“Helen, you simply can’t do this to me, you are the steady one; you are the one who holds it all together. I need you to stay just the way you are.”
A systems approach begins when first you see the world through the eyes of another. Charles West Churchman
When Change Meets Resistance
Linda’s words stopped me in my tracks. It was 1987, the final year of my psychotherapy training. Vulnerability was essential for my growth, yet not everyone welcomed it.
That moment taught me something profound: personal change doesn’t happen in isolation. It ripples through the systems we belong to and not all parts of those systems want us to change. Continue reading “Wholeness: Looking at the Whole System”
“Helen, you simply can’t do this to me, you are the steady one; you are the one who holds it all together. I need you to stay just the way you are.”
A systems approach begins when first you see the world through the eyes of another. Charles West Churchman
When Change Meets Resistance
Linda’s words stopped me in my tracks. It was 1987, the final year of my psychotherapy training. Vulnerability was essential for my growth, yet not everyone welcomed it.
That moment taught me something profound: personal change doesn’t happen in isolation. It ripples through the systems we belong to and not all parts of those systems want us to change. Continue reading “Wholeness: Looking at the Whole System”
Business-as-usual is no longer adequate for the challenges of the 21st century. Purposeful, trustworthy businesses will play a key role in delivering ambitious programmes for decarbonisation, creating meaningful and fulfilling work, developing new technologies that solve entrenched problems, improving health and well-being, and achieving inclusive growth. World Economic Forum
Wise Goose Limited was created to take the interconnected challenges of wellbeing, social justice, and environmental destruction seriously within the field of coaching. We wanted to find a way of using our expertise in coaching, action inquiry, systemic thinking, and personal development to raise self-awareness and help coaches initiate conversations that include these wider issues.
We attract clients and students from businesses of all sizes, they come seeking meaningful work with relevance to the wider community. We aim to teach coaches skills and build their confidence to help individuals and organisations stretch thinking and close the gap between ideals about purposeful business, ‘making the world a better place’ and current reality in order to support delivery of extraordinary outcomes.
Here at Wise Goose we agree with WEFs statement ‘business as usual is no longer adequate for the challenges of 21st Century’, and take a broad, long-term perspective towards creating profit through our business activities. Sustainability and ethical practice are integrated into our purposes and embedded in the services we provide. We use ‘Brundtland’s’ definition of sustainability, ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.
As a micro business we actively promote good business in areas where we have influence, both in our internal operations and through wider stakeholders. We believe even the smallest businesses can play a role in improving quality of life, contributing to flourishing communities and planet. As a small business we can often respond and adapt faster to the change than larger organisations with complicated supply chains.
This policy is intended to be a living document, its purpose is to clarify our commitment towards ethical and environmentally sound practices both internally and externally. It begins with our values and how we put these into practice.
Wise Goose endeavors to optimize efficiency in our resource use and minimize environmental impact, in terms of CO2 emissions from transportation, energy consumption, and resource use/waste management. While it is not realistic for us to measure all our carbon impact due to the nature of our home-based office space, we actively take the following environmental considerations into account in decision making.
Reduce Flying: Journeys to Europe within a 500 mile radius will normally will be taken by train.
For essential trips where alternatives are cost prohibitive, we use economy class (as it maximises the number of passengers that each flight can carry.) In last eight years we have reduced flights from 10 – 15 flights a year to 1- 3 or fewer.
Reduce travel: avoid physically travelling to meetings where alternatives such as zoom or teams are available and practical.
Due to our location on Dartmoor the opportunities to walk and/or use public transport are impractical. To counter this we work from home as much as possible.
Record emissions for business travel to monitor our impact.
Zero to landfill: we have conducted an internal audit of waste. We compost, recycle office consumables, reuse and donate to ‘Proper Job CIC’ local community reuse centre.
Prevention: Purchase pre-loved office furniture where feasible or buy as environmentally sustainable as possible. Paper: we use as little paper as possible and reduce usage by double-siding. We use black and white ink rather than colour whenever possible.
Reuse: Where necessary, we use recycled or FSC certified paper Encourage use of re-usable coffee cups etc. by trainers and students.
Recycle: We have clear systems for recycling glass, paper, cardboard, tin, disposable plastic, batteries, printer cartridges etc. Compost all organic waste.
Water use is minimal, we have measured water use.
Use social media to advocate for SDGs and support/celebrate ‘good business’ practices of stakeholders and wider community.
