uplifting as the altar of the world is in view. A prayer. A blessing. A giving of thanks. In these narratives… each a short story … a poem in a greater and lesser tide…

So the laying down and the taking up… in a moment of humble muse… the tides are calmed and run along in grand dance. In grand dance… even the rip is of a rising and receding tide. A rising and a receding… as a song, a psalm, a prayer… in still small voice. In a living moment. In all creation. Amen.

Lent 36

“No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” John 10:1-18

April 9, 2019April 9, 2019

Invitation; the altar in the world

“… ‘I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again?…” John 9:18-41

Perhaps in the severing … there is a moment of creating linking.

Perhaps … in the severing, there is the raising up … of the altar in the wide world.

Listening through a reading that my eyes say to my ears… A rationalization through reporting of an application of rules across the entire span of the world. Though the fact patterns of understanding and belief are different across the whole, still, the rule is applied. A set of rigid ‘knowing’ that, when applied … leads to formation of so many levels of shift.

In some places, it just means that those who would not or could not, follow the dictum… will disappear from the ranks of those in company. And so, now outside, will continue a relationship with all creation. The dictum, meant to keep pure, creates another linkage or path… one that creates a new set of relationships. The severing by dictum… creation of yet another set of faith links.

At the same time, reading about the faithful unchurched. A fine writing that talks about the mourning of the passing of a place that was formative… and now … coming to terms in that place of expectant projection that the ‘church’ need not be perfect. It just needs faithful servants. The deep and troubling sense that in a dying community, the plaintive desire to have faithful servants is a teaching of servitude… On is not the other.

Last night, enjoying the monthly men’s club. A throw back of a gathering that has some taint of misogyny… and yet, in the breaking of bread, the sharing of story, the gathering together in a jumble of community… sharing pictures of children, now grown… sharing stories… some are old saws… told so often that there is not a sentence that can be a surprise to most of the listeners… all of this in a gathering of men. The club; growing with added generations. It may not survive another ten years… yet, it is a gift in this moment.

When a narrative is demanded in explanation … sometimes there is something in the demand, the demand that a story become a description of … of a world that makes the listener more comfortable … yet, the narrative … our story, it is of our stones, our partners, our hits, our misses. It is that moment of … just being in a story that is of comfort in the face of … at times, great discomfort.

Walking through the doors of a church that was once home… and is home no more… even when that place is in this, the home town… it is something that appears to be a demand of faith. Yet, the greater altar in the world is a church that invites attendance in every moment.

I neighbor who performed a great service was at dinner last night. I asked if he was going to send me a bill for the service… “Are you kidding,” he replied? “It took me all of 20 minutes.” His gift of twenty minutes saved me hours of anguish. I great and faithful gift of community. A gift of neighbor. A gift of friend. That is my church. Imperfect. Full of mission in community. It is the sunrise. It is the sun set. It is the workplace. It is the mail carrier. It is a political machine working to a greater good. It is the arc of an ending of career, seeking legacy. It is the old order, holding on and making the rules more and more to preserve… It is the dancing of the dogs in the morning and the smile of a small child dancing in the hall outside my office cube. It is the altar of a friend’s son, watching a movie and laughing … twinkling of the eye. It is the sadness at an old friend’s passing. It is the lifting up of a college classmate as a grandchild comes into the world. It is the celebration of parents health and healing in the arc of aging. It is the passing of a year in the life of each child… it is all of these and so, so much more.

I miss the rubric of the service. I miss the comfort of the hymn and the wonder of a reading; read well. I miss the gathering of choir … the preparation of the anthem, the sharing of humor in the loft, the long discussion of a service… planning for a celebration… the wonder of a mass, concluded in silence and reverence… the gathering of children… the crying of a child where the entire congregation breathes comfort to partner parents… raising up this song of living… In the houses that are declared sacred, there seems little room for this lifting up. The easing away of a generation… in sacred sense… there is something … easing away.

This altar in the world is something of a mystery. The altar, constrained in a building is equally so. The dictum of each is the chasm of living both on the mountain top and in the canyon. The valley between is home. As too are the mountain tops. That tithe that is all of what I am, it is given in places of wonder. It is given in small and large … and returned in the same coin. The gift of all creation speaks in the most unusual moments… That place is … a moment of just so. Just so indeed.

