Your Sanctuary - The Space Between
Friends!
Another week. They go by quickly.....and slowly. Don’t they?
I find myself working harder than ever to find what’s good while simultaneously spending all the energy I have fending off what’s bad. And there sure is plenty of both.
Today I want to illuminate, elevate and celebrate our sanctuaries. The places where we find quiet, comfort, stillness, and safety. I think those places matter more today than ever as we are surrounded by a landscape filled with a loud, deafening, and constant onslaught of immediate and distant, real, or perceived challenges. Clearly, the significant changes to our media consumption patterns, have amplified this feeling of "noise pollution". Before, we all got the same news, basically at the same time, from one source. Now a fact travels across all our platforms and not unlike the telephone game gets distorted along the way.
So what is a sanctuary to you?
In the past, more people had religion to turn to as a place where you could free yourself from earthly matters. You could enjoy the music, the rituals, the vastness of space, and the richness of community. Today, more and more people are turning to new forms of sanctuaries such as Yoga and meditation. But yet many, perhaps even most, are searching for new forms of stillness, meaning, and sense-making.
I was lucky, early in life, to be introduced to Brahma Kumaris via my good friend Brian Bacon. Through him and them, Jessica and I entered into the practice of Meditation, and Sister Jayanti’s calming voice is still one of our favorite sanctuaries to this day. Breathing, it turns out, while something most of us do without thinking, offers perhaps the most important avenue to stilling your mind, relaxing your body, and turning your attention to your full awareness. This, in a paradoxical way, helps you be more attentive and ultimately selective in how to process and sort the plethora of incoming choices you face in your daily life.
We rush from one thing to another. We rush to judgment. We rush to the need to support or reject. It is in that tiny moment before judgments and decisions where our humanity has a chance to reveal itself. The pause where we get to think, evaluate, contrast, and weigh differing perspectives.
Music is such a good place to practice the concept of a sanctuary. I think most humans know what it feels like to get lost in music. But even “within” music there are “microsanctuaries” which is perhaps the essence of the beauty and power of music. As Claude Debussy famously said: Music is the silence between the notes. Our current climate feels a bit like music with no silence.
Right now, I wish the world could take a giant breath. Go on a collective meditation. A silent retreat. With two simultaneous intentions. To spend time breathing and becoming aware of the glory, beauty, and wonder of this incredible world and all our improbable achievements. Breathing in on gratitude. And then breathing out on service. Recognizing that there is still so much to do, so much that is imperfect, and therefore so much we must turn our collective attention to fix. But with the beauty, decency, humanity, wisdom, and calmness of the yogi.
Below I have shared a few things that inspired me this week along these lines. I loved how my friend Angela Ahrendts talks about her sanctuaries growing up and the role they played in her life of tremendous centeredness, leadership, and achievements. Both professionally and personally. Also sharing my favorite meditation app by Sam Harris and also the guided meditation of Sister Jayanti that Jessica and I have used for almost 25 years.
It’s one of the paradoxes of life that less is more. We think that we are more effective and productive the more we do. It turns out that this is not true. At least not in the BIG game of life, the game that really matters. How happy we are. How much love we feel. How much of service we are to our fellow humans. In that game, we need to find the space between where we can gain the proper perspective, find our inner balance, and elevate the qualities we are meant to share. Love, kindness, and service.
Breathe!
As you many of you know, Sam Harris is someone I respect and follow closely. I admire his ability to dissect complicated topics and his commitment to “both sides” of any argument, always in pursuit of a balanced, truthful and human interpretation. What some might not know is that Sam also is a long time practitioner, student and teacher of meditation. His app Waking Up is a really good daily mediation guide and I recommend it highly. Here is a link to a month free trial if you want to explore for yourself.
This is a great podcast featuring my friend Angela Ahrendts. I shared her podcast episodes on Master of Scale earlier in my newsletter titled Bridge over Troubled Waters. My partners at Wait What who produced that series also are producing Meditative Story. Angela shares so beautifully and specifically how she always has found her sanctuaries and how they have played a central role in grounding and center her self. I believe that she didn’t do this “in spite” of being an incredibly successful leader, mother, and spouse. That special space and rituals enabled her to lead from a more authentic place of self.
I found David Brook’s latest article to be a well framed argument for “the space between” and how we can respect BOTH the achievements of liberalism AND at the same time be critical (and therefore compassionate and sympathetic to the protests and criticism fueling them). And finally, it is a great reminder of the critical importance that we foster a better civil dialogue. See next letter below.
“I defend liberalism because I think our core problem is ignorance and incompetence and not an elite conspiracy. The world right now is astonishingly complicated, our systems need reform. I don’t think one vantage point can grasp reality or devise solutions. We have to have the open exchange of views that is the essence of liberalism.”
This letter, published in Harper’s Magazine this week was, one could hope, a sign of a turning-point towards a more healthy public discourse. The identity politics and in its wake, divisive, mean-spirited presumed-guilty-until-proven-innocent culture that wants to silence and cancel anything that doesn’t fit the narrative of the narrator is dangerous, undemocratic and will lead to loss of freedoms for all. Particularly those who most deserve it. In this article, many writers, intellectuals and artists from all sides of a broad ideological spectrum express their concern of this narrowing and dangerous conversational climate. I find it hopeful.
“The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.”
In this interview, Darren Walker, who I featured in this past newsletter, talks to Chris Anderson at TED. They speak about the tradition of Philanthropy and why and how Darren is challenging us to think about public/private partnerships in new ways. Darren has a beautiful way to articulate the compassion and humility we need when addressing the many challenges we face and that it will take a different type of generosity to build a more inclusive future. It’s a difficult conversation in many ways but Darren is an inspiring voice of change and exemplifies the importance of combining courage, conviction and compassion when challenging conventional wisdom.