Offset remaining ‘invisible’ carbon footprint of consumption, necessary travel. We do this informally through our @treesforlifeuk Wise Goose Grove.
Since 2013: Helen Sieroda is founder and director of Wise Goose School of Coaching, and co-founder Wise Thinking Partners. She is an Association of Professional Executive Coaches and Supervisors (APECS) accredited Master Executive coach.
Since 2014 Diane Pitt: (in house ethicist) has been teaching Medical Ethics at postgraduate level for over fifteen years and has held research posts at the University of Hull in Philosophy and Bioethics while working on PhD research.
Since 2017 Diana Whitmore: founder and director three successful educational charities over a thirty–five year period. Currently Director of the Ecologia Youth Trust and runs Growing2gether for young people, a resilience- based youth mentoring programme, which raises self-esteem, aspiration and educational attainment whilst re-engaging ‘at risk’ young people with their communities.
Since 2019 Dr Sybille Schiffmann Director Deostara part of team, collaboratively designed MSc in Management for a Sustainable Future with Marjon University Plymouth and consultant working principally with leaders in health and social care sectors, who are committed to creating broader and more purposeful impact, in line with their values. Her doctoral thesis explores deep participation and shared leadership, she is co-founder Wise Thinking Partners.
Since 2019 Mary Culhane: digital marketing manager, has worked on projects raising environmental awareness, helping marginalised people to find their voice, promoting well-being for teenagers and supporting and developing community projects. Including local coordinator for Red Tent, to support and empower women and a local environmental group and social media for Dreadnought Southwest.
Since 2023 Gary King & Lee Curtis: Gary is a psychologist and director of the consultancy Create Flow, where he facilitates leadership programmes focussed on positive change and sustainability. He has a literal degree in adventure with rich experiences in expeditions, helping shape and drive his interest in psychology, experiential learning, facilitating and coaching in nature. Lee has worked in the Creative industry in London for over 25 years as an artist, designer, creative director, mentor and coach. Art and culture are a core value for Lee. Appreciation of excellence and beauty is a main character strength. Creativity is at the centre of his life – Lee is always seeking the new and looking for inspiration.
We also call on the other Training and Coaching suppliers as needed: Jonathan Gosling, Emeritus Professor of Leadership at Exeter University, visiting scholar at other universities including Bled, McGill, Monash, Renmin and UWE. He has taught and researched leadership for over 30 years and is now an independent academic and consultant at Pelumbra.com. He represented UK Universities at the Rio+20 UN Sustainability summit and contributes to the ‘greening’ of management education, e.g. as co-author of the text book Sustainable Business: a one planet approach and co-founder of One Planet Education Networks (OPEN). He received the ILA’s ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ in 2021. Miriam Gosling Gage; is a director of Pelumbra Ltd. She designs and facilitates leadership programmes and conferences for universities such as McGill (visiting professor), The RoundTables for Experienced Managers and The International Leadership Association. Miriam campaigns for Womens Equality Party and is co-founder Wise Thinking Partners. Catherine Rees; is also co-founder of Wise Thinking Partners, she is a coach, coach supervisor and a former head teacher who now advises schools in Exeter and beyond and is a Green Councillor. Charles Wookey Trustee and Soulla Kyriacou COOBlueprint for Better Business: an independent charity whose purpose is to create a better society through better business. Blueprint helps business to be inspired and guided by a purpose that benefits society and respects people and planet.
London supplier: Global Generation, an educational charity Founded in 2004, which works together with local children and young people, businesses, residents and families in Camden, Islington and Southwark to create healthy, integrated and environmentally responsible communities. Our work connects people of all ages to nature in the middle of the city.
Devon Supplier: The Barefoot Barn, a small privately owned space used by the local community.
Every year we have a formal commitment to give to registered charities a minimum of 5% of our total profit as ‘in-kind’ donations of places on our training programmes. We are usually able to exceed this by giving over 10%
In addition to this formal commitment, we give:
20% reduction in fees to certified BCorps, graduates of MSc Responsibility in Business Practice (University of Bath) & graduates of MSc Sustainability and Responsibility (Ashridge Business School.)
5% bursary places to social enterprise or other individuals working in social/environmental field who can make good use of a coaching approach in their teams/organizational culture.
Finally, on a case-by-case basis and if resources permit, we do our best to offer bursaries to other candidates who cannot pay full fee.
