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Results 1-10 of 12 articles.
Today
22/09/2011
Today is a day of settling, absorbing the turning of the year after summer excitements of work in South Africa, building work at home and clients old and new focusing on 'what's next for them'.
South Africa brought experiences beyond belief for me. The people, places, colours, landscapes, work... Leadership work with the Leadership Teams of Africa! Ignite (www.africaignite.co.za) and the South African Human Rights Commission was interspersed with interviews for Women of Wit, Wisdom & Wonder (C4CC's sister organisation - www.wofwww.com) - with the most astounding women, Rural Crafters, a Pastor, A Human Rights Commissioner and more.
Yesterday was the UN International Day of Peace. A local First School engaged the children early, making flags with coloured in Doves saying World Peace Day. We held our annual Peaceathon, this time a Silent Meditation at 12 noon throughout all time zones...
Now, as I settle into the satisfaction of this round of work, I also we to some exciting events in WofWWW: a Candlelit Vigil on 31 October in our local town ; the European Launch of a seminal book by South African Author, Devi Rajab - chronicling the lives of 150 years of Women of Indian Origin in SA (email penni@www.wofwww.com for information)
More details soon
May you enjoy the scents and sounds of autumn, finding your own settling and excitements...
Penni
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SPRING
04/04/2011
The first lambs have appeared in the field right beside where I write. Daffodils abound, birds and buds delight the senses.
I reflect on a busy winter. New adventures of travel, old adventures of living with what nature has to offer. The heavy and prolonged snows of November and December telescoped my world into a pattern of snow clearing, log collecting, inventive use of food in pantry and freezer and a very close perspective. Reminding me profoundly of the basic cycles and rhythms of life.
My South African adventure in February gave me a different experience of those same rhythms as I met the most amazing people in cities and Townships and Rural Kwa-Zulu Natal.
Underneath the evident differences we all find ways of living with those rhythms - Birth, Life, Death, Learning, Celebration. We are all connected
Launching Women of Wit, Wisdom & Wonder First Festival felt like another cycle - making visible a passion and project that was long in incubation.
And now, as I hear the lambs first cries, I experience how Spring connects me deeply with all these patterns, cycles and rhythms.
It strikes me that one of the most powerful capacities I find in clients (individual or organisation) is to discover and embrace the particular cycles, patterns and rhythm of their life and work.
This Spring - where are you in life, in work, in living are you? What rhythm is dominant? What cycle beginning or ending or gestating....?
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PEACEATHON - TODAY
21/09/2010
In four hours time our Peaceathon will be manifest, it will be happening, we will be in the first of 24 continuous hours of conversation focusing simply on PEACE.
Just over three weeks ago I turned 60. I was intent on writing about that transition, and, to my surprise, haven't. I realise its not been 'necessary'. Suffice to say it has been an explosion of delight, learning, joy and connection.
MOST importantly it has been the period of bringing this call, this 24 hours of 'disrupting' the 'normal' flow of life for the sake of something SO much bigger.
And the people lining up to be part of this are each taking time to stop the busy-ness, let go of the routine, the demands of life and be part of something else.....
What a gift.
As the hours progress they will be posting notes on this blog - enjoy!
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PHONE 4 PEACE: A ‘PEACEATHON’ – 24 HOURS OF COMPEL
07/09/2010
UN International Day of Peace is 21st September
Women are so often the victims of war and violence – 80% of the world’s displaced people are women and girls. As a contribution to this (www.peaceoneday.org), I’m hosting
‘A Call for Peace: 24 hours of Compelling Conversations’ (24 x 1 hour 'conference all' conversations).
From
12 noon 21st September to 12 noon 22nd September (UK time - go to www.timezoneconvertor.com to find your local time)
This day was the inspiration of one man, Jeremy Gilley. His tireless passion for building a world where Peace is a real experience for all led him to the UN and the commitment of all Governments there to this annual event. This day saves and transforms lives.
Please sign up for and join our Peaceathon* – 24hours of 1 hour telephone conversations on Peace: each with a host, holding a conversation, sharing and exploring what peace means for us; when, where, how we experience peace, what we seek, the challenges we face.
Please join this Global event..
