By: gfesadmin on April 18, 2013
Fragile Life is fragile. So again we are reminded about death and terror this week. As I react to the horror of what happened at the Boston Marathon, it seems my mind is flooded with thoughts: grief at the carnage, anger at the perpetrators and the easily broken sense of security. Mostly I was thinking…
By: gfesadmin on April 15, 2013
Margaret Wheately’s Leadership and the New Science proved to be a challenging read. With her understanding of quantum science, she presents an alternative view, for leadership and organizational life, so to speak, to the currently practiced model patterned after Newtonian laws. I began to wonder, whether her ‘leadership alternative’ is in fact a new understanding…
By: gfesadmin on April 12, 2013
Leaders can face chaos at unfortunate times. Let me explain. I have the opportunity to manage four Continuing Care Retirement Communities in California. Two of these communities are undergoing significant renovation and remodeling of their campuses. The first community (Community 1) has been going through renovation construction for over six years and the residents who…
By: gfesadmin on April 12, 2013
The word ‘chaos’ which the dictionary describes as ‘a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order’ could easily become a synonym for India, a nation splitting at the seams with its 1.2 billion people. This is a country that finds it difficult to identify a single common thread that…
By: gfesadmin on April 12, 2013
Sometimes, like many members in my family, I find it amusing and comical to watch people as they stroll through the mall with purpose, wondering aimlessly, enjoying their companions, or simply treating themselves to a snack as they do life with the people in their circles. What is true for every person that I see…
By: Joy Mindo on April 11, 2013
I live in a world of chaos. When I leave my house in the morning, I stop at the traffic light to buy the day’s newspaper. The newspaper vendor (I still do not know his name) smiles at me and wishes me a good day. At I drive to the next intersection (commonly known…
By: gfesadmin on April 11, 2013
Ministry Is Messy! I used to think that ministry that is going well is predictable and orderly. How naive! There was always a frustration that I could do more to prepare and I could work harder and then maybe there would be fewer loose ends. Perhaps that was a Newtonian perspective where there are clear…
By: gfesadmin on April 11, 2013
This week’s reading was, Leadership and the New Science by Margaret Wheatly. At first, I wasn’t sure what to think, but after the first few pages I found myself in a leadership page-turner! Not what I expected. She begins by chronicling the rise of Newtonian Science and its ability to remove chaos from the world…
By: gfesadmin on April 11, 2013
In the song “Wake Up Dead Man” Bono echoes the lament psalms of David, crying out for a God who can sometimes seem silent in the chaos and violence of our world. At one point Bono questions “is there an order in all of this disorder?” This week I have been reading Leadership and The New…
By: gfesadmin on April 11, 2013
Margaret Wheatley is an innovative thinker about change and organizations. Her book Leadership and the New Science draws on three aspects of current discoveries in science and applies them to leadership. She examines: quantum physics, self-organizing systems and chaos theory. What is remarkable is how right on she is. Change is happening at an increasing…
By: gfesadmin on April 11, 2013
Chaos and Jurassic Park As I began reading Leadership and the New Science by Margaret Wheatley my mind was transported to the scene in Jurassic Park when Dr. Malcolm was demonstrating chaos theory to Dr. Sattler with drops of water. But whereas the scientist in the movie seemed to accept that chaos meant we are…
By: gfesadmin on April 11, 2013
Margaret J. Wheatley, in her book Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organization from an Orderly Universe, challenges us to step into a place of “allowing – trusting that the appropriate forms can emerge.” This allowing is a place where one does not try to control the universe but instead surrenders to participate in…
By: gfesadmin on April 11, 2013
I was seventeen and just found out I had bone cancer. Life as I knew it was over. In the span of a few short hours I was told that I had a rare form of bone cancer, which would require an immediate below the knee amputation of my right leg and aggressive treatment of…
By: gfesadmin on April 10, 2013
…to give birth to a dancing star. (Friedrich Nietzsche) This weeks reading let us to a book by Margaret J. Wheatley called „Leadership and the new science. Discovering order in a chaotic world.“ Margaret Wheatley provides a different dimension of understanding organizational behavior. Linking quantum physics and chaos theory she asks us to get rid…
By: Joy Mindo on April 8, 2013
These are the famous words by Prof. Mbiti, who wrote a book on African religions and philosophy in 1966. He was describing the moral ethic and social organization the African people. He emphasizes the role of community comparable to the theory of communism in which “society incorporates relations of mutual service between equal individuals…
By: gfesadmin on April 5, 2013
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By: gfesadmin on April 5, 2013
It was December 6, 1992, a dark and gloomy day in the history of India, one that left the religious, social and political fabric of the country forever tainted. I vividly recall that day that brought the entire country to a total standstill for almost a week. I had to remain in my hotel room…
By: gfesadmin on April 4, 2013
How are we to engage with our witness in a secular world? How do we find our voice for Christ? It seems there are two overt present options, one is to retreat into a Christian enclave, the other is to aggressively attack both the secular culture and its voice in political venues. But for many…
By: gfesadmin on April 4, 2013
According to Charles Taylor in his book “Modern Social Imaginaries,” a social imaginary involves “…the ways people imagine their social existence…” (250) He states that currently we have a moral order in place that supposes the following points: 1. mutual benefit between individuals, 2. the means to life by practicing virtue, 3. freedom and individual…
By: gfesadmin on April 4, 2013
A read through Charles Taylor’s Modern Social Imaginaries raises a number of questions about life in the modern age in the West. Taylor a Catholic philosopher and social theorist raises the concept of the social imaginary, or essentially “a new conception of the moral order of society,” which is shared by the mass of society. …