All operations comply with recognized good professional coaching practice, as stated in our Code of Conduct and Association for Coaching (AC) Global Code of Ethics. All our students become members of the AC and subscribe to this code of ethics. We encourage them to maintain membership as graduates. In addition the Director is an accredited master coach and also subscribes to APECS code of ethics.
Quality assurance at Wise Goose is designed to enhance the quality of all training and facilitation roles related to the programme. It helps raise standards, provide support, increase work satisfaction and enhance professionalism and expertise. Our quality assurance vision is to provide both a nurturing and developmental support mechanism for ongoing reflexivity, training and personal development to our trainers. This policy is built upon:
A commitment to high standards of professional accountability
A commitment to working to evoke the potential of all who work with Wise Goose.
A balance of self assessment, peer appraisal and a supportive and dialogue with senior management.
An aspiration to balance a compassionate recognition of human fallibility with a rigorous commitment to achieving excellence and improving quality.
Our aim is to provide a space to explore, grow and learn in order to fulfil our mission to deliver a high quality coaching training programmes. Wise Goose is committed to ensuring the quality assurance process is carried out fairly in line with 2010 Equalities Act. All quality assurers will:
execute the role with professionalism, integrity and courtesy
evaluate objectively
report accurately and fairly
respect the confidentiality of the information gained and within the groups observed
The Director monitors the process, outcomes and effectiveness of quality assurance arrangements.
APECS (Association of Professional Executive Coaches & Supervisors) membership
Climate Coaching Alliance CCA
Eco Leadership Institute
Inner Development Goals Network
Ethical Marketing
At Wise Goose, we are committed to ethical marketing practices that build trust, foster genuine connections, and create a positive impact. This includes and goes beyond GDPR and legal compliance. Our policy is guided by the following principles:
1. Genuine Engagement
Interact with our audience sincerely and meaningfully.
View clients and students as individuals with unique needs and aspirations.
2. Two-Way Communication
Encourage open dialogue and feedback.
Create platforms for discussion and actively listen to our clients.
3. Transparent Practices
Be clear about our coaching methods, pricing, and expectations.
Avoid making exaggerated claims or promises.
Share authentic stories that highlight our values and impact.
Use real-life examples and testimonials to illustrate our services.
Promote ethical behaviour and avoid greenwashing.
4. Community Building
Foster a supportive environment where stakeholders feel connected and valued.
Respect the basic human dignity of stakeholders
Organize regular events, online groups, and collaborative projects.
5. Education and Expertise
Share knowledge that addresses the needs of our audience through social media, blogs, articles, webinars, and workshops.
6. Demonstrating Expertise
Clearly communicate our areas of expertise and how they align with client needs.
Showcase specialized knowledge to attract clients seeking specific solutions.
7. Authenticity
Build our brand on genuine strengths and achievements.
Avoid inflated claims and focus on delivering real value.
By following these principles, Wise Goose aims to create a marketing strategy that is both effective and ethical, fostering lasting relationships with our clients and contributing to a better world. We will evaluate the effectiveness of this on an ongoing basis, to ensure that it remains effective and reflects best practice. For more detail about the values and principles underpinning our approach to marketing see our post on this topic.
As advocates for transformative leadership and sustainability, we’re excited to share and recommend One Planet Leadership program, run byMiriam Gosling Gage, a Wise Goose alumna:
Businesses today face increasing tension between serving immediate stakeholders—investors, customers, employees—and addressing broader impacts on future generations and ecosystems. The SDGs offer guidance, but real-world priorities often conflict, and there are no simple answers for leaders.
Despite efforts to promote inclusivity, many organisations have limited opportunities for genuine cross-cultural interaction, leading to isolation and a lack of engagement with diverse perspectives. This trend can make leaders more comfortable, but it hinders their ability to navigate complex global challenges.
Similarly, INGOs and public organisations are grappling with shifts in authority and trust, as well as the rise of localism over traditional hierarchies. This calls for leaders to listen, understand, and respond with greater wisdom and empathy.
The program offers a co-coaching and peer-learning experience for managers and leaders from around the world. It focuses on the lived experiences of taking responsibility and authority in diverse cultural and social contexts, helping participants develop leadership skills that balance global responsibility with local action. This program unites leaders worldwide in a journey of growth and collaboration. Join this global community to enhance your leadership skills and make a positive impact on our planet.
