What St. Francis of Assisi and Leonardo da Vinci Understood About Interconnection
Two men, centuries apart, saw the same thing: the world isn’t fragmented. What looks separate is connected. What looks like stillness is often where precision begins. One observed through science and art. The other through prayer and belonging. Both refused to abbreviate what was whole.
I didn’t know any of this the first time I climbed Monte Pedroso.
I was standing on a rock in Santiago de Compostela, Spain when I looked out over the city. I could see the cathedral off in the distance. I could see my neighborhood and other surrounding mountains.
It was my first time on top of Monte Pedroso. I had lived in Santiago de Compostela for at least a year when I made the journey up the mountain. I could see the top of Monte Pedroso every day, and this day, I decided to make the trek up hill.
I found rock to sit on and I just enjoyed the view. I closed my eyes and just took in the moment of being there. I took a deep breath in.
There was one other person who came up the mountain. He was from Santiago and he showed me the different neighborhoods. I showed him where my neighborhood was. It was a kind and unexpected conversation.
I asked about the cruceiros and he explained that they were part of the stations of the cross and mentioned that he always comes up during Semana Santa to pray at the stations. He mentioned that they were old and have history to them.
Monte Pedroso and the Practice of Attention
When I returned home, I looked them up. Around 1231 St. Francis of Assisi made his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (where the remains of St. James are). During his time here, he’d go up to Monte Pedroso to pray at the top.
According to legend, during those trips to the top, he met and befriended a charcoal burner named Cotolay, who guided him to the summit and offered him hospitality. Francis had a vision, and he asked Cotolay to build a Franciscan convent in Santiago. It still stands today — the current Convento de San Francisco.
I felt that deep connection to St. Francis after reading that. Like something my soul already knew and I was just becoming conscious of it. At the time, I was wrestling with loneliness. I couldn’t keep still. Sitting on a rock, closing my eyes, and just allowing myself to be still. Feeling the sun and a breeze on my face, hearing the birds.
It was my own version of contemplative prayer, I just didn’t know it.
Even as I sat on that rock, trying my best to be still, something was pulling at me. It was my mind pulling at me like a child wanting their parent’s attention. My mind was trying to convince me on a beautiful afternoon that I needed to be doing something, anything else besides being still taking in the warmth and beauty that surrounded me.
I needed to write, I needed to call this person, reach out to that person, I needed to….
That was a small sample of the chatter. Something kept bringing me back to the warmth and beauty instead of pulling out my phone or rushing back home. It wasn’t just mental chatter. It was a refrain I heard all my life. That pull, the mental chatter to do something useful, wasn’t new.
When I was a kid, one of the most common phrases I’d hear was, “Well, you can’t just sit there!” To be still, to be idle was a waste of a day. To “just sit there” meant you weren’t being useful.
As I got older, that chatter stayed with me, no matter what I did. I participated in sports, and it was with me in my professional career. It was embedded in me that being a high-performer meant that I needed to force outcomes, to “make things happen,” to prove my worth through production and result.
The model of extraction applied to human beings. Asking, “How can I get more out of my people?” is another way of saying, “How can I extract more from my team for as little cost as possible?”
Leonardo da Vinci and the Refusal to Abbreviate
Leonardo Da Vinci called the people who wanted to simplify the complex systems into fragmented, disconnected parts “abbreviators.”
He saw it as a failure of the mind and of the heart. He saw the interconnectedness of all things. You can’t understand how a bird flies without understanding how air moves. You can’t understand how fish live and breathe without becoming a student of water and currents.
His notebooks moved with ease between engineering, art, anatomy, mathematics, and water. He knew that to understand one part of the system, you must understand its relationships. This is why his work endures to this day.
You can’t understand how humans fully function without knowing about the tides and lunar cycles. Leonardo Da Vinci refused to fragment parts from the whole.
We live in a world of abbreviators. HR, Finance, and Operations are siloed instead of integrated parts of the whole. We cut “waste” in a bid to be more efficient without considering what the next cycle looks like, and we just cut the most important nutrients for that next cycle.
We abbreviate short term metrics – quarterly results, daily stock prices, monthly quotas over the long term health of an entire ecosystem.
Two men who lived centuries apart saw the same fundamental insight: interconnectedness is the key to how we function as whole human beings on this pale blue dot we call Earth.
They understood that stillness isn’t wasted time. That following your curiosity and observation often lead to innovation and discovery. All of them are the gateways to something greater than ourselves.
Contemplation is the work. Da Vinci’s curiosity and intense observation of nature wasn’t just being idle or screwing around. His curiosity – asking why the sky is blue, mapping the movement of water, the way he saw light – led to his mapping the human body, inventing things that could emulate flight, and to paint masterpieces that we still marvel at more than 500 years later.
St. Francis and the Discipline of Belonging
St. Francis of Assisi spent half of each year in contemplative prayer. That’s what he would do at the top of Monte Pedroso. He’d pray in caves and in the wilderness, too. For him, contemplative prayer wasn’t withdrawing from the world. It liberated him to be fully alive in the moment. He taught that it’s OK to just be who you are. Your existence, your voice gives glory to God.
I know what forcing looks like for me. I was in a time of transition—projects stopped, new ones postponed or canceled. I spent weeks in front of the computer, on the phone. More outreach. More conversations. More messages to my network. The voice in my head screaming do more, do something, anything.
Contemplation as Regenerative Work
One day (it happened to be a holiday) part of me said I needed to spend more time at the computer. Part of me said I should just enjoy the day. I chose the latter. I cooked. I enjoyed the company of friends.
When I checked email later that day, two people had reached out about working together.
That’s what I mean by letting go. Not doing nothing, but acting from presence instead of panic. Trusting that the other parts will function when I’m not trying to control everything.
It’s like being in a zone of my own.
This is the same lesson that St. Francis of Assisi gave Cotolay on Monte Pedroso over 800 years ago.
High performance doesn’t come from forcing outcomes. It doesn’t come from control or holding on too tightly. It comes from listening, acting, and letting go of the outcome, trusting the other parts to function.
In my creative renewal retreats in Florence and along the Via di Francesco, we practice what Leonardo Da Vinci and St. Francis of Assisi knew. We slow down enough to observe. We create space for contemplation. We remember what it means to belong – to ourselves, to each other, to the natural world around us.
Not as a productivity hack. Not to “optimize” ourselves. But as a way of being that lets us connect and regenerate instead of extract. That lets us create from wholeness instead of grinding ourselves down.
This is high performance redefined. Not force, but flow.
As I was sitting on the rock on top of Monte Pedroso, 800 years after St. Francis, I was just learning how to be still. That stillness was and is never wasted time.
That the real treasure was always here, within me.