word gravity

For the Cookie Lady- A Story about Baking and Love

2011-09-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to Alan Levine and the memory of his mother, Al yce.

Dear Alan, the cookies i am baking are an amazing story of openness that spans four generations of my family. To honour that, the memory of your mother, and the sacred invisible web that binds the fabric of our lives together, i have reached out to my grandmother (92) and my mother (72) to help me tell the story, because it begins before my memory does.

My grandparents, along with my mother and aunt, emmigrated from England to Canada after WWII. After a couple of years in Montreal they decided to move to Ontario and in 1953 they settled in Willowdale with no family and no friends and facing very hard times. They were blessed to become neighbours with Grace Walker and her family. The cookie recipe came from Grace, who became known as Auntie Grace to all of us.

My Grandmother shares some memories and thoughts:

Auntie Grace (our first neighbour when we lived in Willowdale Ontario),was a wonderful baker of many luscious goodies, she told me she worked when living up Northern Ontario, in a bake shop, which is where she learned her wonderful skills re baking, many of which she shared with me, (and of course, June and Wendy, my daughters, eventually also my grandaughter Wendy). One of these recipes was these delicious choc chip cookies. Our family love them, as did visiting friends and neighbours when they came to call, so often Auntie Grace's choc chip cookie recipe was requested.
One Xmas, Beric, my grandson baked the choc chip cookies for place markers on our Xmas dinner table. He made extra large ones too, almost as big as tea plates!!
Please accept my sincere sympathy in the loss of your Mother. The cookie story is a lovely memory for your family to share with others.

Blessings and good wishes, Rose Turner ..... Wendy`s maternal grandmother

And my mother remembers:

Auntie Grace was not our aunt but she was the closest to a grandmother that my sister and I ever had. She was an amazing friend to our parents during very hard times. We met when we moved next door as teenagers and we all gradually just became family. This continued until the end of her life.
She was a wonderful cook and was generous in sharing her recipes. Cooking was a joy for her and we learned to feel the same about the many dishes she shared with us. We always headed for the cookie jar to see if any chocolate chip cookies just happened to be waiting for us. Our own children were always thrilled to smell "Auntie Grace's Cookies" as they came out of the oven. They are a part of our family traditions now as they are made for our grandchildren.

Grace Walker and her family were the kind of neighbours that change lives. From preparing all the fancy sandwiches for my mother's trousseau tea, to hosting the exhausted family to Christmas dinner, to giving the first dining table (that followed to my childhood home and was the table where my brother's business xe.com was conceived and founded--now there's a bit of web history for you ;-) ).

We don't know where Auntie Grace got the recipe, but a little sure goes a long way, so there's a theory that it might be depression or wartime era.

And I don't know where the recipe is headed, but it is a deep part of women's culture and human culture to share food and the rituals around it. Recipes handed down form a bridge across which we can travel and visit those long departed. The memories they stir, the love remembered, shared and passed on again every time we pull out our stained copies and begin the familiar motions of preparing them. I'll see my grandmother's farmhouse kitchen and her old sunbeam mixer; my mother's hands holding a fork and pressing down the tops making the criss-cross pattern--and of course, Auntie Grace, her smiling face and white hair and her earrings--the big clip on kind with pearls and rhinestones.

I'm going to give these cookies away to my neighbours--both physical and of the heart. To Wray and Greg who wrapped me up in their care from the first day we moved in here 18 months ago. They have made such a huge difference to our lives--don't know quite how it would have all happened without them. To Craig and Fergus, whose quiet kindness and thoughtfulness and acceptance and joy in my children fill my heart. They inspire me with the lives they have lead and the people they are. To Ang, whose absolute and unfailing loyalty and friendship have pulled me through the darkest time of my life--not to mention the hours and hours of shear hard physical labour she contributed to helping make my place a home. To Lynne B and her partner Lynne A. for a true friendship of the heart, for wisdom, and prods and laughter, for being there to keep me alive in the darkest time. To Soos for her love and friendship and shared girlfriend-fun and hours on the phone. To linnet for her gentle wisdom and example. To Scott for new friendship that is challenging and deep and calls for me to grow in ways that I needed to.