Join Miriam and a truly worldly team to learn from global peers, engage with real-world challenges, and build a more sustainable future together.
We are excited to announce the release of our latest BCorp Annual Report!
At Wise Goose, our dedication to social and environmental impact is at the core of everything we do. This report showcases our journey, achievements, some things that didn’t go according to plan and the steps we’ve taken over the past year to make a positive difference through coaching.
Key Highlights:
Impact and Successes: Discover what we’ve done and what we are celebrating
Setbacks: What we said we’d do in the last report and not done (and why)
Sustainability Initiatives: Learn about our ongoing efforts to promote sustainability and reduce our environmental footprint.
Fostering Conscious Leadership: Read inspiring stories of how we are nurturing conscious leaders andwho are equipped to navigate complex challenges through coaching.
Vision for the Future: What next and where we want to improve
We believe in the power of business to drive positive change, and our BCorp certification is one way of being held to account and showing our commitment. By measuring our social and environmental impact, we aim to be part of creating a future where everyone can thrive.
We invite you to read the full report and join us in celebrating our progress. Your feedback and thoughts are invaluable to us, so please share your comments below.
Wise Thinking Partners is a hub and leadership development programme focussing on furthering the Inner Development Goals (IDGs).
Back in May, I visited Stockholm to launch a book and to reconnect with old colleagues and students. While there I was invited to co-lead a workshop on the potential of the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) to bridge the expertise of a community of psychosynthesis practitioners with the worlds of sustainability, business and leadership. The workshop title was ‘Doors to Be Opened’.
The buzz in the room that morning was great. The deep interest of this gathering of consultants, businesspeople, creatives, coaches and psychotherapists both energising and inspiring. By the time I got home I’d decided to see if anyone in our UK Wise Goose community wanted to explore ‘opening doors’ here by setting up an IDG hub. Since then, behind the scenes we have been busy co-creating Wise Thinking Partners – you can meet the team here.
We are excited by the potential of the IDGs to contribute to purpose led, sustainable communities and organisations. The goals help us do this by putting the inner dimension on the map, providing an accessible language and framework for the transformative skills and qualities needed to develop our inner capacity to deal with today’s increasingly complex environments and challenges. Find out more and follow us on linkedin.
Why do we need Inner Development goals – and how do they fit with the Sustainable Development Goals?
Worldwide we have known about sustainability challenges for decades, the Sustainable Development Goals or ‘Global Goals’ give a blueprint and shared vision and for peace and prosperity for people and the planet. But despite our knowledge not enough is being done to address pressing issues. The IDG initiative is a response to the lack of progress, it maintains that part of the reason for this failure of progress is that most of us, especially leaders, need to be, think, relate, collaborate, and act differently.
The European Parliament recognise this and have recommended the Inner Development Goals as an important framework to achieve Sustainable Development Goals.
How does this fit with Wise Goose?
Wise Goose was hatched over a decade ago out of the belief that we as individuals can influence a lot, and that coaching can have a role in supporting people in developing the self-awareness, communication skills, capacity for complex thinking and leadership that’s essential if we are to contribute to the larger systemic changes. The IDG framework fits seamlessly with the coaching and training we have delivered from the start. We believe we have experience and expertise to contribute to the IDG initiative, as well as a lot to learn together with those who join us in our hub.
And finally, ‘Wise Thinking Partners’ is another way of showing our commitment to ‘walking the talk’ as a BCorp, where our certification is underpinned by the Sustainable Development Goals.
So, what will our ‘Wise Thinking Partners’ IDG hub do? We aim to:
Bring people together around collective exploration and action.
Learn, innovate, prototype, practice and share application of tools.
Create local events, action days or programs to support further activities within the Hub.
Ally with partner organisations to help fund local and/or global development of IDG.
Share stories, recordings of lectures, event designs and presentations with local and global communities.
Next Steps…..
5th December – save the date!
The launch of our hub coincides with COP28 climate summit. Come along to explore and play. We invite the curious to a place free from expectations. A space to share your wise thinking and learn together how to make business, organisations and communities stronger for a better planet. Register here
How should we think about addressing climate change?
Over the past fortnight at COP 26 debate has circled around pragmatic questions; fossil fuels, net zero, eco-efficiency, green consumerism, conservation management, political policy, economic reform and scientific or technological ‘silver bullets’.
But what about other ways of thinking about solutions to the issues? Amid all the noise, and with so many points of view vying for attention how do I make sense of my place in relation to it all?
