Thought Provoking

Between the Hallmark Creative Leadership Symposium today and the Greater KC Interfaith Council's Table of Faith's event tonight, I have had many, many thoughts provoked.

Both events stirred ideas around the power of the question "why?" and the importance of believing in something bigger than yourself. Curiously, the theme of the CLS was "We Are One" and yet I came away from the event thinking about what distinct perspectives each of us in the creative community has to offer. How do we complement or supplement each other? How are we similar? How are we different? How are we unique? The broad range of great speakers and topics helped bring that aspect of diversity home to me. And those same questions might have been asked of the range of faith perspectives represented on the Interfaith Council. The Table of Faiths event was not themed "We Are One" though there is a sense that each of the faiths represented there all exist in harmony inspire of or because of their differences.

Each presenter and storyteller that I heard today fascinated me and inspired me. Here are just a few favorite thoughts from the day.

The Highlights - CLS

"The Disease of Self" - what Dayton Moore warns will tear apart a team or a business or a family

"Choose the thoughts that you think." Toni Blackman

"If you want to write, write." Gillian Flynn

"Don't ask the designer to design a bridge; ask the designer to get from one side of the river to the other." Mauro Porcini

"Believe that what you're doing has to be done." Chris Ciesiel

"Tear down your idea - what's left standing is something pure." Matt Castilleja

"Always know why you're doing what you're doing." Ryan Wing

"You turn folded card stock into joy grenades." Rob Riggle

"Know you're number 1 but act like the underdog." Carla Moore

"Music is not just sound. It's a force." Nolan Gasser

"My work is not satisfaction from all the people I've proved wrong. It's a tribute to everyone I've proved right." Raul Alejandro


The Highlight - Table of Faiths

"People were created to be loved and things were created to be used. The problem is that people are being used and things are being loved." - Shakil Haider (winner of the 2016 Steve Jeffers Award)

"I am doing the best I can."

Julia and the small clay globe she made at school for Earth Day.
She also learned the following song sung to the Farmer in the Dell tune ...
We love the Earth, our home -
Its oceans and its trees.
We eat the food and breath the air,
(inhale deeply)
So no pollution, please!

Several things coincided with Earth Day this week: one was the Table of Faiths dinner sponsored by the Greater KC Interfaith Council and one was AIDS Walk KC.

I celebrated Earth Day by increasing my understanding of watersheds during an informative presentation by the Blue River Watershed Association and by watching a striking film called “Chasing Ice,” which follows the work of James Balog as he tracks and photographs the rapidly melting glaciers that are the dead canaries in our coal mine earth. The long list of contaminants in our water and the startling statistics on how rapidly our climate is changing motivated me to redouble my actions, even as they also left me feeling discouraged. Will I and my efforts really make enough of a difference?

A few days later, on Saturday, I attended AIDS Walk KC for the first time in my many years in this city. I was so moved to see so many people gather for the same cause. Many people walked in memory of those they’ve lost; others walked simply in solidarity. Each person there put a drop in the bucket of support. It is a bucket that needs filling and that can only fill one drop at a time. 

In my mind I went back to the night before Earth Day, to the Table of Faiths dinner that Sergio and I attended. During the closing remarks, Reverend Kelly Isola invited everyone in attendance, which is to say people from a wide variety of faith traditions and people who represent a broad spectrum of religious expressions, to “do the thing that is yours to do.” Which, of course, means different things for different people.

I decided that maybe the things that I do - the actions I take to combat hatred or environmental degradation - are the things that are mine to do. And maybe it doesn’t matter that they are small. They are mine and I am compelled to do them.

Maybe it is my job to be a hummingbird ...