And so, in narrative, that story made up… the gift of this dawning day is to muse in a story told and the demand to tell it again. This time, each element of the telling is honored and owned. The best in the moment. In that owning, there is also a sense of permission to celebrate at the altar in the world.

The church… the altar in the world. Amen, and amen.

April 7, 2019April 7, 2019

The putter of renewal

04-07-19 A ripple in the linkage across all creation

Sleep was filled with disjointed dreams. Dreams of connections, apparent; yet falling away as if a stage falling away from a speeding rocket. Spent and falling away. In olden times, that stage would then fall to the earth and be sunk in the sea as fodder from the sky. These days… the stage is landed and reused… sometimes.

We are in a time of sometimes. That transition of a from what to a to what… That wonder of links apparently broken and yet linked in so many ways … the falling away, in so many cases actually moving to a set of other links.

When the connection is all to … me; the shift is a wild pulling and tearing. Wild, at times painful and always a challenge. In the renewal this spring, of so many parts of my immediate world… that tearing and reconnecting is strong. The renewal of the plumbing. The renewal of the water system. The renewal of … each aspect of … means a tearing out and then a building back in. The opening of space to allow replacing, renewing, and finding path. The discerning of connections that worked at one time and now, with shift, no longer flow. In that discerning. … In that discerning there is an awakening to opportunity. Seeing what appeared sacred in a new set of ways. Just so… learning something beyond. That place of … It is a great and gracious moment. This wonder… indeed.

Feeling the work of the pulling and pushing… In yesterday’s renewal of space of tank house and garage. That making anew.

Now it is morning… actually, moving quickly to afternoon…

And the gratefulness of yesterday’s work, into today’s putter. The wonder of… just sitting in this moment. That is enough. In grateful moment… enough.

April 2, 2019April 2, 2019

How did … when did?

04-02-19 The crisp chill of morning.

The morning light … a surprise lays on the edge of the field. A great branch, clipped by the tractor, fallen from the tree… That sudden sense of … how did you come here? When did you come here? The great tracks leading both up to and away… yet, the branch, fallen to the ground, a surprise. The whole of the view is shifted for the opened area of the sky.

The ardent question. When did you come here? The whole of creation, has been here the whole time. When did the sudden seeing happen? To wake to that which has always been. That sudden awareness of the whole of … And then, once seen, not a possibility of unseeing.

This seeing or the breath; it is a gift of this morning. The sudden and always… come to a moment and breaking, as the sun rise, over all awareness.

With care. With blessing. With awe.

March 29, 2019March 29, 2019

What do you mean?

03-29-19 What do you mean?

Lent 24

“What do you mean by saying, “You will be made free”?” John 8:33-47

A friend sent me a business strategy for the census to get a complete count which he calls “cage and engage” … it is the basic principle of the dislocation of the American Japanese right after Perl Harbor. It also has echos of the Reservation movement/genocide, the Armenian genocide and the Nazi’s solution to the jewish problem. It speaks to every solution model of environmental or ecological preservation. It assumes the limits of the problem and describes a deployment that fits a certain set of criteria. Instead of engaging the elements of community that havea dynamic place. It assumes that the identification of a supernumerary goal… to count every countable person with accuracy, allows the dislocation or assumptive caging… The means to get to the end. The power over… the very reason that the count is a challenge to begin with. “We” in order to help the most of “Us” … invite “all of us” to use these tools to get to the complete count. Implicit in this is the “They”. The entrance to Auschwitz… work makes you free… “you will be made free…”

The pervasive feeling of wonder… to be invited to be of the elect to make this perfect complete count happen… The wonder of delivering so much value for so many… all through the idea of cage and engage. Each of the carefully cared for engagements… the very best of engagement… and the outcome… a ‘perfect’ complete count…

That moment of mistake when … this idea, rationalizes the idea of cage. To entrap in order to identify… We laugh at the long lines of entrapment at say… Disneyland. The fun of beginning to moo… or of the slow lines to get in to a sporting event… mooing again. The concerned security people gazing… or the wending path, carefully designed by Temple Grandin to ease the anxiety as a cow or pig walks to slaughter… All carefully managed for reduction of cost and enhancement of product. The value add…

I understand the thinking of my friend. It is the cost benefit analysis that is evident in every behavior that is undertaken by institutional thinking of late. The cost and benefit to get to the wonderful ‘better world’… the magic of … “And then a miracle occurs” that creates all of this value. The miracle is the vesting of authority or system to get the caging done. Once caged, a population is easy to count accurately. The value proposition is straight forward. The act of caging can be a benign act… the incarceration to get to the better place… We, the people… in order to form a more perfect union… require of each of us… to coming to be counted… The hooking together of a set of ideas to engage a set of behaviors which, in this benign … and … the information, the data, gathered will ‘serve’ the greater good. Giving up … to get latter … the sacred deal with the higher power.