Over these days as I watched the news, and published the posts, I noticed different ways of thinking emerge as different contributors from different worlds offered their thoughts about questions raised by the climate catastrophe.
As I tried to make sense of the voices I remembered coming across a paper by political theorist John Dryzek, this was back in 2007 while studying for a MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice. It helped me understand and untangle different ways of thinking and talking about environmental challenges. Dryzek argued that environmental discourses fall into four different buckets (my image not his!) or discourses, either reformist or radical, and either prosaic or imaginative.
Dryzek, J., The politics of the Earth: environmental discourses. 2005, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The top left, prosaic and reformist frames the challenge within the current economic and social worldview. In other words, we need to tweak business as usual but basically can trust technology and markets to rise to the challenge and fix things. This was the loudest voice inside COP.
Top right, prosaic and radical on the other hand argues that there are limits to growth on a finite planet and to avoid disaster we must cut back economic activity. This might look like the call to rethink Christmas that just dropped in my inbox today, to reduce consumption.
In the bottom left ‘bucket’ the reformist and imaginative discourse operates largely within the ideals, values and worldview of current consumer-capitalist mindset, saying we need to do business better. Tackle things more creatively and intelligently, cradle to cradle, regenerative design fits here.
Finally, bottom right, the imaginative and radical approach seeks to shift consciousness, transforming the way we experience ourselves and the planet. Here all life is seen to have value in and of itself, not just as a resource for humans to utilise. This ‘deep green’ approach might involve a panpsychic perspective. In their beautiful pamphlet ‘On Sentience’ Peter Reason and Sarah Gillespie put it this way: “What would it be like to live in a world of sentient beings rather than inert objects? How would we relate to such a world?” This discourse can take a spiritual turn, seeing the sacred or divine immanent in the earth. A key movement here is in a shift of identity from a separate self, towards a connected self, what is sometimes called an ‘ecological self.’
Though these different ways of seeing the climate crisis and the best way to tackle it can and overlap, they are often in conflict and competition with each other. Think of the activists protesting outside COP26, angry with the prosaic reformist inside, or those inside wanting them to ‘go away’ so they can get on with the hard work of fixing the problem. Or, as we heard in posts here a cynical ‘your are away with the fairies’ or ‘in Narnia’ – a bemused ‘what’s the point’ of any of this in the context of business or a school of management?
I didn’t organise the way different discourses presented themselves over these two weeks, but reading back it looks like I might have. Perhaps it’s because most of us are dipping our hands into more than one ‘bucket’ as we go about our professional and personal lives, giving us access to different ways of thinking. I can easily name organisations and people I work with from all four discourses. This gives me hope, the challenges we face are complex, far reaching and systemic, we need to recognise, understand, accept, include, and co-ordinate all of these approaches. I have my own preferences and perspectives, but if we are to have any hope of tackling the challenges we’d best stop bickering among ourselves to link arms and work together.
Dryzek’s analysis is useful, but I’d like to offer another way of expressing this, from Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone in Active Hope https://www.activehope.info/the-book
They outline three dimensions of work that needs to be done to turn around the climate crisis: Holding Actions, Life-Sustaining Systems and Practices and Shift in Consciousness. They are mutually reinforcing and equally necessary, each one leads into the others.
Holding Actions focus on holding back and slowing down the damage being caused by ‘business as usual’. This can include raising awareness of issues, as well as direct action and protest. These voices are often outside conference rooms, out on the streets. The goal here is to protect what remains. Holding actions are essential; they save lives, species and ecosystems. But, though protest is vital, they point out that on their own, these actions are not enough. Along with stopping the damage, we need to replace or transform the systems and institutions that cause the harm.
Life-Sustaining Systems and Practices involve rethinking the way we do things, redesigning of the structures and systems that make up our society. The green shoots of these practices are all around us. We can all support and participate through our choices about how to travel, where to spend our money, what to eat, where to save. Social enterprises, sustainable agriculture, green energy and investing, all are small steps that contribute to the creation of a life-sustaining society. But like holding actions, by themselves they are not enough. These new structures won’t take root and survive without deeply ingrained values to sustain them.