And sending virtual cookies to Liz--the sister i never had, who is one of the only people who can totally keep me in line--hahaha. To Julie--heartflow for sure as we walk a mirrored path dearheart. To Arthur--for being a good man (and you know what that means to me) and a good friend. And to Robert and Diane--without your love and care and skill over the past three years none of this beautiful new life would have been possible. I love you both so much.

I'm going to have so much fun sending virtual cookies to dozens of people who are filling my mind and heart right now.

And to you who are reading. Have a virtual cookie--and feel the cookielove.

Thank you all. You enrich my life in profound and precious ways. And thank you Alan (and Giulia) for this opportunity to share care and love with friends and strangers.

The sharing of food is probably our most primal and ancient ritual. There is a sacredness to the breaking of bread together--and now to the baking of cookie-bread together. Love to all you cookielovers.

Auntie Grace's Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/4 lb butter
1/4 lb shortening
1 cup (scant) brown sugar

Cream together.
Dissolve 1 tsp of baking soda into 1/4 cup boiling water and add slowly.
Then add:
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
2 cups rolled oats
1 pkg chocolate chips (add by hand)

Drop by spoonfuls on greased tray (or non-stick). Flatten with a fork.
Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.
Cool on tray. Makes approx. 80.

Work and Meaning

2011-08-10T22:18:00.000-07:00

There is an awful lot being written about how to make a living doing what you love. There appears, in fact, to be an entire industry being spawned around facilitating, teaching, and coaching the depressed and often despairing masses how to do just that.

Now, I'm all for spending the time and effort to discern what our gifts are and then figuring out how we can ensure we are giving them to world in the best way we can. But I feel I need to speak up and put out a slightly dissenting viewpoint. I'm going to state my position, and then spend a bit of time explaining it.

So here goes:

It is not our work that gives meaning to our lives. It is our living fully, deep in awareness of our Being, our values, and our vision, that gives meaning to our work--regardless of what that work is.

A lot of us have been conditioned to believe that our self-worth is hugely derived from what we do and how much we earn. (A University Education--is seen as the panacea and cornucopia for an abundant and meaningful life.) Many people suffer endlessly because of the pressure and force of this belief system. A simple life is devalued. Simple skills unappreciated. Much of the work that actually makes life worth living is seen as largely irrelevant and of low value in the modern marketplace (parenting, caring for the elderly, lonely, isolated, growing food, cooking daily meals, cleaning, creating celebrations and community events, mending and repairing, art, music, spirituality...)

To help explain my position further I need to dip into that last one: spirituality.

There comes a time in the life of each dedicated spiritual seeker when the bottom drops out of the world. Sometimes it's know as encountering The Void, sometimes as the state of groundlessness, sometimes as the dark night of the soul, or even The Rot. Whatever you call it, all of the underpinnings of your life, your beliefs, your values get shaken, trashed, burned, swept away. And there is this moment of profound insight that nothing matters. Nothing. None of it. It's all meaningless.

This is not a pleasant moment for anyone. It can happen at any time--and often in the most inconvenient. (Not that it's ever convenient to be rendered non-functional.) Along with it comes a natural and inherent terror and often despair and confusion that can become life-threatening. It's good to have experienced friends at a time like this. What you need to know is to keep breathing and don't resist.

For those who don't immediately pack it all back up into Pandora's little box, wrap it with chains, label it with dire warnings and stuff it the hell back down into the 'disowned things i'm not prepared to deal with' pile, there is a treasure here. For those courageous few, who are willing to simply sit with meaninglessness--to allow it into intimate contact with their souls and psyches--to be harrowed, winnowed and refined by the terror--there comes a dawning. A dawning that the opposite is equally and more compellingly true. It all matters. All of it. Equally. Endlessly. Infinitely.

