What's a monastery got to do with it?

Part of my house is crumbling.

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Worry not, it's old and to be expected.

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The neighbour, who shares the crumbling wall, told me that the climate fluctuations of recent years are putting ever more strain on these old buildings : ever more extreme cycles of heat / cold, dry / wet, expanding / contracting is stressing the brickwork, and fabric of the buildings, in ways that could not have been imagined.
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I don't write for pity. I have a house. That it's old is my choice.

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I write because it's another example of the shifting, changing conditions in which we live and work. I write too as another example of the head in sand nature of the human mind.
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The markers of change are everywhere. Writer Daniel Pinchbeck, who joined me on Peripheral Thinking some months back, talks about the poly crisis ; converging geo political, environmental and ecological change > maybe collapse.
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We're not good at change. Our well being, our safety, is often pegged to an idea we hold fixed in mind. Changing conditions and context threaten the image, the story we tell, so we ignore it. Meanwhile, change rumbles on, regardless.
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I met a guy recently - runs an organisation which spans four continents and ten countries. He has close to 3,000 subsidiaries reporting into him. He's responsible too for thousands of people all doing context, emotional. Complex.
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You know the type, right?
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A master of universe, CEO, yeah?
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Well, no. He's the Abbott of a 50 year old Buddhist monastery network originating in Thailand. He does his work without a constantly pinging iPhone (maybe no iphone at all - God forbid!), or endless stream of email or an army of secretariat support.
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How?
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And why is this important?
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I finished up a project with Dan Burgess, another recent podcast guest, in July.

Approx 40 of us learning about and working on stories, stories to redefine our age.
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In the closing ceremony Dan spoke about the despair of 20 years of climate activism seemingly revealing no change.
I was reminded then about the Abbott.
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Maybe the change that's required will not be forced into the world, imposed on it, but will instead be a rediscovering of an alternative values system, a system which might grow from the rubble of the change we're living through now.
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The monastery network mentioned above was founded and run on two core principles:
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Personal Responsibility

Community Awareness
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This is how the Abbott conducts his business now. How he leads, manages, guides, teaches.
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These ideas are simple sounding but infinitely deep, revealing more and more with each new day / week / year of practice.
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I'll write more on these next time...