Shift in Consciousness involves a deep transformation from the hyper-individualism that’s become a hallmark of a ‘business as usual’ mindset, to a deepening of our sense of belonging in the world. This is the emergence of a more connected and compassionate sense of identity. This shift in consciousness involves our hearts, our minds, and our views of reality. For me, the practice of paying attention to small things, here, with care, in this place, keeps my sense of belonging in the world alive and fresh, giving me the energy and nourishment I need to do the work I do out in the world. Chris and Joanna call this “the inner frontier of change, the personal and spiritual development that enriches and deepens our capacity and desire to act for our world.”
I hope you’ve enjoyed some of the ‘Thoughts for the Day’ we’ve offered over the past 14 days – I’m going to take a break, head up to the allotment and be quiet now!
Todays Thought for the Day comes from Sybille Schiffmann. Sybille is Chair and a trainer here at Wise Goose and part of a team at Marjon University who have been collaboratively designing a new MSc in Management for a Sustainable Future. https://www.marjon.ac.uk/courses/msc-management-sustainable/
“The main ethical question for our time is what kind of work we want to build together with the immense resources we have at our disposal.”
GRLI, 2008 (The Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative)
In my work with leaders from business and the social sector who are currently studying on Marjon’s MSc Management for a Sustainable Future, the question above is particularly relevant.
At its heart it is about taking on new responsibilities, concerns for other people, and for our environment, while weighing those concerns directly against our self-interest and in relation to the primary activities, undertaken by our businesses and organisations.
It becomes a question of leadership – responsible leadership in other words.
As I work with students who have committed to this quite demanding path of study, while holding down their existing full-time jobs, I am really appreciating what a transformative journey this is for those individuals, as they seek to shift thinking and action in their workplaces, through the adoption and in time, integration of sustainable business practices.
Such responsible leadership requires far greater cognitive understanding of the complexities of addressing sustainability matters. As one small business leader, who produces sustainable swimwear while actively adhering to Circular Economic Principles and practices put it: “The easiest and most sustainable thing to do would be not to set up and run a business at all”.
Responsible leadership also involves being visionary in the sense of waking others up to the future that is being debated furiously at COP 26, and to help orientate others in their workplaces towards potentially very different business activities, or entirely new business ventures for that matter.
My hope for our leaders on this programme is that they fully embrace their unique potential to create a positive difference, and impact, for the people, or customers they serve and for the planet they inhabit; be that large or small.
Their job moving forward is to “ build muscle” as Mary Gentile puts it and apply ethical decision-making in their workplaces. All this while facing the demands and challenges of day to day business as usual, where they must now present the ‘voice’ for those environmental and societal stakeholders not conventionally represented on the Balance Sheet, or the Profit and Loss account.
In essence they are creating the path to new possibilities, new products, services or even whole new ways of doing business. Walking this path requires restless curiosity, resilience, courage and a willingness to act at times contrary to the status quo; or as Jacob Bronowski once said “It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.”
It is a great pleasure to be on this journey with them.
Another quote that aptly describe the mind and heart of our students:
“The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation.”
“It’s my deep sense of wonder that keeps me hopeful.”
Alice Walker
It was pelting down. Fat silver drops that fall straight down to bounce and splatter, soaking shoes and trouser bottoms. The water flowed fast, bubbling along the gutters, skimming the top of the kerb and gurgling down drains. Shoppers huddled in shop doorways waiting for it to ease or hunched and hurried to whatever could not wait for the cloudburst to pass. I made my way up the steps of Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum to escape the rain.
On the floor plan I pick up there’s an invitation “Find your way or lose yourself”. I stuff it in my pocket and let my feet take me up the stairs, past the statue of Prince Albert where, ready to lose myself, I take a random left turn.
Disoriented, I feel like I’ve stepped back in time. On shelves specimens in ground glass jars are suspended in alcohol, there are old-fashioned mahogany display cases with neat labels. For a split second I’m in the Hancock Museum in Newcastle sixty years ago. A rare treat, just me and Dad. Every time we went I’d stand spellbound for what seemed hours, gazing into the eyes of the stuffed American bison.
Back in the present, in this museum, I’d stumbled into biologist Walter Percy Sladen’s study, unchanged since it was installed in 1910. It’s the home of his echinoderm collection – marine animals that include sea urchins and starfish.