For me Peace is organic, it is something we need actively to nurture, develop and care for. Peace has a close friend – Passion. In all Peace movements I notice they originate when someone makes a passionate stand FOR something; for a safe world for their children; for their families; for building on what matters; for creating ‘something else’…
To register, please send an email to:
wofwww.peaceathon@hotmail.com
Please give your:
Name
Country
Email address
Call time for which you want to register
All registrations will be acknowledged and you will be sent a phone number with joining instructions
Please register!
Please circulate this to others and encourage them to join us - share our Facebook link:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Women-of-Wit-Wisdom-Wonder-Peaceathon/130007893710760?ref=ts
Wishing you well – and Passionate Peace in your life
Penni
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About Time
05/07/2010
The Title I've given this note refers to two things.
I realise it's 'about time' I shared more of what's going on for me and the Centre for Creative Change.
And, Last Friday, 2 July the UN took a momentous decision. 65 years after it was founded members voted unanimously to establish a single powerful body to launch a new UN Agency - for Women:UN Women.
Headed by an Under-Secretary (making this equal with all UN Directorates), UN Women will be pressing (with a proposed budget of $500m) for women throughout the world to have a more prominent and widespread role in politics, economics and development - and in bringing their skills and experiences more centrally to reducing some of the worst discrimination we see.
At last there will be a Directorate focused on Women and how they are equal partners in our world.
Ban Ki Moon said 'UN Women is a recognition of a simple truth: equality for women is a basic human right and a social and economic imperative'.
When two-thirds of the world's 776 million illiterate adults are women ALL of us suffer....
This acknowledges women's place at the heart of development - and only last year this decision seemed like an impossible dream.
So:
It's about time for women to be seen and heard as a matter of course. That demands a willingness from us as women to speak as if what we say matters, for men to listen, for both to align actions and behaviours....
It's about time that my commitment to some exciting new developments is spoken and shared... As you will see, there are links!
More shortly
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And now for...
01/03/2010
a different approach to a National Anthem....
I am a member of of Women's Folk Choir (www.wercasfolk.com), led by a truly inspiring and real woman, Sandra Kerr. In October this year we're having an adventure - visiting Slovenia to sing and share the joys of life.
Durning our preparations for this event (our first foreign trip as a choir) we have been introduced to the Slovenian National Anthem. The only national anthem to be written calling for Peace...:
God's blessings on all nations; who long and pray for that bright day,
When earth's habitation no war, no strife shall hold it's sway
Who long to see that all people free, no more shall foes but neighbours be...
Food for thought - along with this quote I found on a postcard from the Women's International Foundation for Peace and Freedom:
I dream of the day when my son will ask me: 'What is War'?
What do we do, day by day, to build such ways of being in our world? I don't mean how many barricades do we stand on, I mean, how and when do I take a moment to breathe peace into the air around me; to think before I speak in anger or cynicism.
The Dali Lama says: all we need is to be kind whenever possible - and it's always possible to be kind. Now THAT's building a new way...
Happy kindnesses as we step into the next turn of the year...
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Authoring and.....
25/02/2010
I am in the early stages of writing a book: ‘Women of Wit, Wisdom and Wonder: Women who Inspire’.
As my attention and emotions are engaging in this I become aware of the questions ‘What shapes my identity?’; ‘How do I describe myself?’
Invariably I describe myself as a woman’ – beyond that, for me, all other descriptions become creative, folding and unfolding in time, space and experience.
And yet I live in a world which repeatedly asks me – who are you, what are you, what do you do? I assume (with fair evidence) ‘the world’ wants a concrete, unchanging answer. And yet, what if that really isn’t so? What if, when we receive or ask this question it is really ‘How do you describe yourself – in this moment’?
Suddenly I have more space, freedom, creativity and truth in my responses – and more relationship with both the question and the questioner.
The relevance of this to my book? I’m aware of many women who have inspired me, fired something in my identity, my being. Sometimes this has been indefinable until much later, sometimes ‘in the moment’ I’ve been aware of some powerful shift.
And I ‘got curious’ – where do these women find that experience – indeed do they? So far I discover, they do and I get to ‘meet’ the most amazing women. those telling their story and the stories of those Women of Wit, Wisdom & Wonder' that they share - the friends, mothers, grandmothers, children, siblings, aunts, passing acquaintances, strangers, lovers who have shaped, ignited, inspired, fired the women who have inspired me.
