The recklessness of faith

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"I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings." -William Sloane Coffin

A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.

As a young man I was drawn to William Sloane Coffin's teaching, teaching that he expressed in part through direct social activism. His view that hope is a moral responsibility, an active rather than passive stance towards the world, resonated with my developing, draft-age sense of civic duty.

Similarly, he defined faith as an active trust in the values of love, justice, and truth, even in the face of uncertainty or fear. "Faith is not the absence of doubt," he said, "but the courage to act despite it."

More than fifty years later his counsel is more relevant than ever. Here's a few examples I found this week of people learning to embrace love, justice and truth as guiding lights in their lives and their work.

Happy Friday.

Learning, Personal Development
Pursuing what’s interesting to you can enrich your life beyond happiness and meaning, benefitting not just you, but society at large.

"What makes for a good life? Is it pleasure or enjoying the passage of time, as James Taylor once sang? Or is it more about living life with purpose and contributing to other people’s well-being?

"While we at Greater Good have found both happiness and meaning probably play their roles in the good life, recent research by Shigehiro Oishi and his colleagues suggests there’s a third pillar of the good life: psychological richness. This kind of life entails seeking challenging, novel, and complex experiences—ones that engage our minds, shape our perspectives, and stimulate deep emotion.

"Now, philosopher and researcher Lorraine Besser has written a new book, The Art of the Interesting, to explain what psychological richness looks like and how to attain it. She makes the case that pursuing what’s interesting to you can enrich your life beyond happiness and meaning, benefitting not just you, but society at large." - Jill Suttie

Author Interview: What If You Pursued What’s Interesting Instead of Happiness?

Habitat, Urbansim
"Think like a gardener, not an architect: design beginnings, not ends."

Sweden has an official "innovation agency". Really. Called Vinnova, the group's purpose is to "open the way for innovation that provides sustainable solutions and strengthens Swedish competitiveness."

They hired "designer, urbanist, etc." Dan Hill, to create a book to catalog working methods that facilitate "mission-oriented innovation (that) aims to create change at the system level where everyone involved is involved and drives development." You can download that book - Mission Oriented Innovation - here.

Hill puts careful emphasis on small scale, and a slower dynamic. He sees the street as one of most potent of spaces that surround us. He sees it as the basic unit of city, a place where all systems converge, and all culture plays out. In order to bring a cultural voice into the urban planning conversation for the book, he invited Brian Eno to develop his own "Design Principals for the Street".

Leave it to a thinker and artist known for generative creation, oblique strategies, seeing the world as interconnected networks of feedback and flow, and "scenius" over "genius" to develop some inspiring prompts.

Article: Working with Brian Eno on Design Principles for Streets.

Learning, Teaching
Jacob Mitchell knew that he learned best through rhyme and pattern and music. He figured kids would too.

School bored Jacob Miller. At 16 he dropped out to work for his father’s party business. But he also started to write his own music, mostly rap. Then he discovered self-help books, returned to school, and started using rhythm to help him learn. He traded silent memorization for writing raps about his school subjects. His grades soared.

After he graduated at the top of his class he took a job teaching and loved it. According to one of his early colleagues “At lunchtime, he’d be playing football with the kids. He was running stuff after school. Teaching was a way of life for Jacob.” When asked to help prepare some 10- and 11-year-olds for a standardized test he said: “I was like, you know what, I’m not going to waste any time on teaching this rote examination just for the sake of it. I don’t want kids to be looking at their writing and squeezing in an adverbial phrase.” So he wrote a four-minute song that covered the material, and set it to a beat.

That was then. Today his YouTube channel has 48,800 subscribers, and he has 212,000 followers on Instagram. He filled theaters during a solo national tour, and was a headliner for a 30-city tour focused on performances for children. He has two television shows, “Wonder Raps” and “Rap Tales.” And next spring, Simon & Schuster UK will publish “The Adventures of Rap Kid,” the first of three books Mitchell described as “similar to ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ but slightly more street.”

Article: He Raps About Kids’ Books and Grammar, and He Has Fans

Civics, Citizenship
Democratic backsliding in the United States and around the world highlights an urgent need for a renewed focus on civic education.

Former Congressman and then presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke visits a high school in Des Moines, IA. Image by Phil Roeder

"Multiple studies have shown that younger Americans are losing faith in democracy, and a significant number of them are no longer convinced that it should endure, given the political failure to address issues that they care about....This aligns with broader findings that show public confidence in the federal government has been low for decades."

"...Reimagining and reinvesting in civic education can help reverse these trends by preparing individuals to participate responsibly and effectively in democratic processes and institutions. High-quality civic learning fosters reflective patriotism, understanding of democratic principles, and engagement in civic activities. The result will be a more informed, active, and resilient citizenry capable of sustaining democratic institutions and values." - Danielle S. Allen, Carah Ong Whaley

Article: Educating for Democracy: The Case for a New Civics

Company, Leadership
"As leaders, we need to focus on what stays constant—authenticity, trust, and human needs."

"Focusing on human needs is especially important in the AI-driven era, where the risk of losing sight of human values is heightened. As AI becomes more integrated into our lives, human-centered leadership remains essential. And while AI can augment and accelerate processes, it should not replace human creativity or the core human values that guide leadership decisions."

