Thank you, all, for co-creating yesterday's thought-provoking call with john powell and Meg Wheatley. It was quite inspiring to see over 1200 people register to join the call, and see overwhelming feedback on how important this call felt for so many. Below are some of the nuggets from the call ...

• "My mom would always ask me why I traveling all over the world. When I told her that it was to find out who I am, she joked, 'Well, I'll tell you who are.'" :) In this time, we are asking ourselves who we are, and we need to turn to each other to find out.
• In 1967, of what turned out to be an inflection point of civil rights in America, we had 200 demonstrations. In the last few weeks, we had 4 thousand demonstrations across the globe. We've never seen such a response to racism -- ever.
• Yet we're facing multiple pandemics concurrently. Initially, people said "Covid was a great equalizer", but actually it never was. Suffering has been disproportionate.
• Surplus suffering is suffering that can be avoided. Verus ontological or spiritual suffering. For instance, George Floyd didn't have to die at the knee of a police officer. So many children don't have to die of malnutrition. Yet, we live in a world where some people don't count as much. We heap surplus suffering onto some populations.
• My Dad, who was a Christian minister, said that death is a separation from God. Today, we are separating ourselves with nature, with each other, with certain parts of our body and mind. That separation leads to "othering".
• How do we deal with the unknown, with the groundless? We turn towards each other, towards the Earth. That's what affords us the resiliency.
• My Dad recently passed away, and his last words were: "I want God to take care of my children." He's thinking of others. Building that bigger we starts with engaging. I don't know if what I'm doing bends the arc of the moral universe, but I do know that if we can engage with each other, that's 90% of it. Then, it's not we're gonna be okay, but we are okay.

Some nuggets from Meg Wheatley's opening remarks ...

• Grace Lee Boggs: What time is it on the clock of the world?
• How do you save the world? It's a question I've held for decades. And my earlier thinking was that if you just gave just a new narrative and new model, that if values were at the center, we would get a natural coherence that is present in living systems. Yet, I saw that this did not change leadership -- because there were other dynamics at play.
• We deny our inner lives. In the world of increased pain and suffering, human beings also have spirits that guide our creativity, kindness, generosity and our need to be in community. That needs to be protected.
• At the moment, as we clamp down in fear, we are going for control. Post 9/11, I saw this intense fear take over and the same impulse to control. It's a losing battle. And now, we're in another phase of that.
• When a civilization starts to disintegrates, elites always end up taking control; always, we destroy nature; always, we become focused on entertainment and distractions. Leaders use these tendencies, and it starts to define us heroes.
• In the face of turmoil, who do we choose to be? We want to make a difference, and we need to make a difference, but what is the work that will be of service in this age of true groundlessness? We are rushing to create a positive futures, without discerning if we have the necessary conditions to do so. For instance, equality sounds like a loss to those in power. How will they negotiate that loss in a constricting economy, where leaders are terrified of the future?
• What is meaningful work for us now? We have to give up this notion of combining our desire to serve and our need to make a living. That has never been a formula that has worked.
• We have to choose to be in that interior place of commitment to want to be of service. That is my definition of a Warriors for the Human Spirit. To echo the ancient Tibetan prophecy, such Shambhala warriors emerge during a time of great danger with two great weapons: compassion and insight.
• Compassion alone can lead to burnout. It has to be coupled with insight -- being able to see what's going on clearly, without our own prejudices and desires, without our hopes and fears. How we see what's going on, needs to be focused on the question: what is needed right now? Not what do I need right now! We are past the luxury of thinking of choosing work that we're passionate about, or how it fits with our life's purpose. What is the work that needs doing, and am I in a position to contribute to that?
• We work in our local, islands of sanity, with unshakeable confidence that people can be creative, kind, and generous. Can our small acts nurture those conditions? It's not so much about personal goals, success and achievement, but about being in service to the people who need us and the times that need us.

Few responses ...

JOHN: I have a plaque in my house that reads, "I'm not an optimist or pessimist. I'm a possibilist."

JOHN: I'm not ready to give up on the grand. In China recently, they don't see the world as falling apart. They see the West as falling apart. Working intimately in South Africa, I couldn't imagine that I would be having dinner with Mandela's home in the mid-nineties. Most of us couldn't see the turn.

JOHN: I want to stay with the radical not knowing, and radical engagement. When I was 11 years old, I got a message from the universe to do certain work -- that I've ended up dedicating my life to. I didn't decide my work. It was a calling, and I responded to the calling.

JOHN: One of Dr. King's powerful speeches was about a dream. One of the pernicious effects of othering is that we lose sight of possibilities.

MEG: Vaclav Havel said, "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

MEG: Embracing not knowing also denies our history. For me, what's important is that not be afraid of our history or our future, but to face reality in a highly probabilistic universe. That's inspiring for me, because then it guides me to what I precisely need to do in the present moment.

While Nancy Margulies was listening to Meg's remarks, this is what flowed through her hands and heart:



[More reflections from the Q&A coming shortly.]