Lifespring

My soul bud SR sent this to me - she a regular source of many good things from the land of the muse.

God Speaks to Each of Us

God speaks to each of us before we are,
Before he's formed us then, in cloudy speech,
But only then, he speaks these words to each
And silently walks with us from the dark:

Driven by your senses, dare
To the edge of longing. Grow
Like a fire's shadowcasting glare
Behind assembled things, so you can spread
Their shapes on me as clothes.
Don't leave me bare.

Let it all happen to you: beauty and dread.
Simply go no feeling is too much
And only this way can we stay in touch.

Near here is the land
That they call Life.
You'll know when you arrive
By how real it is.

Give me your hand.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

1 sunrise from home; 2 mother-of-all birding scopes with camera affixed (a mature bald eagle sat in the top of dead tree out of view - I see it there fairly often - unfortunately the camera on my iPhone can't zoom it in); 3 tree on sky; 4 seedless brown plant; 5 icicles; 6 bluebird house. Taken with an iPhone.

Sent from Ron's iPhone

Sent from Ron's iPhone

All photos taken at home. Can anyone identify the third photo?

Sent from Ron's iPhone

Photo snapped as I was going to the swimming pool in the parking lot at home.

Given the ability of social media to "push" one's information to the other media services one uses, I recently found myself curious as to how all of it hung together in my case.  So I developed a presentation below with Prezi. It shows how LifeSprings here at Posterous sends my information to the other social media services I use. (LinkedIn is not included.)

Prezi is an alternative to the linear creation and presentation of slides using Powerpoint or similar software. In Prezi one creates in a free-form approach only one "slide" (though to call it a slide is a misnormer) that contains everything and then one zooms in and out and around to show the informational elements in a narrative, linear fashion.

Prezi permits improved display of the whole presentation in relationship to the parts (context) and relationships between the parts over standard linear approaches like PP. The unstructured creation canvas on which one develops the presentation also seems to facilitate brainstorming presentation ideas. There one isn't constrained by a set of sequential, lockstep slide templates (or bullet point prompts) and can easily add or then organize ideas as they arise. The structure of a presentation grows out of the thought process of entering and organizing information.

In addition, Prezi was designed to be used as a visual tool to support the speakers verbalizations and who is the focus of the presentation - the inverse is typical with most PP focused presentation.

This presentaton to LifeSprings is a first venture with Prezi for me. It was fairly easy to learn though it did take some time. I created the prezi below in about 2 hours. Prezi does require a different novel mode of thinking (non-linear) in the stage of presentation creation (unstructured) vs. the standard (structured) approach that takes awhile with which to feel comfortable - I'm still working on it. I'm looking forward to trying Prezi with other material and presentation requirements.

On my return from a week of retreat and enrichment in the principles and practice of contemplative servant leadership, I reviewed my notes and slides from the presentations. It was a challenge to fully appreciate them in relationship to each other and their gestalt when they were being presented sequentially at the retreat.

In order to provide an overview of the concepts in a singular view to myself, to explore some of the relationships between the concepts, and in general to better understand the material, I created the concept map below - a work-in-progress.

As some concepts seemed to me more related to groups as a point of focus and others seemed more focused on describing individuals, I divided the concepts accordingly (others mileage would surely vary in such an exercise). The division is somewhat artifical however, as are conceptual maps in general and as observed in both General Semantics ( "the map is not the territory") and Zen ("the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon"). Contemplative servant leadership takes place within an integrated process where God-Spirit, the group and the individual ideally co-evolve through discernment, the discovery of consensus and follow-through to manifestation and outer expression - and contemplation by its nature is of course nonconceptual in character.

The map below is best viewed in Fullscreen mode, Slide view, then Zoom in (or you can download the PDF file).

I received, after considerable begging, an invite for the private beta test of Google's new communication platform Google Wave a week ago. Its Saturday and I've just now had a chance to start learning it. Here's a cute 2 minute description of Google Wave by someone is still begging for an invite (but given his creativity he likely has one by now).

This 9 minute, unscripted conversation, recorded with a hand-held iPhone, took place at a Contemplative Outreach retreat on deepening the contemplative dimension of servant leadership near St. Louis MO during November 2009. Its recommended that you increase the volume on both your computer and the video itself to maximum. If you have earphones so much the better.

Note: recorded for distribution on Twitter @centeringprayer.