a blog by John P. Schuster
“I will take the ring, though I do not know the way.” Frodo Wisdom from Frodo, Michael Jackson and George Vaillant In No Ordinary Time, What is Our Job? We citizens of The Excited States of America have to keep up our pace, do we not? So even our holidays are busyness plus, and yet they provide rest and regeneration, for many of us. In spite of holiday reminders that many beautiful things happen all[…]
Read moreCustomers hear it often…” What are you having today?” The order is placed… The brew begins…click, click, click, the expresso drops into the handled machine cup…pfsst, pfsst, the steam cuts through milk & its evolving substitutes…. sounds that could come from a steel stamping factory 50 years ago. But this is now as the baristas of the 2020’s serves up brew and lots more in the daily lives of the parade of seeker-customers, looking for[…]
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[Brief foreword: I have been mostly quiet since COVID hit and then the George Floyd tragedy. Too much change and gravitas to offer much (one exception here on my other blog as I hope we think big for the bigness of the times), and the channels are clogged with everyone having thoughts and opinions, many good ones, some not as much. So I resume with a little modest thought, not equal to the gravitas of[…]
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Poets know… Be patient. Let’s teach each other how to wait, like TS Elliot taught us. I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hopeFor hope would be hope for the wrong thing…Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. And Jan Richardson offers a map for uncertain times. This is not any map you know. Forget longitude. Forget latitude.[…]
Read moreRe-reading The Adult Years by Frederic Hudson, co-founder of the Hudson Institute of Coaching, I was struck by how prescient it was (much of it could be written today) and how accurately it describes the tasks and the dilemmas of adults constructing meaningful lives in times of change (he was onto this 30 years before David Brooks very current The Second Mountain. Frederic’s vision for change is profound….here is how he positioned coaches as needed[…]
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Evidence-based thinking needs its opposite sibling What wretchedness: to believe in only what can be proven. Mary Oliver The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Wisdom is discernment in action. It deepens as we learn to make more useful distinctions. We gain wisdom from experience that we reflect upon, finding patterns[…]
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Mary Oliver tribute Last month we lost one of the great poets of our time. Mary Oliver has seeped into the culture with lines like “your one wild and precious life”. She took her leave of the physical plane at age 84. Prolific, profound, much celebrated, she was rooted almost always in nature first. What a trove of poetic gems she has left us. The title for this post—pay attention, find the joy, tell about[…]
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One of the oft-cited advantages of being in later life is an abundance of friends and relationships, forming themselves into satisfying constellations, that add so much to the quality of life. The opposite, isolation, is a scourge of aging for some who are shut in or endure tough circumstances, so the very relationship riches for some are a stark contrast to the relational poverty of others. In my life, I am blessed with constellations of[…]
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