It’s hard to open a newspaper these days without reaching for a nitroglycerin tablet.  The markets are a roller coaster ride and most of us have stopped looking at the monthly statement describing the wreckage of our investment portfolios, kindly forwarded by our brokers. (I am told that the witness protection program has swelled substantially). Of course, like Warren Buffet, we are all value investors and in it for the long haul. What used to be termed “Freedom 55″ is now been rebranded “Freedom 95″.

In the face of grim news, it’s important to remind ourselves of the concept of “creative tension”. Creative tension is the stretching that is required to hold both current circumstances and possibilities for the future simultaneously. We must be able to keep one foot firmly planted in our current conditions and remain optimistic about the future without becoming overwhelmed with fear, doubt, cynicism or resignation.  The ability to manage this gap keeps us open, flexible and resilient, the three qualities required to weather the storm of uncertainty. Our ability to handle and manage creative tension– individually and collectively– contributes to the expansion or contraction of our personal, social and economic fortunes.

Crisis is one of the triggers of such creative tension and we currently have a doozy.  Crisis presents us with uncertainty, volatility or surprising changes to call forward our personal and collective mettle. It reveals where we have been out of integrity, holding on to false assumptions, irresponsible, or arrogant in believing that we are immune to cause and effect. In such times, decisive action must be taken to avoid breakdown or disaster.

Every crisis is an opening for faith, the engagement of the will, the deployment of  gifts and talents, and collaborative problem solving that serves the collective interest. There are five orders of crisis that invoke creative tension: failure, conflict, loss, suffering and success.

Failure is the experience of falling short of goals or expectations. Stock prices are driven by the ability of public companies to meet or surpass performance expectations.  So too are economies.  When a company or an economy surprises us by failing to meet it’s performance expectations, confidence is shaken. However, it is often through such failures that we discover what has been missing or wrong in our philosophies, strategies and plans. The knowledge derived from failure, applied in a timely way, creates continuous improvement and progress.

Conflict is a state of emotionally charged disagreement or a clash of visions, ideas, principles, perspectives or aspirations. The result is hostility and polarization. Flexibility, civility and mutual gain fall victim to reactivity and anger. But conflict can often produce a breakthrough, especially when we recover our ability to deepen dialogue and explore common concerns, needs and opportunities. Behind every conflict is a creative possibility searching for a way to manifest.

Loss seems to be our current crisis lesson– a crash course in World Economics 101. Loss teaches us to live in the present moment.  It is easy to become wrapped up in the past or deluded by the potential of the future.  Loss brings us present, often with a cold, sobering smack.  It reminds us of what is really important, the blessings we have been given and earned.  Loss instructs us about values and principles. Even economies run on such stuff and when values, principles and ethical conduct go missing, so does long term sustainability. Loss also reminds us that the opportunity to act is always now, and that opportunity can only be plucked by those that are vigilent, disciplined and proactive.

Suffering is a natural part of the human journey and conveys strength, tenacity and endurance. Suffering can be physical, psychological, emotional or spiritual in nature. The crisis of suffering calls for courage–the strength of heart– to meet difficult or painful circumstances and to fight the good fight. Ultimately, suffering teaches compassion. It reminds us that no one is immune to pain and that we all belong to what Angeles Arrien calls “the scar clan”. When suffering visits us, as it inevitably will, it is also an opening for our allies to appear– loved ones, friends, family, the community, even strangers, in support and solidarity. 

“Success…” wrote Ben Franklin, “has ruined many a man.”Success is the fifth order of crisis.  In it’s pure form, success is the recognition that an outcome has been produced that matches or exceeds the intention that was its source.  But success has a shadow side, as Franklin noted.  Success can spawn excess that leads to greed.  We have certainly witnessed greed on Wall Street, where the addiction to acquiring wealth and power seems to have completely overtaken common sense. Success can also foster unhealthy pride, including the kind of arrogance and self-importance that places personal gain over the collective good. It is also a contributor to stagnation, where our work becomes stale, predictable and repetitive. We may be seduced by success to abandon creativity for formulas and recipes that have produced results before but which eventually lead to the abandonment of creativity for the safe haven of repetition.