I wander over to the shelves, examining the jars. Inside float delicate curling arms covered with fine hair that I discover are tube feet. In the centre, cases display dried starfish, all sizes, collected from all over the world. From Teignmouth just down the road, to New Zealand. The labels record the depth of the finds and the kind of mud; blue mud, volcanic mud, coral mud and gravel and stone. I wander absorbed, struck by their fivefold radial symmetry, I remember learning as a child that starfish have an amazing power – they can regenerate their limbs. Surprised by how moved I feel here, surrounded by what are after all dead specimens, I realise what is stirred in me is a sense of wonder at a vast otherness that puts my own small place in the world into perspective.
I glance up and see there are words written around the cornice. Craning my neck and turning around in the centre of the room I struggle to read; with no spaces and no punctuation and it takes a while for the letters to make sense:
“Look on the frame of this wide universe and therein read the endless kinds of creature which by name thou canst not count much less their natures aim which are made with wondrous wise respect and with admirable beauty deckt.”
Back home, I remember the sea urchin shell that sits on the windowsill of my office. Taking it in my hands, I turn it, running fingertips over the bumps where spines were anchored, tracing the delicate peachy-pink lines and darker mahogany stripes, seeing for the first time the curved fivefold symmetry, like a closed tulip. Here, in a room I work in most days; wonder rises again. Awe doesn’t require travel to distant lands. It does need space and time and perhaps, a willingness to meet life with openness.
I often find myself writing about what I think of as ‘micro-practices.’ A colleague once dismissed this as ‘Narnia’ irrelevant, not real world ‘work’. That was 15 years ago, but the barb still sticks. Last week, Chris Nichols, in his post ‘Reaching for the Stars,’ mentioned the time the CEO of his business school declared he was ‘away with the fairies.’ I smiled when I read that, taking comfort in knowing I wasn’t alone. Smiles aside, I still carry a secret, lurking fear ridicule.
Nevertheless, I want to take a stand for these glimpses of another way of experiencing my place in the world. The world needs more awe not less. Specifically, the wonder that rises in response to the natural world, transforming the way we understand the world.
As COP26 moves into its final days, my thoughts turn to Sir David Attenborough’s opening address. His sense of wonder, his capacity to engage and marvel has touched millions, opening a crack where love for the natural world can enter. Awe matters because the more we lose our capacity to be awestruck, the easier it is to look down on the world with superior, self-centred over-confidence.
Wonder is an antidote for the self-absorption that creeps up when I become too busy, speedy, preoccupied or fixated on personal concerns. A few moments at the end of the day breathing cool air and looking at the stars, a cup of coffee on a bench where I can smell honeysuckle and listen to bees, or pausing to watch the birds on the feeder outside the kitchen window – these presences work together to soften and melt a tendency to see myself as the centre of my own universe.
The lines in Sladen’s study are from ‘An Hymn of Heavenly Beauty by Edmund Spenser.
Todays thought for the day comes from Pat Fleming. Pat works in conservation education, and currently teaches and mentors on the ‘Call of the Wild’ courses at Schumacher College. She co-authored ‘Thinking Like a Mountain’, a deep ecology reader with John Seed, Arne Naess and Joanna Macy and has led groups in deep ecology and ‘Work that Reconnects’ for over 30 years.
Cutting Leeks as COP26 opens
I stand by the compost heap, bottom of our Dartmoor garden, wielding an old bone-handled knife, slicing muddy white roots off long fat leeks just heaved from the earth.
Above the pines, in the evening’s apricot sky the mewling of a young buzzard, high-pitched, insistent, cuts through the quiet. Alarmed, alone.
I carry on dropping leek tops into warm wormy compost, a tangle of rotting leaves-peelings-weeds-paper that yield such blessing, keep our garden in good heart.
Suddenly from the south, a wide-winged buzzard swoops over my head, feather tips swish air down my neck. It’s heading home, the Dart valley woods nearby. I try to call back, but my language is lacking.
At this moment, five hundred miles north, there’s a buzzing of heads of state, COP 26 opens to address our broken world, important people talking serious turkey in Glasgow, calling each other out, making more promises to be broken.
I would be there, I wanted to be there, for my alarm cries to be heard by someone, anyone, maybe no-one. But at least like the young buzzard, give everything for my voice to cry out.
But I didn’t get on that train, or sleep on the floor of friends, nor stand in a windy wet street handing out leaflets, maybe dressed as a turtle, or a puddle, or indeed anything that wants its voice heard in the melee.
Instead I slice the last leek, satisfied with their perfect long shafts, marvel how anyone would love them, sweet, lightly steamed.
