Spiders, Bats, and Monsters O My!

What were you scared of when you were a little kid? Spiders? Bats? Ghosts? Monsters under your bed? Yes. Yes. And yes. And that's exactly why we dressed up in scary costumes on Halloween and went running out into the neighborhood with all the other little monsters out there and dared to laugh in the face of the things we were most afraid of. That's why we made a game of it. Somehow, playing made us less afraid. 

It still does. 

Here's another excerpt from The Future Starts Now from the chapter titled "A New Way of Being" and the section on the Renewable Practice(TM) we call: Working Playfully.

"It’s time to ask for the crayons back.

[Organization theorist, Margaret] Wheatley, who has grown sick and tired to death of organizational charts and schedules and plans, argues that the modern approach to life and work has been deeply influenced by a kind of Newtonian thinking that encouraged and allowed people to treat organizations like they were machines. Remember Newton’s scientific theories from your high school science class? For example, “A body persists its state of rest or of uniform motion unless acted upon by an external unbalanced force.” Newton’s “laws” convinced us all that eventually we could figure everything out and, therefore, control it. Well, we can’t. And we won’t. 

The emerging world of quantum science is “weird and fascinating,” revealing things at a subatomic level that Newton’s laws just can’t explain; it “challenges so many of our basic assumptions, including our understanding of relationships, connectedness, prediction, and control.” These scientific discoveries are impacting the way people think about everything. The universe isn’t a machine and neither is the organization you care about. It is organic and, as such, subject to change and chaos, possessing the capacity to adapt and to grow. You cannot successfully control it. But you can co-create within it. You can stay aware of what is happening and respond in ways that are smart and brave. You can work together, experimenting with new ways of doing things. You can commit yourself to learning from each other, from your environment, from your mistakes. And only people who know how to play can do these things."

Happy Halloween, everybody! Go eat something that's bad for you, kick around in the leaves, and do something fun.

 

Click here for a link to the ARE book store
where you can get your copy of The Future Starts Now and
the little book called
19 (or more!) Ideas for Working Playfully.

Comments

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=633295868]

I also wonder if at the same time we have created a "Newtonian God?" A God that is knowable and measurable by what we think and what we feel and what we expect of God? I think of the understanding behind many who say that God is "the same yesterday, today and tomorrow," i.e. God is known by the same things and same actions regardless of how different today is from yesterday and different from tomorrow.

[Kelly]

What provocative questions! In many ways maybe it would make it a lot easier if we didn't have to wrestle with the idea that God is still speaking, still acting, still dreaming, still at work in the world and in our lives. But how boring! Thanks for engaging the conversation!

[Steven Meyer]

And along with a "Newtonian God" a "Newtonian Book of Faith," in which Scripture is reduced to a once and for all meaning. It meant something at one time and our job is to figure out it once meant (or use it to predict the future). A Newtonian God and Newtonian Scripture means that God is no longer a living God and Scripture is no longer able to "divide soul from spirit, joints from marrow; unable to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart."