Who Me? A Prophet??

As If by Magic...

Last Word or First…?

Choose your poison…
or not!

Darkness Giving
Way to Light...?

Time To Say Yes

Of Science, Oatmeal
and Meaning

The Cypress in the Garden:
A Koan Revisited…

Divine Hospitality
at Work...

For the Time Being...
Some Thoughts on the Stewardship of Time

Of Science, Oatmeal and Meaning

By Whitney Wherrett Roberson

My children think I’m a little weird: they saw me packing books for a recent vacation and noted my choices with mild consternation.  Who would choose to read for pleasure -- for pleasure! -- books on the latest trends in physics, math and biology?  Books with titles like Chaos: Making a New Science, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, The Tao of Physics, and Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organization.  Well, okay, some of my friends think I’m a little weird, too, but, as  I tried to explain to the kids, it’s all coming together: insights from science, psychology, and spirituality weaving themselves into a grand tapestry of meaning that fills me with awe. I wish I understood it enough to articulate it clearly, but all I’ve got at the moment are musings, sometimes barely coherent and based on an admittedly incomplete grasp of the whole. Here’s what I’m getting:

Scientists are discovering in natural systems -- both living and non-living (although even this distinction is beginning to blur) -- an order heretofore hidden.  Through the use of new forms of mathematics made possible by computer technology, they are seeing striking patterns emerging from what looked like chaos and unpredictability.  Chaos has boundaries. The behavior of these systems may defy prediction, but it nevertheless makes sense; it is profoundly and beautifully ordered.  It’s as though these systems have, built into the very fabric of their being, a tendency toward ordered patterns which scientists are calling “strange attractors.”  The behavior processes of these systems are “attracted” by these boundaried patterns. Meg Wheatley suggests our cultural systems -- that is, our organizations -- may behave in much the same way; that they too have an inherent order and certain “attractors” which act to pattern our living and being.  (Our human systems are, after all, living systems.) The “attractor” for human beings, she postulates, is meaning:

"I became aware of the call of meaning in our organizational lives when I worked with a number of incoherent companies that had been tipped into chaos by reorganizations or leveraged buyouts.  They had lost any purpose beyond the basic struggle to survive.  Yet under these circumstances I saw some employees who continued to work hard and contribute... even when the organization could offer them nothing. ... it became evident that [these employees] had taken the time to create a meaning for their work, one that transcended present organizational circumstances. ... They held onto personal coherence because of the meaning attractor they created.  Maybe the organization didn’t make sense, but their lives did…"
Wheatley, Margaret, Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organizations from an Orderly Universe, San Francisco:Berrett-Koehler, 1994, p.134-135.

So, I’d got this far in my musings when I paused to wander preoccupied into the kitchen for some breakfast.  As I was stirring my oatmeal, I became aware that I was -- simply -- hungry.  I found myself giving spontaneous thanks that I would soon have the oatmeal to eat. The thanks moved into profound gratitude as I reflected on how fortunate I am to have food simply there when I’m hungry.  And then I wondered why?  Why me?  Why all of us?  Why do we have food that nourishes -- and all manner of other comforts which protect and contain our living -- when so many do not? 

Could it be that our comfort is for something?  That it’s necessary for us to be comfortable in order to do what we’ve been called to do? But what is that work and are we doing it? If we are indeed part of a larger living system, and if it has so happened that we don’t have to pay much attention to where the oatmeal’s coming from, could it be that the energy we’re saving is meant to be expended on behalf of the rest of the system, this beautiful web of life in which we’re embedded and which sustains us?  But look at us, I mused, we think what we have is ours, our personal property to do with as we like without any thought for the whole! How long can such a system last?  How long could a body last if it were each organ for itself or an organ if it were each cell for itself?  Wait a minute, I thought, I’m describing cancer: a few cells going their own way, multiplying out of control, draining the larger system of needed nourishment and resources until...Good grief, my reflections continued relentlessly, we human beings have become the cancer of the earth! But there is that strange attractor: meaning.  I was seeing it at work in my own musings.  Something was drawing me to consider the bigger picture, to be conscious of the whole and to ask the questions about my place in that whole. Maybe the chaos we have created has boundaries. Perhaps we can find a new way to act, if we can just pay attention to the questions, to the connections, to the meaning...