Seedlings

The 2013 Rendezvous -- Calling All Purposeful Planning Collaborators

 

The evening of August 1st over 175 people are converging near Broomfield, Colorado for our 2013 Rendezvous.  Here is the press release we used to invite financial journalists and other media representatives to come observe and report on the unique ways in which the Rendezvous is influencing the professionals who serve legacy families and families in business, and ultimately the families themselves through the best practices we will be exploring and sharing there.

 

 

 

Purposeful Planning Institute Convenes Third Annual Rendezvous in Broomfield, Colorado August 2-3

Friday, July 26, 2013

Media Contact

Tiffany Gunnerson

570-238-1364

Beginning Friday August 2^nd, over 175 lawyers, wealth managers, trust officers, planned-giving experts, psychologists and coaches from across the country will convene near Denver, Colorado to explore, share and collaborate on best practices for families of wealth and families in business.

This annual professional  “Rendezvous”  is organized by the Purposeful Planning Institute  (“PPI”).  Its founder, John A. Warnick, believes  tax and investment planning absorbs virtually all of the time spent in the wealth and business succession planning processes.  Warnick explains, “because we have let the tax tail wag the rest of the planning dog, we too often ignore the purpose of the planning and what  its impact will be on the lives and causes we care most deeply about.”

The Rendezvous’ keynoters will be addressing the roles which philanthropy, family culture and more purposeful planning can play in the intergenerational transfer of wealth and family values.  There will be 28 breakout sessions which will explore how families can successfully launch children and grandchildren in life and avoid entitlement, family fracturing, and disconnects between the planning and the family’s goals and needs.

For the first time the Rendezvous will be open to reporters from mid-morning Friday, Aug. 2^nd, with the first breakout session scheduled for 10:45, until lunch on Saturday.  Please contact Tiffany Gunnerson or email [email protected] for a complete schedule of presenters or any questions you may have.

An Elder's Prayer

 

Isabel Miranda is a remarkable serving professional who calls New Jersey and New York City home.  She has a depth of compassion for the young and the old.  This Seedlings Blog posting is her adaptation of a prayer offered by a 17th Century Catholic Nun.  It will increase our desire to live with greater grace, humility, vision and wisdom.

 

An Elder’s Prayer*

As I contemplate I see that I am growing older and will hopefully someday be old.

May I be saved from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion;

May I be released from craving to straighten out everyone’s affairs;

May I be thoughtful but not moody;

With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all; but I do want a few friends at the end.

May I be free from an endless recital of endless details; may I have wings to get to the point;

May my lips be sealed regarding aches and pains, as they are increasing and my love of rehashing them becomes sweeter as the years go by. 

May I have grace enough to endure with patience others’ tales of their infirmities;

Although I realize that diminishing memory is a reality, may I have a growing humility and a lessening cocksureness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others.  May I understand the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken;

May I be reasonably sweet, I do not want to be a saint, some of them are so hard to live with- but a sour old person is one of the crowning glories of the devil!

May I have the ability to see good things in unexpected places and talents in unexpected people and may I have the grace to tell them so!!!

 

* Isabel Miranda, an attorney and former trust professional in New York City and New Jersey, was touched by the prayer of a 17th Century nun.  She adapted the prayer to create this meditation for seniors who aspire to be elders.

 

Vision and Sight – Watch With Both Eyes

 

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye”— Antoine de Saint-Exupery  “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens”—Carl Jung

Seeing and vision are as different as hearing and listening.  

For vision we need both eyes….our physical eyes and our spiritual eye.  What matters most is invisible to our physical eyes.

John Gardner, at the beginning of his 1978 essay On Moral Fiction, tells a story about Thor circling Middle Earth each year to beat back the enemies of order.  As Thor aged, he got slower and the circle occupied by Gods and men grew smaller.  Woden, the wisdom God, was concerned the world would eventually plunge into chaos.  He went to the King of the Trolls, got him in an armlock, and demanded to know how order might triumph over chaos:

“Give me your left eye,” said the troll, “and I’ll tell you.” 

Without hesitation, the God of Wisdom gave up his left eye.  “Now tell me,” Woden demanded.

The King of the Trolls said, “The secret is, Watch with both eyes!”

