I wonder if everybody can be an entrepreneur?

By the traditional or modernist definition of the word - the "creativity in business as a separate life activity" type definition - this would not seem to be possible. But think for a moment about Peter Block's injunction that "The Answer to How is Yes" and we see things a different way. The idea is that too much reliance on "how" questions will set us routinely looking for answers beyond ourselves and this approach undermines our "gift" to life in two ways:

• 1) It devalues the fact that we each see the life situation (that led to the "how" question) in a unique way.
• 2) It devalues the particular creative capacity that each individual might bring to the particular situation, and replaces it with a desire for efficient (quick) solutions.

Our need for the quick solution is often driven by the need to reach some measurable performance target. But I think we are collectively beginning to question what this need for "measurable speed" does to our capacity to be co-creators of our world. As physicist David Bohm said of measurement: Indeed, the attempt to suppose that measure exists prior to man and independently of him leads, as has been seen, to the ‘objectification' of man's insight, so that it becomes rigidified and unable to change, eventually bringing about falseness and deception in our overall apprehension of the self and the world.

So perhaps there is a call on all of us to be entrepreneurs - and by that I mean those people who recognise the unique sense we each have of an issue and the unique gifts we bring to the world to develop creative solutions - and in that can be whatever sphere of life issues may arise.

Finally let me defer to the Institute for Participatory Design for another sense of how we open up our understanding of entrepreneurship:

Life entrepreneur: Our view is that in order to become an entrepreneur one would not necessarily have to establish a company. To behave in an entrepreneurial fashion, to us, means to implement ideas of an economic, social or ecological nature, with a view to improving one's surroundings in a responsible and autonomous way and with a willingness to take risks. An entrepreneur might build a house, establish a company, develop and produce a product, get an initiative underway, establish an NGO, help those in need, research a solution to a problem, or sail around the world in a self-built solar-driven boat. In this sense, all those who go through life with a positive, goal-oriented, self-responsible attitude are life entrepreneurs.

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My "wonderings" from yesterday re-minded me of Bliss Browne's beautiful understanding of "Trinitarian" wholeness. In this she refers to the "recycling symbol" as a symbol of perfect giving, perfect receiving and nothing wasted. In thinking of the "ideal" entrepreneurship - as I was yesterday - I'm dreaming of a world where no human insight or gift is wasted.

Impossible you say?

Maybe.

But are we at an optimal point of waste reduction?

I think not!

There is still a deeper place to go.

I'm also reminded here of James Carse's provocative words in his life-changing little book Finite and Infinite Games:

Waste persons are those no longer useful as resources to a society for whatever reason, and have become...noncitizens. Waste persons must be placed out of view  - in ghettos, slums, reservations, camps,  retirement villages, mass graves, remote territories, strategic hamlets - all places of desolation and uninhabitable. We live in a century whose master players have created many millions of such "superfluous persons." .....It is society that declares some persons to be waste.

I find myself in "church meetings" from time to time. There are frustrations associated with most institutional meetings but I couldn't put my finger on a particular frustration I had with church meetings.

Then someone who never attends such meetings found themselves in one. And I had to ask - at the conclusion - what they thought of it.

They told me they detected a significant feeling of self-congratulation. By this they meant, even amongst the quite open-minded group that were present, there was a pervading sense that the church "had spirituality under control" or was "the peak body for spirituality."

Suddenly a light went on for me. That's the frustration I often feel. A mild sense - (well, often more than mild) - of a stifling self-sufficiency and a separation from the world.

Recently the Uniting Church in Australia made some marvellous decisions about its constitutional preamble. The preamble now recognises an existing indigenous spirituality in this land prior to European settlement. Knowing the mechanics of the church, it is a wonderful achievement for the church to make this institutional recognition. So be assured that I don't want to detract form that achievement. Yet the hyperbole from some church groups about the decision might lead you to believe that the institutional church had just led society down a new path.

Let's face it, hundreds of people have been following God's spirit (church jargon for the perceived tendency in the cosmos to value diversity and gather that diversity towards unity) in this direction. Various world citizens - within and beyond the church -  have recognised a profound spiritual consciousness - pre-settlement - in our indigenous brothers and sisters. And this has been happening for quite a long time.

The institutional church is finally recognising that movement of the spirit. I am not criticising that response time. I am simply asking that we say our "hoorays" humbly.......... And recognise that there are so many other "movements of the spirit' where parts of the world are calling the church towards them .....not the other way around. I'm fairly sure that has always been the case.

I guess that last paragraph sums up my "wondering" for this blog entry. We - individuals and institutions - can all be self-congratulatory. We all need help to say our "hoorays" humbly. I wonder I the church would be open to a little help on that front too?