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« Older Entries Newer Entries »Longing for Limerence
Monday, August 1st, 2011
In the Social Animal, our favorite Republican, David Brooks, tells us about the glorious concept called Limerence. “Limerence” is the yearning for harmony in which external and internal patterns are meshing and flow is achieved. It can also mean being in harmony with our surroundings, our work, our talents. “A surge of pleasure when some clarifying theory clicks into place.” A feeling of oneness, or connection. Sensing another’s joy. A strong desire for reciprocation.
Brooks argues that we spend large parts of our lives trying to get others to accept our patterns and trying to resist others’ patterns, which we may see as a form of mental hegemony. We need to let go of seeing ourselves as self-contained entities with boundaries that exclude and define others. In reciprocity we do not need others to accept our patterns; yet, curiously, when we let go of that need, it happens: our patterns gracefully seem to mesh. We come to realize that the joy that others feel, we feel also; that the success that others achieve, we do also; that the insights that others acquire, we do too. We call this friendship; we call this love. What a useful notion.
Our happiness—bliss, as Joseph Campbell reminded us—may just lie in limerence.
Linda and Mary
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A Narrative of a Friendship
Friday, July 29th, 2011
Mary Gardner and I have been here at The Sea Ranch for a week working on a couple of our books, trying to solve the debt ceiling problem, shopping and cooking, laughing, planning marketing strategies, walking along the bluffs…we’ve revisited Joseph Campbell’s “Power of Myth” in preparation for Taos: Song of the Loom, Linda’s third novel in the trilogy. Last night we saw the excellent local play “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and recognized the parallels with our current political situation. But perhaps the most striking insights about our friendship reaffirmed our mutual acknowledgement in Women’s Ways of Leading:
“First, we want to thank each other for continually deepening our understanding of reciprocity and friendship. During the last two decades, we have worked on two other books together, but it has been this study of women’s leadership that has woven itself into the fabric of our relationship as well as the fabric of our lives. We listen to each other, construct knowledge together and accept responsibility for mutual decisions. Within a landscape of laughter we realize that a lightness of spirit is like a shared secret, a magnetic circle sometimes blurring lines of separateness. We often laugh at ourselves as well, making fears and hesitations buoyant and fleeting….”
Wishing you deep friendships, Linda and Mary
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Women’s Ways of Leading is now an e-book!
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
Check it out!
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Young Women of Egypt
Thursday, June 16th, 2011
My readers remind me that it has been two weeks since I’ve posted on this blog. As soon as we returned from Egypt and Lebanon we were involved in the glorious graduations of our grandchildren Dylan Smock and Catherine Lambert. We are so proud of them and their plans for the future: UC Santa Cruz and CSU Chico, respectively.
This interval has also given us time to reflect upon our recent journey.
One of the most enlightening experiences in Egypt was our opportunity to spend time with many old friends, especially several young daughters (and one 12 year old granddaughter and 9 year old grandson who knowledgeably discussed the comparative strengths of presidential candidates and constitutional changes).
For each of the five daughters—from three Moslem and one Christian family—we noticed a remarkable change in their personal sense of empowerment, confidence and engagement in politics. Pride. Four of the daughters (one was a new mother) had been full participants in Tahrir Square during the revolution. They had witnessed it all: the mutual excitement and support, the endurance and resilience, the abuse and violence. Now they hold strong positions about the future of Egypt, including the Mubaraks and their crimes, the military, the youth council and constitution, the presidential candidates.
And, there was something else. A thrilling venturing out—risk taking. One young woman had left a high level human resources position with Coca Cola to open her own personnel agency; another left a secure translation job to open her own independent consulting business. Another, a journalist, left her position and joined creative youth to produce a film about the revolution. Yet another young woman accepted a new position to design policies for the disabled (a neglected area in the Middle East). The youngest of the women, equally engaged in the new politics of Egypt, will spend her next college year at UC Davis in California where we will be her “parents away from home.” Such independent mobility on the part of women is symbolic of a society cracking open with opportunities and young women stepping forward without the necessity of having men at their sides. I find the emergence of women the most promising aspect of the Arab Spring.
Tomorrow—July 17—women in Saudi Arabia will demonstrate for the right to drive. More on this movement over the weekend.
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The Sheikh and Me
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011
(NOTE DEAR READER, THIS ENTRY AND THE FOLLOWING TWO WERE ALL POSTED TODAY.)
