The secret of wild geese is that they fly in formation, not solo, giving them the "lifting power" to cover hundreds of miles in a single stretch. This dynamic, inspiring guide unlocks the door to personal and organizational success by showing managers how to achieve focus, discipline, superior leadership skills, and more through the art of self-management.
When long time trekker, writer, and anthropologist Beebe Bahrami made her first full 500-mile hike on the Camino de Santiago,via the Way of Saint James, across southern France and northern Spain, she met French and Spanish pilgrims who told her that the Camino was more than a Christian pilgrimage. They explained that it also was a great leyline, a path of earth energy that could transform one by walking it. They added that under the 1,200-year-old Christian pilgrimage road there was a more ancient, pre-Christian initiatory path that could take one deeper into spiritual experience and consciousness. A person engaged it by looking for signs along the way. Signs? Many, she learned, but that the most potent were those associated with the goose. The leyline idea made sense to her for she was already feeling it as she stepped along, an uncanny hum from the earth that seemed to supported her every step. But signs and geese? What did this have to do with pilgrimage, let alone spiritual initiation? She dismissed it as a wonky idea and dropped it quickly on the trail and forgot about it. But the goose would not leave her alone. It appeared as Bahrami walked, in village and landscape feature names, on medieval churches and monasteries, and most unusually, as a part of a massive inlaid stone board game, the Game of the Goose, in the Plaza de Santiago, the Spanish name for Saint James, in the Riojan city of Logroño. A popular European children''s game similar to Snakes and Ladders, in Logroño Bahrami learned that the Game of the Goose was intentionally set there by city planners and with church''s blessings to serve as a metaphor for the pilgrimage, as well as for life. She learned that the goose was seen as a creature of luck. But what else did the goose mean, beyond luck, signs, and children''s game? What really led it to become associated with spiritual initiation, pilgrimage, and the Camino? No one seemed able to give her a straight answer but by now, she was intrigued. It took Bahrami three returns on three more through-treks on pilgrim paths in southwestern France and northern Spain to unearth the answers, ones that were rooted in ancient, pre-Christian times and that had survived to the present in the seemingly innocuous form of the goose. As Bahrami pursued the mystery of the goose, part skeptic and part seeker, she encountered wise and humorous locals, quirky and questing pilgrims, and unusual evidence in stones, local stories, and practices that revealed that the way of the wild goose was indeed a real and vibrant pathway, a parallel universe to the Christian Camino de Santiago. She discovered that though the medieval Camino was officially dedicated to Saint James the Greater, under the surface still dwelled older native goddesses and gods who continued to influence the way. Most stunning, she found that the goose was very likely an ancient Eurasian earth-centered mother goddess who took many forms but the goose was among her most prominent forms or association. Ideas about the goose were crumbs, clues, and survivors of an older spirituality, ones that even found their way into stories of Mother Goose. In all this, what Bahrami did not anticipate was that the outer goose adventure would take on an inner twist, that way of the wild goose would pull her into her own initiatory journey. She began as a curious bumbling trekker and ended a seeker on a full-blown medieval adventure in modern times. This three part, outer and inner adventure of The Way of the Wild Goose is a travel narrative about wild nature, ancient roads, and mysterious lore that tells a modern story of initiation, challenge, trail magic, and deep personal transformation. Something of a cross between Bill Bryson''s A Walk in the Woods, Elizabeth Gilbert''s Eat, Pray, Love, and Dan Brown''s The Da Vinci Code, The Way of the Wild Goose is a travel narrative and a detective story unearthing an old mystery and unfurling with it a magnetically alive and meaningful long walk on the ancient roads in France and Spain.
A computer techie by trade, Dewey Pellicano would rather swallow needles than be pinned down to a life of quilting. But when her mother passes away, Dewey must exchange code for calico as the new proprietress of Quilter Paradiso. Between learning the business and dealing with a conniving employee who is also her sister-in-law, Dewey is ready to snap. During a national quilt show, quilting celebrity Claire Armstrong offers to buy the shop. But before Dewey can accept, she finds the famous quilter lying dead on the floor—a bloody rotary cutter at her side. When hunky homicide detective Buster Healy enters the scene, romance flourishes...until another murder takes place. Can Dewey thread together the pieces to this murderous pattern before the killer strikes again? Wild Goose Chase is the first book in the Quilting Mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Dewey Pellicano.
Liturgies for Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, Transfiguration, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, All Saints', St Columba's Day, Father's Day; on hunger, economic witness, peacemaking, the environment, pilgrimage, welcome, hospitality and friendship. Includes a blessing liturgy for a marriage or partnership, a wedding/partnership ceremony and resources for a memorial event.Full communion services and shorts acts of worship; liturgies for small groups and all-age gatherings; worship rooted in church life and the Iona Community's resident group on Iona, in social justice and pastoral work. So - as always with the Iona Community - worship which is contextual, with a strong justice and peace edge.Originally published as single digital downloads by Wild Goose, these are now all brought together for the first time in the second of at least two Big Books of resources and liturgies.Contributors include John Harvey, Nancy Cocks, Tom Gordon, Jan Sutch Pickard, Joy Mead, Chris Polhill, Ian M Fraser, Thom M Shuman, Alison Swinfen, Annie Heppenstall, Norman Shanks and others.God of the rhinoceros and the midge,God of the Large Hadron Collider and the iPhone,help us to sense your presence in and through all things. God whose grace is sufficient for all our needs,help us to be people of compassion, justice and peace.(Norman Shanks, from 'A liturgy for the Feast of the Transfiguration')
It was 1992 and everybody was against me so I got up really early and placed a call to the U.S. embassy in Bamako, the capital of Mali.... I told Scott ( was going to Timbuktu. He asked me if he could have my TV set if I didn't come back. I said yes. Then he asked me why I was going. Because, I replied, there's a wild goose honking in my ear...and the bastard won't shut up! So begins the latest gonzo journey by filmmaker Trent Harris (Rubin and Ed, Plan l0 from Outer Space), this one by plane, boat, camel, and pen. Following the wild goose, Harris travels to Timbuktu, choosing his destination in part because it's just so damned hard to get to. Chronicling the details of his trip -- along with assorted other thoughts, historical tidbits, memories, and unrelated tangents -- Harris leads us on a funny and ultimately poignant trip.
