Contemplative Leadership

We live in chaotic times. They are the best of times and the worst too. Students need our help as never before and traditional models of education don’t seem to fit the bill. Technology is touted by some and while I find that fascinating I’m troubled that in itself that is not enough. I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately and much of the direction is how mindfulness could be useful and transformative for our students. I’m interested to know who else sees this need and who might be interested in forming a charter school where mindful education could form a basis for such an institution.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race … there is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all of the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…” — Thomas Merton

(Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,