On the first day of the TAMAM conference, a young man from Dubai handed me three books from his mentor and friend—an elderly Sheikh, a holy man, of renown, now living in a tent and shepherding his goats in the desert. He asked that I read the books and tell him what I thought of them the next day. The Sheikh wanted my opinion.
On the next day—having been up late the night before—I had not done my homework. The young man talked with me and said the Sheikh had called and asked for my report.
Now duty-bound, that night I read as much as I could of the books, noting several positive responses. The Sheikh is truly an accomplished scholar and entrepreneur—well educated and the founder of two women’s universities and a number of businesses. The books were well and respectfully written. When he refers to a person, he uses “he/she.” One book concerned the Ten Commandments and his premise that we are all Moslems, although some of Christians and Jews have not yet “returned” to the fold; another spoke of the stages of a man’s life and a type of memoir; and the third discussed the first stage of life. At dinner on the last evening I shared my positive reactions, then began to tell him what I didn’t agree with. He stopped me. The Sheikh told him that if there were anything I disagreed with, he would want to talk with me personally. He asked that Dr. Monera, the assistant director of the Arab Thought Foundation, make the arrangements.
This morning, Monera called to say that the Sheikh had called her at home and that she was to hear my disagreements and relay them to him. So I talked some of them through with her and she called him back.
Later in the day, I met the young man in the lobby of our hotel and he had talked with the Sheikh once more after he had heard my criticisms. Through an interpreter, the young man extended the Sheikh’s invitation for my husband and I to visit him in Dubai.
Why me? she asks. Linda
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TAMAM continues…
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011
We found it intriguing that the challenges and concerns voiced by the attendees at the excellent TAMAM conference were not unlike those heard in many other places around the world. Among those issues were:
• How do we motivate people who don’t want to change?
• In a country where power in distributed among a few, how do we create equitable relationships in school communities and teams and between coaches and those coached?
• How do we keep from deferring excessively to those in authority?
• Many women now in the profession went into teaching when they had few choices. Now things have changed (even in Saudi) and women can choose among many professions. Many women who were forced into teaching see it as a job, a burden, not a profession—how do we awaken them?
• How do we change a culture in which the principal is supposed to know everything?
• How do we develop new relationships with the ministries and directories so that they will support rather than contradict our initiatives? (note the discussion in the last post).
• Can everyone lead? And, if so, what does that mean for us?
For you educators out there…sound familiar?
One of the many lengthy conversations I had with a woman was about these very issues—particularly how we can change cultures in order to cause people to accept and initiate change. She related what she tells her daughter about empowerment. Her eyes were warm and smiling as we spoke; that is all I could see of her face as it was buried within her full burka.
Linda
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The TAMAM Conference in Beirut
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011
“Our teachers are working on our capacities to make of us
thinking human beings.”
-A Third Grade girl in a school video, at an all girl’s school,
Saudi Arabia
From Morocco to Oman and 10 countries in between, the word is school-based reform. This widely acclaimed conference drew educators from throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Most remarkably, the interim Minister of Education from Libya, a professor from Benghazi who is very knowledgeable in teaching and learning and is determined to reopen Libya’s schools as soon as possible (they’ve been closed during the unrest).
Sponsored by the Arab Thought Foundation, the American University of Beirut and the TAMAM (in Arabic: al-tatweer al-mustanid ila al-madrasa)project, the program included school and country presentations. TAMAM is committed to a new paradigm in the Arab world: developing a theory for long-term educational change grounded in school practices while building capacity for improvement. The major approach is inquiry or action research (bottom up change with top down support) focused on building communities of practice, professional development that changes habits of mind, transformation of school culture and working with university teams. I was honored to give the keynote address on leadership capacity, debrief two World Cafes, and teach a workshop on team coaching.
TAMAM captured the imagination of the participants who are using many of the key ideas already. I was most intrigued by Egypt’s report of its new approach to school-based reform with school improvement plans and local boards (“so that our policies won’t change every time we have a change of ministers”). They were the first to admit that these good intentions have yet to reveal good results.
The last discussion question was particularly thoughtful: How can the schools, universities, and ministries go forward together into the future. The groups almost unanimously called for co-equal, mutual partnerships.
“Reform,” our friend Ambassador Hassouna told us before we came, “is the word used everywhere.”
