Maria Arpa
This week
A top down approach
Plus…
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
and
The Wednesday Whisper
A compassionate approach to leadership
These last few weeks I have been in the presence of a very wise man. An elder within a Sufi Community and dedicated to the empowerment of others, we have been engaged in mutual sharing of our gifts and wisdom.
Interested in the Dialogue Road Map and its potential to bring healing within communities, we talked about how leadership in communities can miss the most important and basic step which is allowing all members of the community to be heard and understood. To be clear, listening is only complete when the person speaking believes they have been heard, not when the listener tells the speaker they have heard them.
We talked about what happens when people do not believe they have been heard and shared many examples of the types of behaviours that indicate the leaders are not truly listening.
When thinking about how a leadership team might tackle such a situation, he spoke these words:
“What we are talking about is an inquiry into why the waters of love and mercy are not reaching down to grow seeds of creative response to our needs within community?”
I was immediately touched by the beauty and possibility of this framing. And grateful for this elder’s wisdom.
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
My heart has been processing my thoughts about the waters of love and mercy and seeing how this defines restorative practice. I’d love to see this reach our schools as part of a behaviour policy or in workplaces for that matter:
‘We accept that in all communities there will be conflict and that conflict has the potential to disrupt and divert us from our mission. We work to minimize disruption, not through punishment or other ‘power over’ attempts at compliance but by striving to inquire why the waters of love and mercy have not reached down to grow seeds of creativity and contribution to our community”
The Wednesday Whisper
Where in your life could you spread the waters of love and mercy? When have the waters of love and mercy reached you?
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