I have, forever, included political content in these Wednesday emails. However, I try to limit it simply because world events often steal a lot of our attention away from our business, and the Divine knows our businesses need tending and care, especially in these times.
At the same time, my view of culture and society is that we have an obligation to care for the collective. I do believe fervently in individual expression and the strength and beauty that comes when we have the space to be ourselves, in all the ways that can challenge societal attempts to get us all to be the same.
And yet, I feel that my life is an ongoing tension between tending to my own heart, and tending to the collective heart, to meeting the obligation I feel to help care for society.
Right now, modernity, all of our modern complex culture, is showing symptoms of the limits of that complexity. Things are breaking down. People’s fears of the unknown, and our completely understandable desire for stability, are all too predictably being channeled into authoritarian structures.
AI-powered surveillance. Increasingly oppressive and dangerous laws against the most vulnerable among us, like our trans siblings, women in general, people of color, immigrants. An economy that has an incredible amount of wealth stored in it, but kept out of reach of most folks by a tiny number of very greedy people.
But, also hope continues to sprout. Indigenous leaders from different lands met in Brazil. Across the U.S. literally millions of people were in the streets against the authoritarian regime. Locals groups worldwide are making it much harder to build water-sucking data centers. The continued growth of regenerative agriculture practices.
Here locally, in central Pennsylvania, I see hope locally:
– The Horn Farm Center who is celebrating the community coming together to rebuild the farm house that was burned in a fire into a new educational center.
– The New Cumberland Collective who is organizing locally just to connect neighbors in doing good works.
– Harrisburg filmmaker and artist Michelle Green, who continually brings love to local community. A recent one: Sweet Love for Harrisburg, PA
The very things that resist fear and evil, are some of the same things we need to weave healthier community, and to be most resilient with all we are facing.
Knowing neighbors. Cultivating joy. Deepening our knowledge of ourselves, to decolonize ourselves.
And yes, tending your business.
Your business is an important thread in the weaving we are all doing. Notice I didn’t say it’s a huge part, it’s a thread.
Any blanket takes many threads. If there’s one thread missing… it will be, okay, although it’s now easier to unravel the whole. More threads missing, and it starts to look a little threadbare, so-to-speak.
Your business is an important thread. Bring your love and care to it.
This means helping it both in practical and spiritual ways.
It means using your voice to consciously weave the culture you want, both to help society, and to help the people who most need you see you for who you really are.
It also means being practical and concrete in your offers, in your messaging, in your pricing.
At this point, I’m going to invite you to consider taking one of the clinics I’m offering. Because all of this is why I’m offering the clinics. They aren’t free, but they are not expensive at all, at all.
One clinic on bringing out your politics, or spirituality, or just your you-ness, so your business can feel in integrity, in alignment, and be more a part of this cultural weaving we’re all doing.
It’s in a week, next Thursday
The other clinic is on resonant pricing, on how to price your offers while tending to both your own needs, and the need to be accessible.
That one is the week after, on Wednesday.
I hope you can join me for one or the other. Or both.
Click here: The Clinics
with love,
Mark Silver, M.Div.
Heart of Business, Inc.
Every act of business can be an act of love.
Needing spiritual anchoring in challenging times?
I’ve struggled with how to make the Sufi Zawiya offer visible, because although it is dear to my heart, and so nourishing and powerful, it’s not related to business in any way.
I know that some folks just need spiritual grounding, anchoring, inspiration, uplifting, and yes healing… not to bypass anything, not to make nice-nice, but to charge our hearts up to face the work our hands need to do in this beautiful world of ours.
If you’re drawn, take a look:
There is a free version, and a really inexpensive version that has a bit more access.