At a time when I believe the world is hungry for relationships, for inspiration, for connection, for listening and discovering ‘other ways’ to sustain and be - the experience and information is available; in the experiences, the ancestry, the visionary voices of these women. Of all women
So I am drawn, impelled, compelled to write this book…… to give voice.... To share and celebrate countless women known, unknown, famous to many, famous to a few, or one other. It's time to hear these voices
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Sometimes all is not what it seems
07/02/2010
A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward. Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite.
This is only a 1 minute, 44 second video and it is brilliant. Make sure you read as well as listen, forward and backward.
This is a video that was submitted in a contest by a 20-year old. The contest was titled "u @ 50" by AARP. This won second place. When it was shown, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause. So simple and yet so brilliant. Take a minute and notice your reactions as you watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA
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What makes a difference
26/01/2010
Researchers* are discovering that, when people follow the joy associated with making a satisfying contribution, there are remarkable results - particularly among groups or communities of people.
These "networks of accomplishment" are usually within our experience, but stand in contrast to the "networks of ambition" that isolate, harden and exhaust us.
How about this as a challenge to 'business as usual'?
*eg Anne Murray Allen and Dennis Sandow - the Society of Organisational Learning: http://www.solonline.org
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Thresholds.....
25/01/2010
I am 59 years and 5 months old. Sometimes I feel like three and a half!
And I am continually surprised….. I remember feeling that way then too.
How did I get here? Where did all those years go? Finding the words ‘forty years ago’ slipping off my tongue the other day astounded me. I can remember forty years ago? Yes, indeed, and with great clarity.
Then I was very conscious of standing on a threshold. In fact, at nineteen, I felt I had stepped over a threshold, into the world beyond childhood. This at a time when adulthood was conferred, by the symbolic phrase ‘getting the key of the door’, at twenty-one. At nineteen I could not yet vote - who says things don’t change?
I had, have had, and still have, a sense of being ‘gifted’ to live in extraordinary times. I remember the sixties as the time of turbulent possibility. Hope, passion and the conviction we could change the world. The famous ‘free love’ seemed remote – the world of newspapers and (the rarely watched) TV. Growing up in Northumberland, with Scotland a more present reality that the far south (Leeds as far as I was concerned), hardly leant itself to that kind of ‘wildness’ (although indeed I knew drugs were around – and surely the adults would have been astounded to know I knew, and saw that).
And now I feel at another threshold.
There have been many along the way. Twenty-five: - a shocker (I’ve been on this plant a quarter of a century, what have I done), forty and fifty, both revealing new worlds. Each bringing new ‘stuff to do’; new aspects of my being, my history, my present to confront; each with a sense of another new world to be explored and lived with passion and boundless energy.
So I have practice and expertise at crossing thresholds!
And this one feels to be of a different dimension. Truly there is less ahead than behind (even if I have inherited my grandfather’s genes and live to 97) – and that somewhat concentrates the mind.
Yet I feel ‘off the map’, in a new territory. I am well versed, practiced, experienced, competent at ‘doing stuff’ (just see how long I’ve had to perfect that).
However, I find myself setting off to ‘do stuff’ (easy to find stuff to do, be flattered when people ask me to) and then stopping. Something deeper (and wiser?) calls me.
When people ask me ‘do you still work?’ I find myself flummoxed what does that mean? Yes, I work at my profession, and that feels an inadequate response at this threshold.
Stripping away the layers, the labels, the roles, I realise that where I stand today is as a human being, not a human doing. That’s my ‘work’, my profession, my life at this threshold. That is who I am that has impact, weaves memories into the world. Perhaps it always was, I just didn’t notice
At this threshold this I know – what I do is Inspire. Inspire people to be alive, to live, find joy; find belonging, place, passion, contribution (form, size, scale irrelevant). And a humbling revelation of this moment is that what’s most important is not ‘I do this at my best’. It’s my authenticity, my realness, honesty…. that inspires. And that’s always been how others have inspired me.
So at this threshold I learn, that what humans do best – for themselves, for each other: be human beings. From that miracles happen.
Our doing is body, role or form (mother, father, farmer, shop-worker, prime minister, scientist, youth leader, nurse, cleaner, the next Einstein…). That doing has value, a place and is only the part of who I am, what I bring to this world.
Who are you, what do you bring, what threshold are you standing on? What human being are you in this moment?
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