{"id":27381,"date":"2021-04-04T20:59:39","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T03:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=27381"},"modified":"2021-04-04T20:59:39","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T03:59:39","slug":"i-wonder-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/i-wonder-2\/","title":{"rendered":"I Wonder?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One theme that has popped up through my time in the LGP is that of imagination and dreaming. When I first began the program, I started with several questions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Why does my church not feel like a community?<\/li>\n<li>What is missing from my experience of church?<\/li>\n<li>Why do I feel so alone in the midst of being in one of the most densely populated places on earth?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>Wonder is the spark that ignites our imagination and dreams of a different world<\/em><\/strong>. Simon Walker writes, \u201cWonder begins with an awareness and could be said to be the basis of all leadership. Awareness is our ability to perceive ourselves and others and the world as we are.\u201d<a name=\"_ftnref1\"><\/a>[1]<\/p>\n<p>Our journeys all begin with a variation of the thought, \u201cI wonder\u2026?\u201d When we think of the Hero\u2019s Journey, it begins with a longing, an innate pull that there\u2019s something more outside of the hero\u2019s bubble of existence. The hero dreams of what could be, initially not giving much thought to the trials that will stand in their way.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026but our world is not conducive to dreams. It bars our way, doing everything in its power to stop us from moving forward:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>It isn\u2019t practical.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>It isn\u2019t worth it.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Your dreams don\u2019t pay the bills.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>You\u2019re not worthy of the journey.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>It\u2019s been done before.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>You\u2019ve tried before and you failed.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We\u2019ve spoken many of times of the \u201cimposter syndrome\u201d \u2013 that feeling that we have no right or reason to pursue our dreams and goals. <em>\u201cWho am <\/em>I <em>that I should do this? I\u2019m the wrong person for the job.\u201d<\/em> And just like that, our dreams are quashed and we find ourselves stuck in our mire of complacency.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026but the pull doesn\u2019t go away. We can\u2019t help but wonder, \u201cWhat if\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What is leadership without imagination?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>LIFELESS<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>So in this world that isn\u2019t conducive to wonder and imagination, what can we do?<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong><em>Read Fiction.<\/em> <\/strong>The best place to recapture our imagination is to turn back to the stories that first captured our imagination. The canon of literature in our world is vast and stories have a way of rekindling that childish sense of wonder. When I graduated high school (all of ten years ago \ud83d\ude1b ), I felt my love of reading destroyed. It wasn\u2019t until 2018 when I started to read for fun again and found my imagination reawakened.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><em><strong>Write.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Jotting down little thoughts and phrases throughout the day is a practice I\u2019ve used, particularly when I go on my daily walks. A thought may occur and I\u2019ll type it into the notes on my phone to come back to later. This helps me to make sure I don\u2019t lose something that could be potentially important.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li><strong><em>Wonder with Others.<\/em><\/strong> Even if you aren\u2019t a reader or a writer, conversation sparks imagination and wonder. It\u2019s through conversation that our thoughts and dreams leave the canvas of our mind and manifest themselves in the world. Once they\u2019re shared, they are not longer our own, but others as well. We wonder in humility, knowing there are angles we are missing and spaces that need to be filled. However, we must also be wise with whom we share, lest the cycle of dream smashing continue.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ol start=\"4\">\n<li><strong><em>Stay Curious. <\/em><\/strong>When I first began volunteering in Hong Kong, one of the best pieces of advice our trainers gave us was, \u201cStay curious.\u201d Ask questions. Think and ponder. Things don\u2019t, won\u2019t, and may not make sense, but it never hurts to ask. We follow the Yellow Brick Road as far as it leads, but then we ask ourselves, \u201cWhat\u2019s next?\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"_ftn1\"><\/a>[1] Simon Walker, <em>Leading Out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership<\/em> (Carlisle: Piquant Editions Ltd, 2007), 167.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One theme that has popped up through my time in the LGP is that of imagination and dreaming. When I first began the program, I started with several questions: Why does my church not feel like a community? What is missing from my experience of church? Why do I feel so alone in the midst [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[35,1718,1691],"class_list":["post-27381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-leadership","tag-walker","tag-wonder","cohort-lgp10"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27382,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27381\/revisions\/27382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}