{"id":27405,"date":"2021-04-11T09:14:50","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T16:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=27405"},"modified":"2021-04-11T19:19:58","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T02:19:58","slug":"shinrin-yoku","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/shinrin-yoku\/","title":{"rendered":"shinrin-yoku"},"content":{"rendered":"

The leader carries a lot of responsibility. Most of the time, more than enough for just one person. Simon Walker refers to different kinds of leadership, based on personality, and their various approaches to public involvement and behind-the-scenes integrity. He writes that the \u2018good leader is in command of the overall theatre of his organization, community or society, and for this to function well he must be able to perform effectively on both the front stage and the back.\u20191<\/sup> Quality leadership he refers to as \u2018theatre\u2019, a performance of sorts that demonstrates \u2018arete\u2019 (to use a Greek term of sophistry) both under the spotlight, before the ears of the mass politic and in centered quietness with maps, glaring grit and key players.<\/p>\n

The capacity of leaders to endure increasing responsibility, tension and stress with poise and equanimity varies. A coping strategy can be to release control, to share responsibility and to coordinate (as a leader could do) a shared approach to leading. This is a weak force, as Walker would deem it. Perhaps a \u2018negative capability\u20192<\/sup>, on the road of the undefended. In the second part of his trilogy, \u2018Leading with Nothing to Lose, Walker differentiates between the approach or impact of leaders by strong and weak force. He states that \u2018our society has come to associate force, like power, with being strong and dominant, and to associate weakness with being submissive and having no influence.\u20193<\/sup> Oh, and how the \u2018strong and dominant\u2019 love this dualistic processing. Why? Because \u2018strong force\u2019 generates confrontation and competition\u2019 and \u2018creates winners and losers.\u20194<\/sup><\/p>\n

Emotion can give vibrations of both strength and weakness. The unrelenting passion of a strong leader can excite people to action, even to exhaustion and burnout. The example of strength weakening.<\/p>\n

We are sensitive to the way we are approached. I understand that leadership can be a dance and that finding various rhythms within corporate movements is vital for grace, the natural being, expression and wholesome progress of the group. Awkward and upsetting on a system, community and organization is the way of forcing power, the application of strength unwarranted that is, in general, beyond the character of human beings. This is power pushed to reinforce \u2018place\u2019, one\u2019s position and ego-prize. In her book, \u2018Quiet\u2019, Susan Cain encourages the individual inclined toward introversion to not succumb to the pressure to be the loudest person in the room, in order to establish themselves. In a competitive reward-driven world dominated by loudness and the extraverted presence, where quietness, a weak power, can be perceived as a weakness, she encourages the flow of true nature and \u2018to not be swept up by prevailing norms.\u20195<\/sup><\/p>\n

The negative capability, quietness, can be beneficial practice of emotional intelligence. If quietness were the canvas on which we met, the office in which we dialogued, what could be the outcome? This is different, I know. There\u2019s a balance, I think, that Walker is alluding to in his book, between the assertion of strong power and weak power in leadership.<\/p>\n

The story is one: that we are in individually, that we are drawn into corporately and globally and that we are invited into with God. The deeper our commitment to the story and its movement with us and beckoning for us \u2018to come\u2019, it is in my opinion, the quieter and stronger we become. We are called into the darkness where grace is sufficient and the weak are made strong.6<\/sup><\/p>\n

I went for a walk on a logging road the other day with a friend. It was a quiet place, only our feet crunching on the gravel beneath us made a sound. The gravel came from the blown up, side of a hill we had just walked by on our left. Beyond the crunch, nothingness, no sound for no nature, as we walked in the midst of a clear-cut area that once was original, first growth forest. Up ahead, the buzzing voice of a chainsaw (a symbol of \u2018strong power\u2019 in this environment) could be heard. As we crossed the line from clear-cut to Old Growth, the annoying sound grew louder; this uninvited, obnoxious sound that has devastated the natural quietness of the area and propagated a devaluing of its original integrity.<\/p>\n

Eden Grove is one of the last remaining spans of Old Growth forest remaining on southern Vancouver Island. A trail was being formed, with this loud annoying instrument, for good. From naturally fallen Western Cedar, a trail was being formed by a group of activists, to open a door for people to come into the experience of a First-Growth, temperate rainforest. We walked in. The air was different, the environment everywhere full-of-life. The smell, the soil, no death. Even in naturally broken trees, fallen to the floor, life interlacing entirely.<\/p>\n

There was another trail that I saw lined through the forest just to the side of the one that was being made for people to visit, to learn from the honest life and quietness of creation, to experience the presence and sacred voicelessness of these forests that barely remain standing. This trail that I saw was one of orange tape, denoting a \u2018falling\u2019 line for loggers of a company who had received permission to take it, to annihilate it, destroy what was on the other side of that line. So, there it is, trails of life and trails of death. There is a story of \u00a0exploitation and oppression that groans from these stumps that is not far from the scream of oppression that I have felt for feeling cut off at times, and of those who I walk closely with day-by-day near to the streets of the city. Exploitation and corruption banks on the gentle, sensitive individuals (those who feel the pain, long for justice and together have the power to stop the oppression) remaining silent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Walker, Simon P. Leading with Nothing to Lose: Training in the Exercise of Power<\/em> (The Undefended Leader Trilogy Book 2) . Piquant Editions. Kindle Edition, chapter 1.<\/li>\n
  2. Steven D’Souza and Diana Renner, Not Doing: the Art of Effortless Action<\/em>,<\/li>\n
  3. Walker, Leading with Nothing to Lose<\/em>, Chapter 3.<\/li>\n
  4. Walker, Leading with Nothing to Lose<\/em>, Chapter 3.<\/li>\n
  5. Walker, Leading with Nothing to Lose,\u00a0<\/em>Chapter 3.<\/li>\n
  6. Susan Cain, Quiet: the Power of\u00a0Introverts in a\u00a0World that Can’t Stop Talking,<\/i><\/li>\n
  7. 1 Corinthians 12:9-11, NIV.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The leader carries a lot of responsibility. Most of the time, more than enough for just one person. Simon Walker refers to different kinds of leadership, based on personality, and their various approaches to public involvement and behind-the-scenes integrity. He writes that the \u2018good leader is in command of the overall theatre of his organization, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"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":[],"class_list":["post-27405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-lgp10"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27405","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\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27405"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27419,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27405\/revisions\/27419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}