The challenge is that there are the cagers and the caged. If we all are engaged in all of us… then there is not an inside and outside the cage. This inside/outside is the tension, the problem. My friend is always outside. The problem is always inside. There is a separation of the elect and the counted… mostly because his counting is at a different level than those who must be caged and engaged. The subtle art of giving authority to the intercessor. And then, having that leadership have a different set of rules… rules of engagement. The subtlety of an equality play that makes the count equal and the access to count a binary. Those who engage the count and those who need to be caged so that the count can be imposed upon them. They who engage and those who must needs entrapped engagement.

Missing the mark by imposition of … the sin. The Mistake.

The work of the lenten moment of this morning. Humbling to see both and all. To see the both and… In seeing, to also see the subtly of and difficulty of … community in equity. Community in equity, informedwith equitable engagement. To allow equitable engagement through a path… a path … many paths. That many paths challenge. To engage complete count through many paths. So, that each may find a count place. The invasive model … leveraging community to make sure that a hearth is open for each and all.

That moment when each is a friend to … for then there is no stranger. At the well, the water of living … it is a dream inwholeness. It is a moment … an arc, a prayer, a blessing.

That hierarchy … to engage the whole of the hierarchy … there is the invitation. That each person… held in hierarchy, may come and see, may come and be, may, in communion, be counted in the whole of the host. Raised up and counted in the whole of the host. That the least and greatest … the lion and lamb are each among the “All of These.” That is the blessing prayer of this day.

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March 27, 2019

… The Swirl of the Deep Dive

03-27-19 Data and … the swirl of the deep dive.

Lent 22

“… but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.”

John 8:12-20 –

This makes me think of tea parties. That amazing set of moments when one of the kids invites me to sit and share ‘tea’… We have little cups and saucers. It used to be my own kids… now it is the children of the Godmother or even a child at the office who has a few moments to sit for tea. … this phrase of arrest because an hour is not come… Arrest is an amazing thing. A heart in arrest. A fall in arrest. An idea in arrest. To see it in a moment of … not yet come.

As a life arc… that moment when the rising comes to a point of arrest and a fall to earth begins. Or, at the deepest arc of a dive… and then the arrest of the decent and the rising back to surface.

In the midst of rise or dive… we arc and get to that arrest point… and as we arc, we arc to path… as is set before … as our arrest hour is not come.

In this time of reflection, the dark which is not dark and the light which is coming into darkness… it is an arc. The cycle of arc. The darkest before the dawn. Not arrested for the hour is not come.

So what is the hour? To be in communion with this moment. The arc of this moment. For … that sharing is the light of all creation. And in that light, even in this dark… that light shines forth so deeply. The deep light of care, of linkage, of connection. In this tapping… the light of connection.

There is a swirl of data and granularity in the air this day. That data, gathering slowly over the past year. The activities now described in that data… It has been with some anguish that, as the delver into the pool of this granularity and data swirl… I admit to worry that the pool will not fill… now, that tap, turned full, has filled the pool. And, in the deep waters of information… a new arc of engagement begins. The filling has come to arrest. The dive is now begun. The darkness before dawn is now the warm pool of wonder.

What is the hour? The hour that is here. Awaiting an hour that… has not come; invites missing the hour that is the tea party. And, in the moment of a tea party… may we raise our cups in toast. Toast to the light in darkness. For that hour is come. And come again and again.

March 20, 2019March 20, 2019

Comfort In…

03-20-19 Comfort in…

Lent 15

“… saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?” John 5:1-18

It is comforting to have the dogs wake up and start asking to go out at a certain time. It doesn’t matter that they were keeping me safe from some ‘heard’ thing … just three hours ago. The wagging and smiles… the wonder at seeing, as if for the first time, yet again, what is out there in the world… the excitement of ‘come and see.’

It is comforting to wake and walk out the door to get the papers. That short walk from front door, out the gate and to stoop down to pick them up. In the walk, to take the pulse of the morning. To breathe in that air of the new day. Checking the tank for water. Having a conversation with the dogs… security. A new moment.

