Maniac Mondays: To Be a Leader Again! Follow a Tree?!

We've pondered about being a leader here on Meady's Musings before but we've never dug into what it is to be a good or a bad one. And for good reason! And we still hold firm to the fact that a thing is only good or bad depending on the viewer's perception...it depends on where you put your eyes!:)However I guess generally speaking societies define things as good or bad through I guess their collective societal eyes and perhaps as a globe we have certain universally accepted things that we consider good and bad...similar to how on my sister blog we can engage in UCP-Universal Collective Prayer! So here here to that! All the same I will still not explore good or bad leadership but instead explore this thing call leadership some more!

However before I go on I'll have you know that the reason I'm discussing leadership at all here on Maniac Mondays is to do with the fact that I'm about to launch a new festival over on my sister blog UCP-Universal Collective Prayer! You see as of tomorrow the Spring Navratri or the Vasant Navratri kicks off and in fact it's already started over in India! It's a nine night festival, 'nav' meaning 'nine' in Sanskrit and 'ratri' meaning 'night(s)'. And well I concluded my festival of Shiv on UCP in Feb and all through that festival the female universal form of God (Shakti) in Hinduism was sitting quietly next to Shiv (the male form)in her incarnation as either Parvati or Sati. You see Hinduism is not only a religion of exploring both the big and the small at the same time as I pointed on during my festival of Shiv it is also good at exploring the male and the female forms of the divine, by themselves, side by side and even as a collective in the ShivShakti form!

However my festival of Shiv was mostly about Shiv as the male form. So as Vasant Nav Ratri dawns upon us I felt the need to celebrate the Divine Mother once again on UCP i.e. the Universal form of God as female. And then it dawned on me as I myself am female and have been contemplating my leadership duties quite a bit of lately and well hear this some more...Well in the United States the month of March is declared Women's History Month also the UN celebrates World Women's day on 8 Mar every year. So I was thinking women...women...women...leadership...the divine form. It dawned on me too that we were in the Catholic season of Lent and I thought the Divine Mother in Catholicism...The Holy Virgin Mary...and well so on and so on...

So I came to the point where I felt I wanted to do a series on UCP about the Divine Mother in Hinduism and Catholicism but in particular focus on her role as a leader and how these religions view her in leadership roles...

But you see before I did that I had to explore women in leadership and before that leadership as a whole...I had explored it before as I said in my opening paragraph but I felt I wanted to do it some more...I have to say I don't see the need to spilt it as women in leadership versus a man in leadership...because just like nothing to me is good or bad only thinking makes it so...well I don't really see the difference between a man or a woman...I mean yea there is the biology the good ole Y chromosome is present or not and some different biological roles...But that's just the mortal coil and to me leadership in its real and true sense or for that matter anything in its real and true sense doesn't come from the mortal coil but from a higher place. In fact if we go back to this blog I wrote about all of us being little pods that feed into this big universal mother or let's say father fluid (to be fair now) well then we are all just part of one and so not separate at all...so what's in a chromosome?! In fact in that thinking we are just popping our little mortal heads or faces out to see what's going on to feed it back to the great big mother/father fluid...just checking things out for information! Momentary pearls of the Universe are we!

However we all must wear the mortal coil and be those momentary pearls however we are formed...so as we wear it and live in this material and mortal world I'll call it as I should and we will celebrate the male sometimes the female sometimes the Divine Father sometimes the Divine Mother...but having said that let's get to the heart of the matter and talk about leadership already! :)

What is it about? Well I was wondering and wondering you see and then I looked at a tree...seriously! I did...and there it was...the very epitome of leadership for all to see...if they at least thought like me?! Right there in my front yard a majestic peepal tree or as some called it the sacred fig or the banyan fig or lo and behold the bodhi tree ...that famed tree of Buddha englightenment fame!

The particular tree has been in my family's yard for >60 years and has itself rejuvenated and reincarnated itself, since almost 2.5 decades ago before the death of my maternal grandmother it had become very dry as if it too was ready to die...it was up to that time a very tall sprawling tree...and then it was cut to that of a trunk and its dried wood used to make the funeral pyre of my grandmother. Said tree eventually sprung afresh from the trunk but most amazingly when it regrew it only remained a certain size...a size that made it such that no one needed to prune it from reaching electricity and phone lines....nor was it big and branching to harbour weeds and snakes...and it remains like this to date! What amazes me more is in this current incarnation this tree although the island is experiencing drought is ever freshly springing new leaves...you see its roots run deep...very deep...as large as the giant tree it once supported that now looks small...and in viewing this tree and its story of growth, death, re-birth and never ending (hopefully) rejuvenation...it made me realise it had all the properties of a good leader...and now I'll tell you how...

It can be big...but it can also be small...
Its roots run deep to a strong foundation make...
While its branches need not be very sprawling and large but it can be large too if need be...
It knew when to die and when to be re-born...but most of all it knows how to adapt...
It restructures to fit the needs or the space it is allowed...
In times of hardship it digs deep to get what it needs to stay alive...
But most of all it does all of this while staying sturdy and still!
And last but not least it knows how to propagate itself...
Because like any good leader it knows how to mentor and teach...
So that if this tree one day dies it would have left its little underlings to carry on its legacy to carry on its line!