In the profound illumination of that moment, all striving drops away and what is left is a pure note of choice. And the understanding that meaninglessness is the root of Freedom and that taking responsibility for what matters most--to us--is where fate, duty, and free will intersect.

So what has this all got to do with work and meaning?

When you understand that ultimately all work is inherently meaningless, you are stunningly freed to choose to imbue any and all work with absolute meaning. And where does that meaning come from? You. Your heart and soul. Where else? Your true nature, Being, shining through in each and every choice.

We have all met people who have made this choice. Some consciously, some instinctively. The janitor that cares so much that we can feel it every day when we enter our school/business/offices; the clerk at the store that always gifts you with a smile and a sense of belonging somewhere; the social worker that keeps on connecting with you as a person instead of bowing in despair to a broken and unjust system.

I've offered workshops on doing what we love for a living; I've coached people through career changes; and one of the first things i do is to look at how they can start right where they are. Once you know what you love--once you are clear about what matters most and what YOUR vision is for a better world--how can you begin, today, this very moment, to embody that?

It changes everything.

Meaning in life is created by living fully. Nothing less. No job, no work, no matter how wonderful can give us that gift. It's something we find and create for ourselves. Starting right where we are. Now. Today. With the work that is in front of us. By daring to bring all of who we are to the table every moment. No small order. There is a lot of work that needs to be done by people with heart and soul all connected.

So there you have it. My little rant for the day. You can worry and strive for years to find work you can love or that brings you meaning. Or you can start right now and begin to bring your love and your meaning to the work that you do already. And then see what happens ;-)

First Animated GIF

2011-06-07T23:08:00.000-07:00

Little learning project inspired by Jim Groom's ds106 Digital Storytelling course and my kids desire to be creators of all things digital. The little man's gonna love it ;-). Thanks Jim for the great and easy to follow instructions. This was created out of 7 separate photos taken randomly of the G-man on the swings this afternoon. Click on the pic to see it work. (At least that's what I have to do...)

Whatever Happened to my blog?.....

2011-06-01T22:42:00.000-07:00

Okay. I know I’m not the only one. I can trace the decline and fall of my blog directly to the increase in my use of Twitter. Oh, I started out with the best of intentions: I’ll just tweet this kernel, this golden little nugget of what will become a fully fleshed out blog post...tomorrow. Yah. Tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. And as we all know, tomorrow never comes—let alone the next day.

I did notice the pattern, and consoled myself. Well, self, I’d say, all those golden goodies are all safe. Safe as houses, in your twitter account. Even safer, ‘cause I use backupmytweets. And you can go back and mine that rich vein any time you’re ready.

Still waiting.

Hmm. No blog post. More no blog post. Hmm.

So what’s the problem here?

I’d like to propose a theory. It’s a theory that has to do with the energy of human creativity—with the energy of a thought. And with our nature as social animals.

Now, some folks can whack out a blog post in under 20 mins. I’m not one of those. A meaty post from me can take anywhere from 1.5 to 3 hours to craft. That’s a pretty big investment. I get a lot of satisfaction out of just taking that time to sit with my thinking and expand it and explore it and put it out there in pleasing and enlivened language. And in order to make that kind of investment, I propose that I need to be experiencing a deep draw to the idea, or the question needs to be a burning one for me—one that I feel some level of inner compulsion to wrestle with. It is my experience, that once the spark of an idea gets out into the world, something happens in the mind and heart of its creator. There’s a leakage of energy, a subtle dissipation of the inner container. Subtle, but crucial. Without that intense holding of the spark, the inner motivation to fan it into productive fire withers into smoke and blows away at the earliest distraction.

Enter Twitter. The social media tool that is whooshing its way around the planet and into headlines on a daily basis. At first it sounded stupid. 140 characters? What can you say of any relevance in 140 characters? Come on…you know you said it….at first. And then the challenge started. It was a bit like a puzzle, a quest. Could you do it? How much meaning could you squeeze into that little space? We all got a lot more concise. That was one upside.

And then there was the almost immediate ego hit of replies and retweets. And do you remember Follow Friday? That was the second upside.

And how about those lightning conversations? 140 char quips whipping back and forth—maybe at a conference, maybe in the middle of the work day, or perking up a quiet evening at home? Another nice little bit of juice, a minor thrill. Contact. Real-time engagement. Heady stuff. Hard for an old blog to compete with all that.

Because, and I know we’ve almost all had this happen, you pour your guts into a blog post—share the very best of your thinking and feeling and wondering—and….nothing. No comments. No way of knowing if anyone even really read it—or was moved by it or stopped a moment to think. Pretty hard to sustain that over the long haul. Especially when the new kid on the block is so responsive.

So by sharing the nuggets out into the Twittersphere pre-maturely and by feeding off of the insta-hit of almost real-time feedback, I’ve fallen into a self-made morass and succumbed to the tyranny of 140 chars. And my own and a long human history of sober reflection and composition goes flushing away down the intertubes.

I’m not blaming Twitter. I’m in control of what I share and when. And turning this trend around for myself at least, is not going to be an easy task. But it’s one that I propose is worth the effort. There is something very special that happens when an individual chooses to spend time arranging their thoughts for the careful consideration of others. An important human legacy of investment in stillness, and focus and thought. Deep thought. We can’t afford to lose that. So if you find that like me, your blogging has dropped off, consider what I’ve written. See if it rings true in any way for you. And then perhaps crack open that keyboard, make a nice hot cup of tea, and invite your thoughts to the virtual page once more.

Just Say NO To Calvin Klein

2010-10-26T20:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the marketing demons over at Calvin Klein have done it again. And this is the end for me. The latest ad is making hay with gang rape. I'm so done. Boycotts are not working. It's time we took one of these guys down--so maybe the others will pay attention and clean house seriously. So please join me in ending all patronage of Calvin Klein--for good--for ever. I also encourage you to scrounge through your closets and recycling depots and thrift stores for any CK you can find and return it in whatever condition to any local retailer that sells CK. Let's make it soooo damn inconvenient to carry this stuff that they stop.

Here's a link to a story about the ban of the ad in Australia. Marianne Williamson is also calling for a movement to ban it in the US.

You can email Calvin Klein to let them know how you feel.

Please help make this go viral by spreading it to all of your networks.

My letter to them is below:

To Whom It May Concern,

Calvin Klein has built it's brand around the objectification, exploitation, and sexualization of human beings--both male and female. You have repeatedly been requested to rethink your brand and strategy and you have continued to profit from the degradation of humanity. This latest ad depicting the gang rape of a woman by three men is unconscionable.

I am done with boycotts. I will NEVER buy your products again. I will teach my children NEVER to buy your products--and why. I will promote this complete end to patronage to all of my networks. I will also encourage everyone who already owns your product to return it to where they purchased it. I hope it becomes such a pain to your distributors that they refuse to carry your product.

I don't see any place for the Calvin Klein business in the new, more authentic, essentially humane culture that is emerging in ever-growing numbers. We are done with you. I hope this is the first small chime in the death knell for your company. You contribute nothing significant to improve the world--and are a major player in creating pain for young women and men.

As a practicing psychotherapist I get to clean up the mess that your company has helped to create. I work with survivors of stranger rape, gang rape, date rape, incest, childhood sexual abuse, pornography, serious body image issues including anorexia. Your corporate marketing decisions affect the mental and physical health of millions of young women and men.

I don't expect you to hear this. Others far more eloquent and credentialed than me have lobbied you to no effect. I'm throwing my voice and energy in the way of your corporate bulldozer because my conscience and integrity demand it.

In disgust,
Wendy Farmer

The Edge

2010-07-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

Early morning walk by the sea. In the footprints of those who went down to the water before me. A young deer, raccoons—mother and child, a man—by the size and depth of the print. Following the deer track; a wandering sine wave over sand and shingle. Crab tracks. Tiny paired pinches over the ripples made by waves.

