Apparently, an Organizational Development that is more aligned with life includes poetry. This was what we discovered during a full-day online event in December around the theme of “OD for Life.” There are four of us hosting an ongoing exploration of what more is needed and what more is possible if this widely varied field is to be more fully in service of life. For our Zoom gathering in December, we four agreed to the general flow of the day and then each took responsibility for hosting a part of the agenda. What none of us knew was that each of us would bring a poem into our part of the agenda (two of them by Mary Oliver!). It was a delightful surprise. And my sense was that it had an outsized impact on the day, deepening the well of potential — making more possible. Poetry seems to be one way of inviting in more of life, more dimensions of ourselves. Here is one of the poems we shared that day in December.
