Stepping Up
by Jeff Allen
Susie and I have just completed a 3 day workshop in Midhurst, East Sussex. Midhurst is a great venue with lots to offer especially at the Spread Eagle hotel as that is a name that can inspire a man!
As usual it was a great opportunity to bond with others and feel the friendship grow over the days. It was fun and a good laugh punctuated with heroic healing and compassion. The main theme of the weekend was the call to really step up. Not the pretend version, usually a form of disguised competition, but the real thing. Naturally this step is also a leap into intimacy and partnership, giving up more and more of our independence and the guilt that drives it. It was about the willingness to start caring again, not thinking about caring but what we really care about, what kind of world we want to create through our love and caring.
Recently on a news broadcast a prominent woman European minister was speaking of the courage, hard work and integrity of the average Ukrainian. She went on to bemoan the really poor leadership that had brought the country to the brink. This is such a message to us all for while we recognise our gifts and abilities and work so hard at improving them, if we do not implement them, if we do not share them in continuous acts of leadership we will crumble and eventually fall.
The number of challenges and problems in our relationships, in our families and in the world around us seems to be proportional to our willingness to put ourselves forward; to do all we can to make a difference, to make good use of our gifts and to lift the hearts of all those we come in contact with. Sometimes the only question is, “how bad does it have to get?”
In my case it was becoming paralyzed from my waist down two years ago to the day, certainly something hard to ignore and about as subtle as a sledgehammer but then I always was the slow learner. Much of what I was called for was to be truer to myself and walk my own path. Mine was a step in truth.
The world is struggling under poor leadership in almost every area and while it is easy to point at others it is also time for some personal reflection on our own leadership and the contribution we are making.