The surf flowing over and swirling around my calves. I feel the tug and pull of the sea. A gentle lure, here at the shallow edge of vastness. My mind bites the bait, swallowing down more than I want. Imagination diving far out—whales move out there, the unspeakable depths of the abyss. This ocean once full of monstrous beasts. It birthed and held them; stroking the sinuous lethality like a lover. A rippling terror flutters at the edges of consciousness.

This sea which has birthed and devoured so much life over billions of years. My feet, my tiny solitude, dipping carelessly into its margins. The vastness of it all overwhelms me. Because it is in me too. This unstoppable force. Each microscopic cell full of an ocean of its own. Pulled by the same forces, tidal risings and fallings. Busy birthing and devouring my body. This same water, this same ocean, from mother to mother, cell to cell, down from the beginning in an unbroken line of life.

Terror flutters dark wings patterning the brilliant light of awe. Perhaps this is the closest we ever come to physically touching the divine infinite. This human body, standing at the edge of the sea.

My Best or Not My Best; That is the Question

2010-06-25T22:14:00.000-07:00

I have been doing some thinking inspired by a request from @SirHendrix that I consider sharing some of the bitter pills I have been swallowing that have been doing me so much good. One of them swirls around the various permutations of doing my best. The hardest and bitterest variation is what happens when I do my best and it’s not enough. When I have done everything I know how, as well as I know how, and still I am unable to protect or save or heal what I love. Just breathe in the pain of that for a moment. Feel the grief. Feel it sober you.

When I breathe that in and then shine that sobered light onto other behaviours that I might quantify as ‘my best’ a lot of them look pretty shabby. Then I have to be careful. It is very easy—with the lifetime of conditioning I have—to become harsh. To judge myself as wanting and failing—to take that energy and screw myself up to be better, to do more. This ultimately fails, producing more harshness or depression, or self-hatred. Harshness is not the answer.

Nor is blind compassion. I could look at the shabbiness of my efforts and say, well, I did my best. I made the best effort I could given the circumstances. Sounds pretty lame already doesn’t it? But let’s really do it justice: remember self, you are enough, you do enough. You are a good person. You do a lot. You work hard. You need to accept yourself just as you are now. Breathe in light, breathe out suffering. (It’s starting to get its claws in now isn’t it?) Hold the small self gently. Breathe in compassion for the one who failed. She has so much on her plate. She needs care too. (Are you entering the lotus position yet? I feel my fingers forming a mudhra as I type.) If I just seek refuge in the triple gem all will be well. I will be mindful of my failings and shortcomings…totally accepting of all that I am not. Blind compassion is not the answer. It leaves me unaccountable for my behaviour and the harm I may have done.

So what is? Well this is where we get into my favourite territory—the paradox—that beautiful quality of the Mysterious Absolute that allows many things to be true, even opposing perspectives. So, were the shabby efforts my best?—well, if I am wandering about behaving unconsciously ( oh come on! We all do it!) then yep, what I did was ‘my best’ in that moment. Now, when I regain consciousness, or finally attain it (here’s hoping, eh), I now have a new perspective. What does my response need to be? That I need to take responsibility for the newly revealed shabbiness of the behaviour. That I need to summon the courage to make amends. That I need to attend to growth. That I need to follow my sense of shame, not towards harshness or unskillful compassion, but towards integrity.

And to do that I have to sit with it, hell, to sit in the middle of the big stinking morass of it and get really intimate with it—body, mind, heart and soul. (Sounds like a whole buncha fun, doesn’t it?) You might try it. I offer you—Integrity—the wave of the future. (Yeh, sure….right….that’ll happen….)

Integrity is the answer to my best. Integrity is hard. It takes guts. It costs friends and family, lifestyles and livings. It weighs as much as absolute responsibility. And holds the keys to true freedom under a blaze of unrelenting light.

Bitter as it may be, I have developed a taste for it. And it’s doing me a lot of good.

Deep thanks to Robert Masters for encouraging me to explore this further in writing.

