‽istis ponders ‘mindingfulness’ (weekending March 23rd
2024)
This week ‽istis has pondered ‘mindingfulness’, a term that has emerged towards the end of a recently completed writing project exploring poetry and empathy and which - on making a swift-ish internet search - perhaps, possibly, may even be a word I could cautiously lay claim to devising/contriving[i] (but with very sincere apologies if this is in all likelihood not the case)‽
This, (with just a little bit of editing from the original) as they might say is ‘what I wrote’:
'A final, perhaps somewhat contrived, word has come out of this
project for me: ‘mindingfulness’. This may be a combination of:
• ‘Minding’: past and present about equality, social,
political, economic, ideological positions and their manifestations; minding
about the potential impact of separationism, sectarianism, tribalism,
nationalism, violence and conflict, the things that may divide us; minding about factors that may have denied or diminshed or demolished or destroyed and that mean too many have to be overwhelmingly preoccupied with
the safety and wellbeing of them and theirs; minding about what is going on for
others, what their experience is and has been like, how they think and feel -
trying to imagine what life is like, striving to understand how and why they
behave as they do, having a concern for others’ welfare and wellbeing;
engaging, asking, being inquisitive, being interested, encouraging voice and
song and story; listening attentively; engaging; heeding; adapting; being
reflexive…
and
• Approaches associated with ‘mindfulness’ practice and
the sort of exercises and habits advocated by Roman Krznaric[ii] or Karen Armstrong and the movement associated with the Charter of Compassion[iii],
and with the Declaration of a Global Ethic[iv].
Might we strive to find a way to get ‘so actually into the place of another
that our (own) feelings duplicate more or less the feelings of that other…
(and) weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who are glad.’ (Henry
Moore ‘Universal Kinship’ 1906[v])
Maybe we can find a way to practise, encourage and support
‘mindingfulness’; moving from affective empathy and cognitive empathy to
behavioural empathy with the broadest of practical implications; striving to follow Audre Lorde’s progression from word to deed[vi],
from thinking to feeling to behaviour, from practice to practising (getting on
with it, putting it into practice, trying again and again wherever we have
influence), casting ‘…the quality of the light within which we predicate our
hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then
into idea, then into more tangible action’ at an individual, relational,
social, organisational, systemic, structural and political level.'
And many ideas explored across several of these weekly blogs (perhaps
not surprisingly) seem to be gathering, hovering and interacting this week: ‘self’
and ‘other’; me and we and us; systems and systemic; symbiosis; well-being of all; only
connect; endogenous (within) and exogenous (without); dynamic interaction; mutual dependency, mutual
reciprocity - mutualism; collectivism; ‘ubuntu’…
So, as Spring seems finally to be springing in the UK and as the week closes - more work is underway to set out thoughts on what 'mindingfulness' might look and sound like in practice, and a tentative proposal is forming for a related project with local singing and creative friends.
Perhaps, possibly, maybe promoting and practising ‘mindingfulness’
could help us more than simply/complexly imagine that things could be different…‽
NB:
further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog
entries to be found on X/Twitter with replies, retweets (which don’t
necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’:
@Pistis_wonders.
X/Twitter ‘follows’ and
respectful comment and dialogue welcome...
[i] An
‘‽’ is definitely required here, I think…
[ii] See
Roman Krznaric: ‘Empathy’ 2014;
[iii]
Referred to in earlier blogs, not least in relation to Karen Armstrong’s
writing on the ‘Golden Rule’ and the development of the ‘Charter for Compassion.’
https://pistisrec.blogspot.com/2021/04/pistis-reclaims-golden-rule-weekending.html
[iv]
Again, see a previous blog: https://pistisrec.blogspot.com/2023/08/pistis-ponders-on-and-on-parliament-of.html
[v]
Definitely a text ripe and ready for ‘sankofa’ activity, I reckon. See blog
from December 2023: https://pistisrec.blogspot.com/2023/12/pistis-ponders-down-in-yon-forest.html
[vi] Audre
Lorde, writing about the potentially transformative practice and power of poetry:
‘... poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms
the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward
survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more
tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can
be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our
poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.’