Podcast/Transcript: The Role of Human-Centered Leadership in the Age of AI

Habitat, Public Spaces
"My paradise is a library ... I am a paper freak. I was born a paper freak … I was not interested in anything else but books, books, books and drawing paper."

The former photo studio of Karl Lagerfeld, which is lined with thousands of books on photography, architecture, art, design, interiors and gardens Image credit: Photography by Cédrine Scheidig

"Step through the sliding glass door at 7 Rue de Lille in Paris and you’ll find yourself inside the sumptuous psyche of one of fashion’s most prodigious figures. Karl Lagerfeld, the designer who left an indelible mark on visual culture during his 36-year tenure at Chanel, founded Librairie 7L in 1999, converting a former art gallery into a photographic studio, bookshop and library."

"Since Lagerfeld’s death in 2019, 7L has maintained the designer’s prolific eclecticism and scholarship through its three activities: the public-facing bookshop (where titles are presented at eye level on high tables or displayed on picture rails like paintings), the publishing house Éditions 7L, and the library, which has also now become a space for cultural events, exhibitions, music performances, dance recitals and poetry readings." - Dal Chodha

Article: Inside Karl Lagerfeld’s Extraordinary Paris Library And Bookshop, a Haven for the Bibliophile

Communication, Advertising
"Eliciting laughter is proof that you’ve connected with someone on a fundamental and human level."

'The Underdogs' TV spot. Credit: Apple

"Undeniably, we live in deeply polarized times. People are at odds over a multitude of social and political issues, and it’s getting harder and harder to find common ground. In such a divisive atmosphere, people are searching for something that unites us. That’s precisely why humor can be effective now more than ever, especially when it builds upon shared experiences." - Jon Cook

Article: Humor in Advertising Can Cue More Than Laughter.

Learning, Repair
Street Stiching is "an act of gentle disruption that demonstrates the pleasure and necessity of garment repair.”

Photo courtesy Mary Morten

"In this age of fast fashion, many people don’t give a second thought to tossing a torn shirt or ditching a pair of pants with a broken zipper. But go back in time a few decades, and simply mending what needed repairing would be far more commonplace. With her posse of street sewers who gather under the motto “Stitch It, Don’t Ditch It,” Mary Morton is encouraging a return to form.

"The 67-year-old and her crew post up about once a month from April to October in Edinburgh, Scotland, their brightly colored signs beckoning passersby to stop and learn how to wield a needle and thread. While having the happy consequence of saving people money, the sewing lessons are really about saving the environment." - Rebekah Brandes

Article: Through Pop-Up Sewing Lessons, UK Street Stitching Movement Tackles Fast Fashion

Related website: RepairWhatYouWear.com

One-liners

Article: A groundbreaking agreement provides libraries with permanent ownership rights over tens of thousands of digital titles.

Article: A fossil fuel economy requires 535x more mining than a clean energy economy.

Article: By integrating psychedelics into group settings and leveraging their capacity to foster social identities, the effects of psychedelic-assisted therapies could be enhanced.

Article: Research finds that other people like us more than we think.

Article: A walking bridge 3D-printed of stainless steel by robots has opened in Amsterdam.

Playlist

Video: Perla Batalla sings Bird on the Wire (L Cohen)

Perla Batalla was born in Los Angeles to an Argentinian singer and a Mexican mariachi musician who ran a record store together. She was attending law school and participating in talent contests at bars when she was introduced to Leonard Cohen who was auditioning for backup singers for his "I'm Your Man" tour. She later called that meeting her "big break and the opening of everything".

She toured extensively with him, and her live performances with him have been documented on various recordings, including concert footage and live albums. She is credited on several albums during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including "I'm Your Man" and "The Future".

Cohen encouraged her to pursue her own recording and performing career, and to date she has released eight albums, including two tribute albums, the first being "Bird on the Wire: The Songs of Leonard Cohen," in 2005.

She released the second, "A Letter to Leonard Cohen: A Tribute to a Friend" on September 20th of this year, a day prior to what would have been Cohen’s 90th birthday.

The performance captured on this video was recorded at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, CA on May 20, 2018.

Weekly Mixtape
In honor of Leonard Cohen on what would have been his 90th birthday

Playlist: Bird On the Wire

Image of the Week

Image by Starck

"Thanks to drones, the Miyazaki prefectural government captures a pair of mysterious circles made of cedar trees at its forest management site.

"Miyazaki prefecture is well-known for Japan’s biggest output of cedar trees and the Nichinan city’s forest is populated by local Obi-sugi cedar trees.

"So, the mysterious cycles are in fact the results of a 45-year experimental forestry program by scientists, who planted the local cedar trees to understand the effects of forest density of tree growth, explain prefectural government officials." - Design You Trust

Photo Essay: It’s Mysterious Circles In Japan: Drone Captures Circles Of Trees

What's Love & Work?

Love & Work is the weekly newsletter by me, Mitch Anthony. I help people use their brand - their purpose, values, and stories - as a pedagogy and toolbox for transformation.

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