NB: To be clear, when I speak of blind compassion, I am not speaking against having compassion for the self, merely that that compassion needs to be grounded. Blind compassion is a term used to designate an unskillful application of compassion that uses it to avoid unpleasant realities or responsibilities rather than as an aid to facing them.

Avatar or Avarice

2010-06-06T21:02:00.000-07:00

I know it's beautiful. I know it's cool. I know Sigourney Weaver kicks ass. I know everybody and her cat loves it. But as i watched Avatar, as what i was watching, the story being told, dawned on me, a rage began to grow inside me. It built until by the end of the movie, i was numb to little else.

This is not the story of some fictional planet called Pandora. This is not merely a dumbed down environmental allegory designed to promote 'the liberal agenda'. Its merits as a dubious vehicle of increased environmental awareness for the masses notwithstanding: in my eyes it is a crime and a travesty of appropriation on a monumental level.

The story at the heart of the movie Avatar is not fiction. It is the real life pain and struggle of indigenous people across our planet. They are not acknowledged anywhere. The obscene profit the movie has made is not flowing to them. Their pain, their blood, informed the plotline of this movie. And once again they are erased, invisible, irrelevant to getting on with making money. We get to feel all gushy about some blue giant aliens. I guess it's safe to let ourselves see and hear their truth--they're not real after all. We can't be accused of exploiting THEIR culture. Can we?

Right?

Well I do. I will. Avatar is one more f*&%%$# monument to avarice. It exploits the genuine pain, grief, loss, courage and unbelievable commitment of indigenous people across the globe, and particularly in the Amazon. This is not fiction (except the part where the oppressed actually win). This is the daily bread of those who live in biospheres unlucky enough to contain resources required to support our way of life. (Yes mine, yours--stop looking for someone else to point the finger at and suck it up buttercup.)

But, but, you say, what about those fabulous lines like: "We have nothing they need." Sigh. Again it is so convenient not to see ourselves as part of the system. THAT'S WHAT INTERCONNECTED MEANS PEOPLE! Of course we have things they need and they have things we need. And most of what that really is we'll never know consciously--but it's true nonetheless.

It's about respect. Little word, big deal. Respect life, all life. Including you, us. Until we see ourselves as intrinsic elements of the larger whole, we continue to be bystanders--and complicit in the destruction of cultures and biospheres. So stop feeling guilty. Feel the shame; let it in and let it awaken genuine dignity of self and purpose. (Sounds contradictory i know, but try it, it works)

There is nothing about Avatar that will make me get up on my feet; but i do fall to my knees when i think of those with so little resource who day after day offer up their energy, their bodies, and their lives to protect sacred land.

So maybe instead of shelling out another $20 for the fab folks up at Fox; maybe you want to give a rerun of Avatar a miss and send your cash to an indigenous land protection charity like this one: http://www.altaimir.org/

Or maybe even do YOUR OWN research and find a little piece of the planet that matters to you and try to save that--instead of distracting yourself (NOW IN 3-D!) until it's way too late.

To indigenous people: I am sorry that once again your culture, your history, your pain, and that which you hold sacred, have become fodder for our entertainment and profit.

Now excuse me, i need to throw up.

Unconditioned Love

2009-10-17T01:50:00.000-07:00

It's not unconditional love i yearn for, it's unconditioned love. Love without objects. Love that arises sublimely from the very process of being alive.

While we may strive for unconditional love, it is an ideal we can no more than aspire to until we have faced our own conditioning. And that can be the work of a lifetime. Finding and then facing our conditioning takes courage and devotion.

How can i love you unconditionally, without projecting any of my shadows or demons or angels onto you unless i have become intimate with them? Unless i know them in every dimension? Until i have freed them from being anything other than what they are? Than what i am?

What does unconditional love mean anyway? Does it mean nothing more than a non-negotiation? Is merely an absence of transaction? I don't think so, although that is how many people see it. I hear others talk about wanting to be loved by another who won't put terms on the relationship or who will love them just the way they are. In their words i hear the desire for both freedom and intimacy. In their eyes i see fear and pain and self-doubt. In their souls i see chains.