More on TAMAM in the next post, Linda
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Amazing Lebanon
Friday, May 27th, 2011
Yesterday, Morgan and I had the privilege of enjoying the hospitality of the talented staff of the Arab Thought Foundation situated in downtown Beirut–surely one of the most beautiful cities in the world. We were finalizing the plans for the TAMAM conference that will begin tomorrow at American University of Beirut. Twelve countries will be involved in three days of sharing their work in school-based reform. One of the most heartwarming stories so far–and testimony to the importance attributed to this event–is that the new Libyan Minister of Education and two other colleagues will be coming–by land! In the next few days, I’ll be reporting on the events and ideas behind the conference.
Today, we visited just a small part of the wonders of Lebanon, a long and geographically diverse country much like California in its elongated shape. First we went to the Jeita Grotto northeast of Beirut. It really is two grottos (or caves/caverns). The upper grotto is vast and dramatic: “rich limestone deposits and an infinite variety of crystals reminiscent of wild petrified orchids, giant mushrooms and elaborate chandeliers.” Yet there is more: a lower grotto with a deep blue river maze that can be traveled by boat. This Grotto is a nominee for one of the wonders of the world; vote for its inclusion on line at www.jeitagrotto.com.
From the Grotto, we went to Byblos, the site of the longest occupied city in the world (circa 6500 years BC). Fortunately, we were with a knowledgeable archeologist who had spent time excavating at the site. He reviewed the complex history beginning with the Canaanites, the results of the excavations, and the mythological stories that emerged from this stone city. One of our favorites: The Egyptian goddess, Isis, discovered the remains of Osiris near the well in Byblos and returned to Egypt with the resurrected Osiris along with cedar oil used in embalming to ensure the resurrected life of the dead.
Next: the TAMAM conference
Linda and Morgan
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“If you want to know the character of a man…
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011
…give him power.” That is how the Speaker of Parliament in Britain introduced
President Obama as he rose to give his historic speech to the Parliament. Historic in that he reminded us that “We’ve (the US & UK) created the world that is emerging and we remain the catalyst for global action…The nature of our leadership must change.” He reviewed the architecture of democracy.
It is this last point that may go the most wanting in Egypt and some other parts of the Middle East. It was a young man working in a hotel who helped us to understand misinformation regarding the nature of democracy. He said that “we need a strong man with a good heart.” When I added: “and, an understanding of democracy.” He paused, grimaced and said, “what if a group of bad people want something—then we have to give it to them?” Democracy understood as the raw rule of the people, or the street–rather than rule of law, civil rights, governance, representation. Granted this concept of democracy has not been well known.
A professor friend from Ain Shams University told us that he was very nervous whenever he would drive past a police station. “They could just arrest me, torture me, keep me and I would have no recourse.” Fortunately, the top two candidates for president in Egypt understand these principles well.
Linda
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May 27 in Tahrir Square
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011
A large demonstration is planned for this coming Friday in Tahrir Square. Driven by impatience, those who are unhappy with progress will gather along with those who are adamant that the Mubaraks do not get off without a trial. The army has warned against this demonstration–primarily against “foreign agitators” (US and Israelis)–but are unclear about consequences.
As we leave Cairo, we are again aware of the press of people, smog, and conflicting demands and are not sure that we understand the revolution, although we do realize that media portrayals of its struggles and causes are far from the truth. Misinformation, rumors, paranoia, and assumptions swim among the people who want unity and change. Whatever the long-term resolution may turn out to be, our many well informed advisers seem to be pretty confident that the country will make significant progress and is moving in the right direction. Religious conflict and fundamental are less than described. And we can confirm that the Cairo we experienced was peaceful and relatively calm.
We are back in Beirut now, having walked the city today. Downtown Beirut is like Paris, parts of Rome, Reggio Emilia, Ferrara, Italy. Elegant historic buildings dotted with Rodeo Drive-like shops. Orderly traffic. A pearl of the east. The waterfront has been extensively rebuilt into grand hotels and shops. By the time we leave on June 1, we hope to understand why such a modern city does not have a government in session. Today is a holiday–the celebration of the anniversary of the Hezbollah-Israeli war of 2006. No issue is more dominant anywhere than Israel and on the surface, things are not going well.
As we enter the weekend, our focus will be on Middle East education and the school-based reform initiatives to be shared by 12 countries attending the conference.
Linda and Morgan
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