Ultimately, crisis and creative tension, always lead us back to fundamentals. Accountability, courage, clarity, equity, and decisiveness are the fundamental principles that  create a pathway from crisis back to possibility and positive change.

© Patrick O’Neill 2008. All rights reserved.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

When I was a child, we had classroom drills about what to do if the A bomb was dropped. “Hide under you desk and don’t look at the flash!” As though the advice given to Lot’s wife was any more useful to us than it was to her. No wonder she didn’t have a name.  They couldn’t identify her remains.

It was the Cold War and the Cuban missile crisis. Communists were lurking in the bushes, pursued by Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover.  We were urged to build bomb shelters to protect our loved ones.  Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe on the podium of the United Nations and Walter Cronkite reported the body count in Viet Nam.

We saw the leaders of the civil rights movement on TV, standing arm in arm and with great dignity, a bullet away from martyrdom. In those days, minstrel shows were common in small towns all over North America.  There was one every year at our local high school.  My parents refused to let me go even though I desperately wanted to, too young to understand the insult to human dignity they represented. 

My parents took me off the street every year during the Orange Day parade because we were Catholics. Service clubs were restricted so my Dad was not eligible. But we were proud when a Catholic was finally elected President of the United States. It was as significant to the Irish Catholic community, even here in Canada, as Barrack Obama is to the black community today.

Although my childhood took place at a time of great turmoil and social upheaval, we witnessed something significant emerge from the humus of oppression: visionmaking.   They killed Jack and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King right in front of our eyes but it only added fuel to the fire of vision. In my childhood I learned that visionmaking is more powerful than violence.  

© Patrick O’Neill 2008. All rights reserved.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

I was first aware of the concept of a “helping ally” when I would walk into the small mining town from the bunkhouse where I lived for a time. Invariably, I would be joined on this short half-mile stroll by a raven.  I had never seen a raven before.  They are huge, black birds.  They talk as they fly–caws, quorks, clicks, and a variety of other sounds.  The raven appeared to be the same one every time. It would fly an arms length behind me and just above my head, talking, talking, talking. 

At first I was afraid.  But as I got more used to the idea of being followed by a huge black bird, I started to think of it more as a walking companion.  I knew that in many cultures of the world, the raven is associated with Death.  Everyday, I strolled with Death into the village, trying to understand why this mysterious companion was stalking me. I began to talk to it, the way you would to a friend. I would tell it about the day I was having, my problems working in such an alien environment with people I could barely fathom, and my parents wondering when I was going to come home to return to my education.  My friend would caw occasionally, and fly off when I reached the edge of the village. 

Its presence reminded me of something I learned as a child: we are never really alone on this planet.  There is always a presence, sometimes visible, often not, willing and available to share important passages of the journey. As the mythologist Michael Meade reminds us, there is a world behind the world.  

© Patrick O’Neill 2008. All rights reserved.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

My mother planted a love of nature in me in early childhood.  We would go on daily adventures to the Credit River searching for fossils, arrowheads, frogs and the ever elusive and mysterious yellow-bellied sapsucker.  Hurricane Hazel came through this valley the year I was born. Eighty-one people lost their lives to that storm; 300 million tons of water fell from the sky at over 100 miles an hour.  It left a mark on the land that we were determined to find, along with a rare sapsucker feather. 

My mother would demonstrate how echoes were made, stones were skipped and which vines were edible.  We looked in river pools for the trout lying in the shadows by their edge.  A neighbor raised pheasants in his back yard and we looked for the males with their ornate wattles and long tails.  At the dam, we watched for minnows escaping in silver flashes in the tiny falls. I would spend my days in such settings, often alone but never lonely, pursuing some new mystery like the discovery of an animal skull washed clean by the water, just waiting there for the adventurous collector to add it to feathers, stones and other bones, the boons of daily expeditions. 

