The Power of AND
Experiencing the Majesty in the everyday
Our feet were dangling over the side of the boat on the Sea of Galilee.
As we sat gazing across the water, my classmate and I discussed what it must have been like to witness Jesus walk on water when my religious education teacher, Miss Smith (not her real name), decided to stage an intervention.
She leaned over us and presented a string of different theories designed to entirely debunk the event.
We often clashed, and I instinctively snapped back: “and how does that add to our experience of being here?”
The miracle didn’t need my defence, but the moment we were sitting in did. It might not have happened and we can explore what it must have been like, and what it means, all the same.
My question did not argue. It simply refused to let someone else’s cleverness derail the wonder at hand. A question that pointed out that she’d missed the depth of what this moment meant to us.
Later, I performed a heist and stole my internal school report from the head teacher’s office. In it, Miss Smith described me as ‘extremely irritating’. The feeling, I confess, was entirely mutual.
And I look back on our battles with a fond nostalgia.
Irritated and nostalgic.
Wounded and moving forward.
Grieving and dancing.
Lost and looking.
Devastated and full of potential.
Whole and becoming.
If your Majesty is the ground: the truth of your intrinsic and immeasurable worth beneath the performance, your credentials, and your circumstances. Then ‘and’ is nothing short of a skeleton key that can open the door and let it out, every day.
But you have to pull it out of your pocket.
Your worth is not dictated by your ability to feel it in any given moment. It is always present. In the middle of struggle, anger, jealousy, and the tension you currently face.
And returns you to its depth.
Not by denying what’s happening on the surface. But by reminding you that what’s happening on the surface doesn’t get the final word.
It’s the Majesty in motion.
And as protection
On the Sea of Galilee I used it instinctively. The short version: ‘and what!?’
It’s something we should make a habit of saying to survive our everyday exposure to the Isolation Economy. Every time we scroll, feel a pang of jealousy, or face an external judgement we have the power to say ‘and what?’
That person got the job, they’ve got a bigger house, they’ve got more followers, they’ve got testimonials, they’re younger than me… ‘and what?’
That literally has nothing to say about you or your story.
And as self-regulation
That deflection works when it’s just you and the scroll. But there are times when it definitely won’t work. Sometimes we need to create space instead.
Sleep-deprived with a one-year-old, Laura and I were nipping at each other the other night.
Looking back I should have said to myself: I’m angry and I’m really tired. A way of acknowledging how I was feeling, and creating breathing space around that feeling so I didn’t react in the moment.
If I had used ‘and’ as a tool for self-regulation, maybe then I could have avoided a trait that Laura knows all too well: wanting to hash it out on the spot.
Not fun for anyone at 3am.
And as anchor
But sometimes that’s not enough either because you’re too close to the surface tension. In those moments, asking yourself to regulate is like asking the storm to calm itself.
That’s when you need someone else.
Not to be cleverer than you or trade one thing for another (I’m looking at you Miss Smith). But someone with the wisdom to hold two things at the same time.
Back at school, my English teacher knew I was finding things tough.
I remember standing in the corridor outside class one day and she said: yes, you’re struggling and you’re also kind, don’t forget to be kind to yourself. In that moment she held my complexity: struggling AND something more.
While other teachers were looking at how I was performing, she noticed something about my character that completely reframed our relationship. She saw something of my internal worth: the real me beyond the results, waiting to be noticed.
I went on to achieve the highest possible grades in English. The only top grades of my academic career.
My English teacher reached what I couldn’t. And from my vantage point now, I realise ‘and’ is more than a cognitive tool.
It’s a structural necessity.
You are not transparent to yourself
‘And’ is nothing more than a mechanism to remind you that your Majesty has something to say. But it only works when you can reach for it. When the jealousy hits hard, or the comparison spiral tightens, sometimes you’re too stuck to hold what you feel alongside the larger truth of who you are.
In What Presence Requires, I argued that Community isn’t optional, it’s architectural. You need others to reflect back dimensions of your Majesty that introspection alone can’t reach.
I lead a fellowship of practice called the Order of Unremarkable Creators because of this gap. It’s not a celebration society, it doesn’t exist to be anyone’s cheerleader, it exists to reveal what you can’t see on your own.
When you’re building alone, it’s easy to collapse into your own horror story.
But others take that story in a different direction: “I hear you and look what you built last month and you’re still showing up and the people who need this work are already looking for it”.
They create space for the struggle and refuse to let it have the final word.
This is empathy. Not soft empathy that finds excuses. Iron empathy that holds complexity without flinching.
Last week in the Order, a practitioner said “I just don’t execute.”
Every week she writes. She facilitates events. She joins our calls. She allows us to scrutinise her work. She has paid clients and paid bills. She brings pastoral wisdom we’d be poorer without.
The feeling is legitimate. There’s a challenge and a signal worth noticing. And it’s not the final word.
The isolated practitioner is often lost to their own internal dialogue. Alone, “I don’t execute” feels like truth. It’s where you’ll find the hustle, performance, and judgement, waiting to redirect the work we’re actually called to serve.
With others, it’s information. The difference is everything.
The ‘and’ our member needed could only come from the people around them: this feels like failure and look at what’s actually emerging.
‘And’ is more than a tool for internal regulation; it’s a way of helping others see themselves clearly.
When you go from holding your own ‘and’ to holding someone else’s, that’s when your calling becomes a practice. That’s when you start meeting a need.
That’s when you become the English teacher, reframing the relationship, and helping someone else notice who they are becoming.
And who are you becoming?
You’ve already been experimenting with this idea. Our response to the Isolation Economy, forgiveness, dancing despite circumstance, life as a mosaic instead of a fixed narrative, all demonstrate the power of ‘and’ for those who chose to wield it.
When we view our life only looking backward, where you are right now feels like the conclusion. But your Majesty isn’t subject to your circumstances. It’s immovable. Constant. And it has something to say.
Return to Galilee with me and take a seat on the edge of a boat, legs dangling over the water. The wake follows behind, turbulent and dispersing, the vast ocean lies ahead. Your younger self is sitting with you, looking ahead, whilst your older self leans against the railing to your other side looking back.
You ask: who am I?
They respond: and who are you becoming?
Like Dan junior and Dan senior on Parker’s Piece, the company you keep aren’t interested in collapsing your story into the moment you’re in. And it’s true for the people who want to gather around the campfire you’re creating.
People who can honour your complexity; who see what you’ve survived and every shred of potential you hold.
Your calling, and the practice you’ll build around it, is the living tension between everything you carry AND everything you are reaching for.
‘And’ holds the door open.
It invites others into the conversation.
When they arrive, they remind you: the wake doesn’t decide the direction of the boat.
When you know who you’re becoming, you start to see who you’re for.
And the question becomes: what ‘and’ am I holding for someone else?
Where We Are:
This is Week 20 of a year-long practice.
Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.
The Power of AND ← You are here
Community is the Great Leveller
Think Like an Artist
You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View
Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.