Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Under the White Wing - An Extraordinary Reading
Save
the date and join us for an extraordinary reading!
Charles
Squier
UNDER
THE WHITE WING:
EVENTS
AT SAND CREEK
Sunday, March 18th, 3:00
p.m.
3021 Jefferson St., Boulder, CO
80304
Charles
Squier's masterfully lean and fast-moving verse narrative vividly evokes the
characters and motives convergent in one of the nation's most unforgivable
chapters, the Sand Creek massacre. Rarely, if ever, has any episode in that
slow holocaust called "the winning of the West" been revealed with
such movingly understated irony. The verse line of Under the White Wing
is clean, muscular, and mercifully free of the falsely "poetikal."
Its illumination of the barbarism which in the American West once passed for
civilization places Squier's poem among the best of its genre.
-Reg Saner,
author of Reaching Keet Seel:
Ruin's Echo
and the Anasazie
Here we have the tragic events of the Sand Creek massacre of 1864 truthfully told in a language so clear and visual that you will think you have already seen the movie. It is a story that has the power to transform us, if we listen.
-Gary
Holthaus, author of Circling Back
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
An Evening with Adam Kahane
Power
and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change
The Book
&
An Evening with Adam
Suspend that usual notion of power as power over, Adam tells us.
Instead, consider using the word power as the drive toward self-realization,
the drive “to achieve one’s purpose, to get one’s job done, to grow.” Think of
this as power to.
Shelve typical ideas about love as romantic love only, he
says. Think of love as “the drive to reconnect and make whole that which has
become or appears fragmented.”
Understand, as Martin Luther King Jr. did, that both are
necessary. “Power without love is reckless and abusive and love without power
is sentimental and anemic,” Dr. King said. Building on this, Adam tells us,
Power without love is
reckless and abusive, or worse, and
love without power is sentimental and anemic or worse. We can see both of these degenerative forms in our world,
in our work, and in our selves. Choosing either power or love is always a
mistake. How then can we exercise power and love together? (p. 53)
Thus was the basis for the captivating talk in which Adam
elucidated his ten commandments for approaching social change, and for looking
at ourselves.
Adam’s work in more than fifty countries has informed his compelling ideas—from scenarios in South Africa as the country
transitioned from apartheid, to post-civil-war Guatemala, to India, Japan and
others. Continual learning is key, and Adam often uses the phrase, “what I’ve
learned,” or “what I’m learning” as he tells stories of the people he’s learned
from, including those with whom he’s worked and those whose works he’s read,
such as Paola Melchiori, Martin Luther King Jr., Paul Tillich, Rollo May,
Robert Johnson, among many.
Not flinching from the difficulty of putting these ideas
into practice and the impossibility of thinking of love and power as easily
integrated, Adam offers the analogy of walking. When we walk, we use one leg at
a time. But both legs are necessary. Power and love—use one at a time. Both are
necessary. With practice using both becomes more natural.
Thank you to The
Leadership Project of PassageWorks Institute, co-sponsor of this event, to
Naropa University for hosting it, and the the 75+ attendees who engaged so
wholeheartedly. A special note of gratitude to Adam Kahane for being with us, nudging
us to think beyond the conventional, and to do what we can. More good news is
that Adam is finishing his next book.
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