Giving up our left eye is akin to looking at just one prong of an issue, one facet of a personality, one branch of a family or one source of a problem. 

I just acquired a pair of prescription reading glasses.  While I paid a lot more for them than the generic pair from Walgreens which they replaced, they were specifically tailored (by Dr. Taylor) to allow me to read comfortably for hours.  But they only function well when I’m holding something about eight to fourteen inches from my eyes.  They aren’t effective when I’m driving or needing long-range vision.  I need more than one lens to be able to see everything I need to.

Our vision improves dramatically when we look through the lens of others’ viewpoint.  Nothing serves as a more powerful reminder of the dangers of relying solely on my own experiences and expertise than the fable of the Six Blind Men of Indostan.  I wrote about that fable in  The Dangers of Personal Observation -- The Advantages of Collaborative Vision.  Recently, a friend shared another version of that fable by the Sufi philosopher, Rumi, in which he describes what happened in a Hindu village one night when an elephant was brought into a dark room where no one had previously seen such a beast:

One by one, we go in the dark and come out 
saying how we experience the animal.
One of us happens to touch the trunk.
A water-pipe kind of creature.

Another, the ear. A strong, always moving
back and forth, fan-animal. Another, the leg.
I find it still, like a column on a temple.

Another touches the curve back.
A leathery throne. Another, the cleverest,
feels the tusk. A rounded sword made of porcelain.
He is proud of his description.

Each of us touches one place
and understands the whole in that way.
The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark
are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant.

If each of us held a candle there,
and if we went in together, we could see it.”--Rumi

So the next time you approach a new problem, please consider asking others to hold up a candle for you.  What have they’ve seen and experienced which will help you better see and respond to your new challenge.  Are you using both of your eyes—physical and spiritual?

 May we all be willing—whether within the sacred space of family, the workplace, or our communities—to hold up a candle for each other.   Through collective vision we will see the whole picture.  And by watching through both eyes—physical and spiritual—we can bring harmony and joy to whatever corner of the world we occupy. 

 

"If I have seen farther than othes, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants."--Sir Isaac Newton

 

The Calculus of Love -- A Formula for Enduring Legacies

“It was the day my father died…in the small hospital room.  I was supporting him in my arms, when…my father slumped back…I lowered his head gently onto the pillow.  I…told my mother…: “It’s all over, Mom.  Dad is dead.’…My mother said:’Oh, he was so proud of you. He loved you so much.’…these words…were like a sudden shaft of light, like a startling thought I had never before absorbed.  Yet there was a definite edge of pain, as though I were going to know my father better in death than I had ever known him in life.”  Later, while a doctor was verifying death, I was leaning against the wall in the far corner of the room, crying softly.  A nurse came over to me and put a comforting arm around me.  I couldn’t talk through my tears.  I wanted to tell her: “’I’m not crying because my father is dead.  I’m crying because my father never told me that he was proud of me…never told me that he loved me.  Of course, I was expected to know these things…but he never told me.’”  John Powell, as told inThe Secret of Staying in Love, p. 68

 

There are so many unknowns in the calculus of love…the factors of When, How, and Who are all part of the equation. 

Until love is expressed, whether in word or through action, its influence is unfelt and emotionally inert.  Only When love is communicated do we release its positive energy. 

Through the expression of love two people benefit immediately: the speaker or doer as well as the recipient of the word or deed.  In the sadness expressed by John Powell in the story above, we see how devastating it is when we treat love as an assumption rather than an expression.

How we express our love, appreciation, pride or any other positive emotion intended to uplift, matters not as much as the expression itself.  Surely there are myriad facets for the Hows in this Calculus of Love.  Each sparkles and shimmers with the positivity of emotion.  What tarnishes the expression of love, and turns the calculus negative, are insincerity, indifference, and domineering pride.

The Who is defined by the circle of our family and the circumference of deep friendship.  Each within that radius will benefit from the expression of our love.  And, if the expression can be preserved in writing, audio or video files that can be treasured electronically, so much the better.  For then those expressions will live on to prove that we heeded the admonition of Harriet Beecher Stowe that “the bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” 

The day will come when, after harnessing [space], the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin