Spiritual Leadership
May 1, 2022
The Audacht Morainn, the testament of a dying Druid to a new king, has at its beginning the words that encourage a messenger.
"Arise, set forth,
O my Neire accustomed to proclaiming.
The virtue of dutifulness makes you known,
Dutiful the journey you undertake,
Announce, increase truth."
It is the privilege of this messenger to carry wisdom, to help someone new in their job as ruler, to help someone whose decisions will affect others.
Similar, it is the privilege of the Druid to have gained through study and experience, through long life, the wisdom that can guide a sovereign.
We are a community of leaders. With three to five years of study and sufficient personal drive, anyone who wants to can have a circle, a coven, a kindred, or some similar group of their own.
And we are a part of a culture that overwhelmingly values, approves of, even idolizes leaders, or people we perceive as leaders.
In my own practice, we begin to teach independence and leadership early. We hold the understanding that, at any point, any of us could be away from our center, off on our own, living in another part of the country or the world. We want each person who has learned from us to take away something useful.
And recently I realized that I had something very useful to teach about leadership, something that had eluded me for many years.
Like so many others I saw the public face of leadership, the celebrity of leadership, the history written by the winning public relations teams. What I admired about people I perceived as leaders was the outward face of the experience. It looked like a role I could step into, and I was very good at stepping into roles.
Seeing so many "actors" as leaders gives the impression that one can act oneself into leadership. Just don't break character.
I have loved acting and I have been enjoyably good at it. There's nothing like the feeling of making a whole room full of people breath with you, lean in with you, jump back at a gesture, laugh in spite of themselves. It's a rush. I believed that I could lead in the same way that I had been able to act.
It was frustrating to be terribly wrong about that.
Because the truth I uncovered in my bafflingly disappointing experiences in leadership is that leadership isn't a role. Leadership is an amplifier.
It's lovely when it amplifies something that I do well. It is horrifying when it amplifies the qualities I had hoped I could leave backstage. Moments of pettiness, jealousy, insecurity: those don't get left on the dressing room table. They blare out at unexpected moments like feedback from a microphone, disruptive, mood-breaking, and humiliatingly loud.
The truth about me in leadership is that it is me. All of me. And the best way for me to be the best leader I can be is to know exactly what it is that I would rather hide, stifle, or leave backstage. Because there are boundaries, but there is no backstage.
Those boundaries are important. I don't have to put my whole life on display to lead, but I cannot set boundaries around things I'm not admitting to myself.
I hope you walk in leadership if you want to, and if you don't want to lead, I still hope that you pick up the skills that would help you to do so if you are called upon. It's okay if you have faults. They don't have to hurt you in your leadership experience as long as you are able to face them and deal with them. It's when you hope to hide them, when you're not honest with yourself about those scary corners, that they can pick their own time to pop out and ruin your leadership moment.
Walking in leadership takes a lot of practice and a diverse set of skills. No two people will do it the same way, or by drawing from the same experiences.
This is my message today: find a process or system that helps you to deal with the issues that trouble you, because assuming the mantle of leadership will not diminish, hide, or erase those issues. At some point in time, when you least want it, it will amplify them. I hope that this message helps you to be successful.
Peace of the mountains to you,
Paulie Rainbow