Philosophers throughout history have asserted that “the fundamental nature of the world is aesthetic” (Alfred North Whitehead, Gregory Bateson,James Hillman, Martin Foss,Donald Winnicott to name a few.) The word aesthetics comes from the Greek word “aisthenesthai” which is the ability to perceive. James Hillman writes, “Aesthetics in this primordial sense involves sensing the things of [ Read more … ]
learning
Going beyond academic learning…
When I was in school, I loved the precision and tidiness of it—each class a container with a tidy list of assignments by week. All these fascinating subjects, like chests full of jewels, and if we only sign up and listen, we might uncover some of those jewels. Looking at new syllabi at the beginning [ Read more … ]
Our hearts drive our curiosities
I have a client who loves history. Before working with this client I’d never thought much about history. I like watching historical movies, but I disliked history as a subject in school and I always did poorly in it because it required memorizing information (names, dates, places) that felt dry and dead to me. But [ Read more … ]
Profound Vulnerability
Several years ago I attended a Christmas Eve church service where the female pastor (who was clearly a beginner) played Silent Night for the audience on her harp. I have never forgotten that moment, nor her profound vulnerability. The tenderness of it, risking our judgment and ridicule… The educator Maxine Green said, “When we are [ Read more … ]
Learning is a Conversation – Excerpt from Getting Messy
In the 1920s, Lincoln Steffans was a history student at the University of California Berkeley. As a freshman, he became engrossed in history and read everything he could find on the subject. It soon became clear to him, however, that these scholars of history did not agree. He discovered that history was not a set [ Read more … ]