A Nested Meditation
by Charlie Smith
In my daily prayer time, a go-to book on my shelves is Divinity in Disguise, Nested Meditations by Kevin Anderson. He describes a nested meditation as one in which each stanza contains the previous stanza and adds a single line that usually changes the meaning of the piece. The goal of a nested meditation is to let each stanza stand alone as its own statement or meditation. For example:
Be a leader.
Be a leader
Where you are.
Be a leader
Where you are
Most needed as one.
Be a leader
Where you are
Most needed as one
Who germinates the Godseed in others.
Accompanying the nesting poem are two quotes. One is from St. Francis de Sales – Be who you are where you are. The other comes from Mahandas Gandhi: You must be the change you wish to see in the world. (These remind me of the Rotary Four-Way Test.)
In an accompanying essay, Anderson writes:
“What is leadership? In a word, service. When Christ walked the earth, people kept trying to put a power label on him (“King”), but he insisted on leading by serving.
“We often think of service as giving time or money to the materially less fortunate, as if only they need to be served. But the spiritually poor in our culture vastly outnumber the physically poor. People are starving for models of how to live soulfully.
“Anyone who is about the task of discovering a spiritual, authentic way to live serves humankind by example. This kind of leadership, by women and men of all walks of life, is what the world needs most. By letting our true selves shine like the morning sun into our families, our communities, and the world, we awaken the best in others.”
May we work – through meditation and through hard work – to better understand servant leadership to effect change in this world.