Presence: Part 1

Monte's Book Club

We live in a world and culture that seems to be stuck on separation, distinction and breaking things down into parts that we can get our minds around. Yet in this first part of the book, the writers advance that "the whole exists through continually manifesting in the parts, and the parts exist as embodiments of the whole." p. 6 of intro. Where we see separation we should be looking for integration, synchronicity, inter-dependence, mutuality and reciprocity. Historically it seems that those that are able to step back, to see the big picture, or take in the whole are the ones to voice as prophets, healers, and truth-tellers what the whole is that we live in, what's wrong with it and how to transform it. That's what the authors advance as the most true and essential vocation of leadership. Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, MLK Jr., Gandhi, Amos, and Esther...they are examples of leadership according to presence. Leadership is more about being a being who can see the whole, who recognizes that the whole - or system in which we breath, move and have our being - is a whole that is fundamentally relational.

With the emergence of global culture, instant communication, rampant individualism and as-of-yet-historically-unknown-material acquistion our traditional family, religious and social structures are threatened. We live in a moment where much of what we know is questioned, in crisis, and unsure to continue. Global Warming. The Food Crisis. Global Multinational Companies. The Slow Food and Locavore Movements. We need leaders that are aware of the changes around us - and call us to hope - of course it's one thing to talk about it (like Obama) and another to be what the authors consider living an awareness of the system in which we live, the changes happening and the ways in which to move into the future. We can't just react to change (which merely leads to reinforcing old established habits and affirming empty vague rhetoric, violence and genocidal tribalism), we have to move beyond the escapist tendency to find comfort in habit to seeing uncomfortable and extraordinary clarity regarding what it means to act in the service of what is emerging around us.

We most often think that we fail in changing institutions because we lack visions and noble intentions, when in fact we ail because people can't see the reality that we face. In a sense we live in an almost sci-fi world depicted in the Matrix, Star Wars, Battlestar Galatica and the X-Files. We fail to recognize and discern the synchronistic and interdependent relationships all around us from the quarks that make up the atoms of creation to the ways in which we work together. To be a good leader in an effective and emergently aware way, is to redirect energy to focus on the whole through spiritual practices of mediation, centering prayer, silence and awareness.

It's challenging to see that these non-religious folks go towards spiritual practice as the foundational essence of leadership. It's not about action but about awareness, not about reactivism but presence, not about being distant but about being connected. Yet we continually focus on leadership as about power over others to direct things in ways that we want. It's about collaboration through motivation, shared decision making or if all else fails, manipulation.

I think about the people/leaders/mentors that have had the most impacted me.....they did so more through their relationship then through their knowledge, wisdom, actions, or words. It's a direct challenge for most pastoral leaders, when we base people work leadership on a CEO model in which leaders stay in an office, directing others by staying on top of information...instead of walking the streets, hanging in the cafes and bars, and being present in the world seeking to be aware of what God is doing. The other day I walked through the Dimond District (the neighborhood of the church I serve) in jeans, a t-shirt and my ipod visible. A friend said that no one would ever be able to know my pastoral profession from the way I looked. Maybe I'm on the right path then towards Presence Leadership....