The typical response to our growing urgency is to learn more about fixing things—to grasp for one more book, podcast, video, seminar, degree or certification that promises just the formula for the leadership we need. Yet, yet, and yet … textbooks and practices that make for peace, mercy, and justice seem more elusive and distant than ever. This book starts and thus ends very differently. It’s not much about skills, techniques, or tools, but about a different set of capabilities. We notice life and we are actively curious about how our lives might be aligned with their ever-creating flow of possibilities. We are curious less about which terrible problem we should focus our effort upon (though we still notice those) and more on what life suggests is trying to happen among us, around us, and beyond us, and on how to release that energy. Life generates its next possibilities in a radically creative, almost playful way. We want to understand how it works and thus, how we might work with it and through it. This kind of active curiosity is not abstract; we are guided by what we see life doing in the most hopeless situations. Even there we are curious about how life finds a way because we want our lives to help life find a way for the people, families, neighbourhoods and natural systems that we love. We write out of that urgent love to allow our minds, hearts, and hands to do better work.
Life generates its next possibilities in a radically creative, almost playful way The one thing we are clear about is that we don’t need to fight to fix things. Inevitably, paradoxically, tragically, that way too often strengthens the forces of fear and cynicism, however “right” it may feel. There are surely times when we have to forcefully defend what is human, but those are not enough. There are also more creative, lifegiving ways. Every single aspect of every corner of every human institution and network is in radical and dynamic change. We share the anguish of how some people’s self-seeking ways and powers seem to be able to ride the waves of change while staying aloft on their privileges. But we feel less inclined simply to fight what we fear and much more inclined to see where the hidden flows of life are present and leading—so that we can spend our energy on crafting lives and roles that are worthy of what comes next. Some of us, tuned to the ancient faith traditions, sense a time between times and remember that we are urged to live confident lives built on what is coming. Our urgent love casts out fear.
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