Three key elements of discovery, according to cartoonist and MacArthur Fellow Lynda Barry, are loneliness, uncertainty, and boredom.
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also – can our hearts handle the stretches of darkness and desolation on the path to destiny?
It requires discipline and “the courage of creativity,” writes author and professor Imani Perry in “Breathe: A letter to my sons.”
“I have written to you enough about freedom from the constraints,” Perry continues. “And at the same time, I worry, as I do about many in your generation of Americans, that you expect too much of leisure. That the elusiveness of boredom, when entertainment is always around, makes you junkies for pleasure and relaxation. Freedom and leisure are not the same thing.”
How can we answer the call to lead and be the example to younger generations?
How can we model that surrender is liberation, that divine living is, as Perry describes, “cultivating and curating that place inside?”
The fruit of silence is prayer;
The fruit of prayer is faith;
The fruit of faith is love;
The fruit of love is service;
The fruit of service is peace.
- Mother Teresa
Take Up Your Crown, Let Go of Your Life
A Righteous Leader hides in plain sight. Cloaks of compassion are their camouflage, and we fail to notice that mercy is the mark of majesty, because we are trained, instead, to believe leaders are planted at the head of banquet tables and greeted with plastic marketplace praises.
Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.
James Baldwin
A Just Leader grows like a tender plant in the dry deserts, and they abound in the margins with simple melodies of healing affirmations. They build bigger tables and curve them round, where everyone has a place to lead.
A True Leader is led by the Spirit. They follow the call of their heart into the lonely places of the night, cut off from the land of the living, to fall forward and listen within for the answer to their prayer: Blessed are you God, Maker of Heaven and Earth and all things in between. Here I am, to do Your will, and may Your will be done.
A Purposeful Leader emerges from the darkness, clothed in light, and armed with the good and perfect gifts that pour down from the Source of Lights, to serve and seek that which is hidden but not lost.
Establish the Work of Our Hands
Austin Kleon discusses finding joy in repetition and the generative power in showing up to our daily work. With fervor and zeal, the return is our rhythm of worship; by consistently coming back to the unfinished thought and the incomplete idea, we allow ourselves to be led along, as if dancing into the darkness where discovery beckons.
In the creative embrace, the joy is in the struggle of figuring it out, putting it together, breaking it down, and doing it all over again. We seek the infinite, perfect ideal, and believe something beautiful will be revealed in the process.
Monotony, like monogamy, makes room for miracles: “It is commitment, not its abdication,” Perry writes.