Boris rattles on the 6 pm radio about “The last chance saloon” as if he’s some sheriff in a dodgy ole western, rattling his spurs, cocking his pistol, to save the world. Why does he sound so hollow, so desperate to project gravitas, whilst wearing a cowboy hat?
I hear the Island nations – Pilau, Philippines, Pacific, whose women speak so eloquently, passionately, concisely, about what needs to happen “Or we will get angry!”
Actually we are already angry, very angry. I wave my knife. Angry at my species, in our stupified thrall of stuff, turned away from our legacy, from future generations whose soil and sea and air we hold in our hands, within our smallest of actions. Angry how our endless reckless hunger is more important than the magnanimous recognition of our belonging, of all our belonging.
Deep down, aren’t we, like young buzzards, mewling for home, for safe places to rest and return? No need to holler any more, but to quietly embrace, be embraced, belong.
It’s that time of year, time for the salmon run. This year I almost forgot.
Every year I wait for a few days of heavy rain , that’s when salmon surge upstream heading for the gravely shallows where they were spawned. Many will die after, but not all.
When he was nine or ten, I’d collect my son from school, and we’d head for the salmon leap to watch them hurl their bodies at the falls. Cheering whenever we saw one, close enough to see the shimmering copper-pink and silver scales. Then another and another; sometimes as many as fifty in less than an hour, sometimes only one or two. I remember him saying “I like breathing the air here.” Sweet, moist, cool and rich with autumn smells. We would sit side by side in silence for a long time, sharing flapjacks and a thermos of hot chocolate, bearing witness until the light faded.
That was fifteen years ago. How much longer will the salmon return to our watershed spawn? I wanted my son to see, so he could carry their story in his memory. I’d say “some people go their whole lives and never see this” and he would laugh, because every year I repeated the same words.
Though they seem numerous, around the world salmon populations are collapsing, all Devon’s rivers have seen a substantial decline. The reasons are various and systemic; overfishing in the Atlantic West Greenland, Faeroese and Irish Costal fisheries; poaching locally; pollutants from agricultural run off; contamination from treated sewage; escaped farmed salmon weakening the genetic strains of wild salmon; escaped farmed trout competing for habitat; pests and diseases from farmed stock infecting wild fish; alien invasive weeds leading to too much or too little shade along the riverbanks; ocean pollution and of course warmer waters brought by climate change. A fragile balance being broken.
This place asks for engagement with issues that takes me far beyond one species in one river. The flourishing of the salmon can only be understood in terms of patterns and networks of relationships, connectedness and processes. There is a whole community of embedded relationships: the ecosystem of the river; the bioregion; the oceans; the biosphere.
The recognition at the COP26 talks last week that the climate change and biodiversity are intertwined crises is welcome, but it’s also shocking that they could ever have been thought separate.
Relationships and context don’t lend themselves to our conventional scientific framework, rooted as it is in a world of measurable and quantifiable things. Though quantitative knowledge is essential, the qualitative, subjective, interpretive, artful, poetic, imaginative and exploratory is so often neglected. Unfortunately, analytical thinking can only take us so far. Systems evolve, change, develop, grow and transform, we need to look deeply at relationships.
Every year at this time, others are drawn to the salmon leap. Stopping, listening and watching. We stand sharing a sense of wonder, touching the spirit and magic of the place. I play with the notion that each in our own way we are answering an echo in our soul, a temporary softening of tired old ways of seeing and feeling, leaving us, for a few moments, more permeable; open to a world that is alive and awake and aware. The roar of the weir, the salmon, the falling leaves and soft air speak a language we are briefly able to understand.
When Gregory Bateson spoke of consciousness, beauty and the sacred as an ‘aesthetic’ I wonder if he meant this resonance with place; a recognition of the relationships between things, the ways place acts upon us; a mutual responsiveness, encompassing not only biological interdependencies but also heart and mind.
It’s often argued that community involvement leads to protection and care of a bioregion, might this ripple outward from these moments at the salmon leap? When I’m full of doubt and leaning towards despair I fear we simply don’t have time for the subtle, gentle and less obvious action which might flow from here. It’s not enough, much more is demanded of us. As a friend put it last week, only partly in jest “I feel like I should be out there, gluing myself to a motorway.”
Then again, I also see how a culture of haste infects our personal, social and political worlds. There is unrelenting pressure to decide, react and act and not enough time to engage with the complexity of life. Perhaps the urgency is so great we don’t have the time not to go slowly.