Who could claim to have really been in nature without encountering a world where secrets hide until silence has recovered? Every place has its atmosphere, made manifest by the spirits of plant, animal, water, stone and other shy and elusive presences.  

© Patrick O’Neill 2008. All rights reserved.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Three days and nights alone in the desert is an archetypal and transforming experience.  With tent, sleeping bag, water and fasting solution, you have everything you need to ensure that your physical needs are met.  Once you have found a site where there is some shade from the desert sun and enough flat ground to pitch a tent, you can make camp.  There are no distractions that you will permit to interrupt your purpose: food, cell phones, books, ipods, laptop computers, video games or other entertainments are sacrifices on the alter of solitude. You are alone on the land, present with the silence. You sit…and watch…and wait. 

It’s hard to tell when your consciousness changes. Maybe it happens right away when you first step on the land.  Maybe it’s when you get over the nervousness of that first night, when every twig snapping and every rustle in the underbrush crashes through you like an explosion. Maybe it’s when you befriend the night sky in all its dynamic brilliance. Maybe it’s when you awaken from a narcoleptic sleep that has carried you to an unfathomable depth to deposit you on the shoreline of consciousness some 18 hours later. Somewhere, the incessant chatter of the mind has been replaced by the slow, hypnotic rhythm of timelessness. 

That’s when the visitations come: the memories, dreams, visions. What has evaded decipher suddenly reveals the meanings that have been hidden from understanding while in plain site. This retreat in nature is less about the outer landscape and more about the geography of the inner world, a place of solace and silence. 

As the chattering mind recedes, a more ancient way of knowing that resides in the bones and organs attunes you to inner and outer realities. Body wisdom makes possible knowledge that cannot be attained through the mind.

Scents on the wind that would never be recognized arrive like advance notice of a guest.  Prickly pear brings a sweet melon scent. The white bursage bush emits the licorice of tarragon and sage and the creosote bush provides a pungent, tarry sweetness to the air.  Somewhere down the arroyo, an acrid scent signals the coming of two scruffy, snorting havelenas looking for a dinner of favorite desert plants. 

Drink before you are thirsty, sleep before you are tired, ride boredom like a slow desert wind carrying you ever inward, deeper into the ancient, ancestoral memories carried from your soul by your blood. Sitting alone in this spirited place, perhaps it is possible to recover what is described in the old Zen koans as “that face that you had before you were born.”

© Patrick O’Neill 2008. All rights reserved.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

“And what is good, Phaedrus,

And what is not good–

Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”

I discovered these words in a dusty paperback in a bottom drawer that was the “Book Section” of the Hudson’s Bay Store in Lynn Lake, Manitoba.  Lynn Lake, a mining town of 500 people, lay north of the 56 parallel. It was carved out of the bush. To me it was at the end of the world.

 I was electrified by my discovery.  The book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, reached to the depths of my eighteen year old soul.  What on earth was it doing here, amidst the pile of romance novels that passed for the most extensive library in this remote mining town of 500 people? 

This was a place where the Canadian Legion was the cultural center of the community …and lord help you if you got yourself banned from the Legion for being drunk and disorderly, because your sentence was 99 years and not a day less!  This was a place where babies were left in the town dump, Indians were beaten for sport and old miners lay dead in their rooms from a heart attack or working to death or loneliness, until the smell alerted someone that they might be missing. 

This was not a place where one of the most important books of a generation should lay hidden in a bottom drawer. But here it was, and it was mine, possibly the only person for a thousand miles who knew what it was or cared. I read that book in my room in the bunkhouse cover to cover, exhilarated by the universe of thought woven through its pages. This book was a singular point of light in the dark, dark world of the mine.

It is the 40th anniversary of the publishing of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. It was turned down by 122 publishers.  It has gone on to sell five million copies around the the world.  It is still a must read four decades later. 

