Episode 8 from my Podcast: Journey from Grief to Healing: M encouraged me to journal as a way to get in touch with my emotions related to my grieving and accompanying suffering. I didn’t realize the depth and breadth of emotions I had been repressing as I grieved. I discovered journal is a big help in working through grief. You can listen to the podcast at this link on check it out on your favorite podcasting app.
https://raycalabrese.podbean.com/e/episode-8-grieving-and-suffering-touched-every-line-in-my-journal/
hope
Thinking Out Loud: It’s Time for a New Way of Thinking
When I was in academia my research was in the field of appreciative inquiry. Appreciative inquiry often shortened to AI has nothing to do with artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, Bard, or other artificial intelligence applications. It has everything to do with human intelligence and the inherent belief that human beings can construct the type of world in which they choose to live. It provides real hope to people who feel as if they’ve hit the bottom and the only option to give up. If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, there’s barely a week that goes by where I fail to mention the words never give up or never quit. I must have had the appreciative inquiry gene in my DNA when I discovered it’s existence. It made all the difference for me, the students enrolled in my appreciative inquiry classes, my doctoral students, and the organizations and communities where we applied appreciative inquiry. I will share and reflect on appreciative inquiry over the next week with the hope that you will discover the best of what is in your world and use it to stimulate your imagination to make it even better.
Thinking Out Loud: It’s Time To Delve Deep into Our Hearts
Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection from William Faulkner’s Banquet Speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1950
“He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.” ~ William Faulkner
Note: William Faulkner won the Nobel prize for literature in 1949. In his speech, he is speaking to both young writers and to us some 70 plus years in advance. Faulkner challenges us to look into our hearts and rediscover the eternal truths residing there. He asks us to remember things like love, honor, pity, pride, compassion, and sacrifice. In a word, he asks us to rekindle our humanity. In rekindling our humanity, we can reflect on our relationships with ourself and with each other. Perhaps, it’s time to look into each of our hearts. And ask ourselves the following questions: Am I capable of compassion? Am I capable of loving unconditionally? Am I capable of providing hope and inspiration to others?
Thinking Out Loud: Dream on Dreamers
Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Cervantes work, Don Quixote.
“He did not care to put off any longer the execution of his design urged on to it by the thought of all the world was losing by his delay, seeing what wrongs he intended to right, grievances to redress, injustices to repair, abuses to remove, and duties to discharge.”― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Note: Have you had a great dream? The dream of a fool? Did someone accuse you of being a Don Quixote? If you have, congratulations to you. You had the courage to follow your dream. What appears to be foolish to others is real to dreamers. I imagine the conspiracy theorists of the 15th century probably said Columbus’s discovery of American didn’t happen. It was fabricated. People who dare to dream and to follow their dream regardless of the shouts of the naysayers are the people who make a difference. Do you have a great dream? Grasp hold of it, pull it tightly to you, toss what you need in your backpack and head off in pursuit of it. We need you.