It is comforting to breathe in and breathe out. It is comforting to see the clouds in the sky and to hear the harvest all around. It is comforting to be wakened in the night with security … saying that they need to go and see… later… saying that they are ready to come in.

In this comfort is also the still small voice. That voice of wellness in each breath. The answer is yes. For the question is … the comfort in… Do you want to be made well? In gladness and deep lenten preparation, yes.

There is comfort in the question. There is comfort in the reflection. There is comfort in the conviction… the invitation to conviction. And the renewal in breathing in creation. All of a moment. All of a morning. All of each morning. In humbling seeing. The laugh at the wonder of the joke. And in that … comfort in all of this wonder. Comfort in…

March 8, 2019March 8, 2019

Lenten Musing and… All Creation

Cleaning up the stables…

Sometimes the flowery words of scripture are like the duff on the stable floor. So overlaid with blather that the beautiful invitation to relationship and conversation are covered over in layer after layer of rococo …

What do you wish in your life? What are you looking for? What are you seeking?

Where are you going? Who is going with you?

The teaching of Augustine: … our hearts are restless until they rest in God…”

What do you wish in your life? What are you looking for? What are you seeking?

Where are you going? Who is going with you?

The teaching of Augustine: “… our hearts are restless until they rest in God…”

It is now a moment… where am I going? Who is going with me… resting in the heart of creation. In my world, the heart of God. The heart of all creation.

All from cleaning the stables. A gift.

March 2, 2019March 2, 2019

Open Integration

From What — To What?

When I begin from that place of walking to where I am… this is not an existential experience. It is a finding place for scope, scale and context. It is the rooting place of who, what, where, when, how and why. There is a place that invites a beginning moment.

If all emotion is based in projection, assessment of projection, engaging projection error and then recalibrating the projection so that it more closely responds to experience… and, in that set of practices, a connected and fostering attitude is manifested; a from what is assembled.

Context To — Context and from what … to what.

Gremlins and a journey…

Muray Bowen is responsible for the next image. That dance of triangle that invites the gremilins of guilt and shame… that of not good enough, bad playing… I did something bad… I am bad… Learning to engage in the gremlin dance and once dancing… beginning to be clear about where I live… and in that rooting in place, knowing self the better and the more.

Open and learning — Closed and defending

In hearing a conversation… is it based in yes/and or yes/but? Do the conversants cut off or give a lead for the next round? In participating in policy design, a room design, a song, a creative activity, a walk… in engaging a process; what is my attitude of participation. Are the who, the what, the where… dancing in a shared form? Is the when, the how and the why… in sync, in congruence, in… ?

Does the connective collaboration align and integrate both up and down a power structure? If yes/and, open… if yes/but… a system in defense. A system in decline. It is not black and white… for there are too many varibles of inside/outside, scope/scale, input – process – output…

This multi-variable sense and framing allows a fostering, sustainable system of integrating different levels of competence and structure to flex and dance in the storm. It is where we live in this moment. Well, it is where I find myself living in this moment.

A Spiral Dynamics Flow — A riff on the work of Clare Graves, Chris Cowan, Don Beck, Ken Wilber, and Said Elias Dawlabani

Passing the torch…

It is easy to hold on to a place. Even as the place leaves me. That desparate desire to have a home and a place to belong. To reflect on this sentiment. To own it as a desire.

In recognition, “There are many days that I wish desparately to fit in; to feel as if I belong. And yet, I do not. For to fit in, is too painful to my soul.”

What was a story or narrative of yesterday, a foundation of memories in stone… That castle has crumbled. In the strewn ruble… a wisdom comes from the foundation stones. The anchored ships in resentment bay begin to pull up, to come to harbor, to refit, to renew… to integrate the lessons learning in projection error. In that stripping away, collapse, renewal… there is something else happening. The dance. The pulse of all creation is beating in slow harmony. It never stops. It always pulses… it always invites. Just … for a while, perhaps, a situational deafness has been about. In the renewal in a new dawn… the wisdom and walking through the dark time now breaks as a seed breaks open.

There is a great wisdom in this cycle… a gread and wonderful wisdom.

An image…

Reductions — Pulling up anchors and refitting… from anchored in, in Resentment Bay to sailing away.

The more I learn… The less I know…

Is - Was — Engaging all of us… where we are… finding interesting moment. In gratitude.

The work … each day. With thanks, humored moment and great appreciation.