© Patrick O’Neill 2008. All rights reserved.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

It was Thanksgiving Day, 1997.  That’s when I first met John.  I’d seen him before, sitting on the sidewalk on the main street, selling his “art.”  He was about 60 years old at the time, hair askew, and dressed in an old coat, worn out shoes and shorts.  He wore shorts all year round, usually the same pair, no matter the weather or temperature.  John was a panhandler and I avoided him, intimidated by how uncomfortable I felt when he tried to make contact with me while I was passing, which was often.  He’d be attempting to sell his artwork to passersby, pieces of paper or cardboard that he had found and applied wild color and distorted imaged to.  Most people ignored him completely, as though he were invisible.  I couldn’t tell if he was mentally impaired or crazy or both.

That Thanksgiving Day everything changed.  Perhaps from misplaced feelings of pity, I decided to buy one of his postcards.  He was delighted.  He tried to find the best one, and then decided I should have several. He had a new series of “postcards” that he was fashioning with frayed paper and Popsicle stick frames. He retrieved them from an old canvas shopping bag, one of several he carried with him at all times.  It was the best way to gather art supplies, he informed me. John reeked of garlic.  Later, I learned he ate it raw every day for his health.

At the conclusion of this transaction, John asked if he could visit me sometime.  Disoriented by the question, I mumbled “ok”.  ”What’s your address,” he asked to my horror.  I quickly gave it to him and scuttled away, certain he would forget.  Three weeks later, on a Sunday morning, I saw an apparition wander up the street where I lived.  It was wearing shorts and carrying several shopping bags.  It called my name.  Oh my God, I thought to myself.  What now?

John arrived full of amiable greetings and a request to visit for a while.  He had brought me more of his latest work and would I like to see it?  I invited him in to get him off the front porch, so the neighbors wouldn’t see us together and start speculating.

In he came.  He plunked himself down on the floor in the hallway of my house and began rooting through his bags.  By now my family was gathering, shocked witnesses to what was unfolding.  As he emptied his bags onto the floor, my alarm grew exponentially.  He seemed to be carrying with him every scrap of paper he had ever found.  It was filling the hallway. Finally, his search was successful.  From out of this mess, he pulled a reasonably good likeness of the church that stood at the top of the hill.  ”I was having a good day,” he explained.  ”I think I captured it well.”

Something about those words and how they were spoken, the humble satisfaction they conveyed, touched my heart.  That was the moment that I decided what he had already concluded some time before.  I was going to be an arts benefactor.  ”Can I have something to eat,” John asked?  ”I haven’t had breakfast and I have to go to church soon.”

That was our first breakfast together. John had breakfast with us every Sunday for three years thereafter.  He especially liked peanut butter, which I began buying him in bulk jars.  And raw garlic.  And bacon and eggs.  He would bring me his recent or not so recent work, depending on how he was feeling.  We would talk about his life, his schizophrenia, the shock treatments he had endured as a child, his memories of his parents, summer camp, the latest police officer to take him home, the beatings he received on the street. He would sing songs in German, his mother tongue, and educate me about the harsh treatment that the mentally ill were subject to from the budget cutbacks by the government of the day.  He was a gentle soul.

A couple of years after our first meeting, when my father died, John was full of kind words. “You have helped me so much. Now I can help you, Patrick,” he said.  Perhaps he already knew that he had been helping me all along.  Helping me to overcome my stupidity and arrogance in dismissing him as a crazy person.  Helping me see the dignity that comes from creative expression, no matter what it looks like. Helping me see the power of enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit.  Helping me see that a genius of relationship can come in dirty old shorts and boots with holes in the toes.

In the third year of our friendship, John was ill on and off.  He had to curtail his walking, which was a disappointment to him. In his prime, he confided, he could walk twenty to thirty miles a day.  Although I was worried about him, I wrote it off to the medication he was on, which was very harsh on the body.  He hated hospitals and refused to go, likely the residue of his childhood experiences.

When we didn’t hear from John upon our return from the cottage that summer my wife phoned the minister at John’s church.  He gave us the sad news: John had died from a massive stroke.  He also told us that we had missed the gathering that had taken place for John in the church hall.

It was completely filled with the patrons of the arts.

© Patrick O’Neill 2008. All rights reserved.

Be Sociable, Share!

•