Smart car designed by Swatch with attitude.
Sent from Ron's iPhone
Smart car designed by Swatch with attitude.
Sent from Ron's iPhone
"Mathematician Steven Strogatz shows how flocks of creatures (like birds, fireflies and fish) manage to synchronize and act as a unit -- when no one's giving orders. The powerful tendency extends into the realm of objects, too." - TED
If this tendency exists in nature and people are of nature, might the tendency also be found in social groups in a way that supports emergent cooperation and collaboraton from a group's "nature"?
"I would like to step out of my heart
and go walking beneath the enormous sky.
I would like to pray."
From the poem Lament by Ranier Maria Rilke
Approaching Seneca Creek during an I-270 commute.
Sent from Ron's iPhone
Sent from Ron's iPhone
In a previous post, on Inauguration Day, I mentioned how I drove to Little Seneca Lake near my home to look for eagles. I'd seen them previously in a particular dead tree by the water but they were not there.
Today, the warm air prompted me to drive to the lake but not necessarily to look for eagles. On driving pass the dead tree the eagles were not there but on returning they were, sitting close side by side and high up. I only had an iPhone camera so you cannot see them in the photo below but I've pointed to the dead tree where they sat.
Many eagles now inhabit the Cheasapeake Bay and the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers. It is always exciting to see them, and equally exciting to see their very large nests. Its actually rarer to see their nests than the eagles themselves.
I'd engaged a woman in conversation at the pull-off where we were viewing the birds on this day. She said their nest was visible from the road about a half mile away. As it was on my way home I looked for their nest and saw it clearly in a sycamore tree, not 60 yards from the road and in the backyard of a private home! Moreover, the nest was about 80 yards from a railroad track. Talk about making your home wherever you are!
This business with trying to see eagles brings this to mind on contemplative prayer:
"Prayer is like watching for the
Kingfisher. All you can do is
Be where he is likely to appear, and...
Wait."
(Ann Lewin, Candles and Kingfishers)
Sent from Ron's iPhone
Whether its psychological space, social space or physical space, if its occupied there may be little if any room for anything new to enter the space. Implication: practice sweeping with whatever is available.
Sometimes I don't know what I'm thinking until I try to say it (or in some way express it). In the act of expression, the externalization of thought, there is opportunity for increased refinement, clarity and understanding.
Thomas Keating - Christian monk and former Abbot, Author, Chairman of the Board, Roman Catholic priest, an architect of Centering Prayer.
Residence: St. Benedict's Monastary, Snowmass, CO, USA
Quote: "Here, would you like to have it?"
Interview (3 parts): http://moourl.com/Keating
Sent from Ron's iPhone