To me unconditional love, is really unconditioned love. The love that arises when we are at one with What Really Matters. With what Is. Whatever you want to call that, Spirit, Universe, God. And yourself. How can you/I love anyone until we can love ourselves. Fully. All of our disowned and unloved and ugly and inconvenient and imperfect and plain disappointing moments/parts/habits/behaviours/histories. Because these self-judgements arise from our conditioning. From the values we learned early, early. And they create our suffering. And our loneliness. And our unlovedness. Our joylessness.

I yearn for a love that is not based on objects. Me included. No wendy-thing. I feel an increasing longing, a pull towards a love that arises ever-fresh, in each moment Now, from the source of all-that-is. It arises as joy in my center--from my core. It arises all around me. And i believe that in relationship it is no different. It is merely the recognition of that ever-present arising in another. The beloved.

The beloved may be self, the beloved may be child, the beloved may be partner, the beloved may be Source. Love arises, unconditioned from the center. We are always held in that grace.

Breathe in the grit of this moment, breathe out a spark of joy. Breathe in the love of the sacred ground you stand on in this moment, breathe out a full-blooded breath HAH! and feel your feet on the earth.

What are the stories you tell yourself about love? What don't you love about yourself? Why? What parts of you have been colonized by the loveless lies of modernity? Where is joy? When did you feel it last? Look there. Then look deeper.

Unconditioned love arises in each moment for each of us. It's there. Always. Like the space between breaths. Hidden sometimes behind dragons we fear to confront. And so i yearn for it. Not having challenged all my dragons yet. The yearning itself grows sweeter each day. So i learn to love what is unresolved in myself. And take another small step closer to the joy that never fades.

A bit of Pratchett for your enjoyment

2009-06-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

Been Tweeting a bit of Terry Pratchett's brilliance and so, for the uninitiated and old fans both, here is a bit of classic Pratchett from "Hogfather". This excerpt occurs near the end of the book and is a conversation between Death and his granddaughter, Susan (Death talks in caps, of course):

Susan: "...You're saying humans need...fantasies to make life bearable?"

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little..."

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY AND YET---AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME . . . SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point--"

MY POINT EXACTLY.

THERE IS A PLACE WHERE TWO GALAXIES HAVE BEEN COLLIDING FOR A MILLION YEARS. DON'T TRY TO TELL ME THAT'S RIGHT.

"Yes, but people don't think about that."

CORRECT. STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE'S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A . . . A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT.

"Talent?"

OH, YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS INSIDE YOUR HEADS.

"You make us sound mad."

NO. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?

Vital skill for forging our future

2009-06-11T22:16:00.000-07:00

I am a long time member of the Open Space Listserve. There are a lot of amazing folks and deep thinkers over there. Today my dear friend and OS colleague, Doug Germann, posted this quote:

It is their presence in the whole, and the fact that they are helping the life of the whole, which gives them their individual life....Italics in original. Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and The Nature of the Universe, Book One: The Phenomenon of Life, p 431

Doug followed that up with his own observations and one of his wonderful questions:

What I am seeing here as an inside-out truth, is that in a group we do not lend the group our individual life, it goes somewhat the other way round about. What gives us our individual existence and life is our presence in the group, our helping of the group; in turn the others helping the group give us life. We intensify each other.

Can this be true?

So i chimed in and here is an expanded version of my reply:

Yes. It's about Circles of Belonging, Doug.

Don't we feel most alive when we know we are truly significant? That our existence matters essentially to another? We can only see that truly reflected in the eyes of our community.

It explains modern existential angst. Without true community and a way to find our place in it--we find life deadened, numbing, meaningless. The same thing is mirrored in organizations. We have largely managed (all puns intended) to engineer an inhuman context for ourselves. If we are to create a future where we and all the other species on our planet can thrive, we will need to understand the need for authentic significance deeply and begin working to acquire the skills and instincts to provide this to each other in the way we live and work together.

Re-membering and re-claiming the skills and patterns of connecting to the whole is a vital process for our future. There are ways of being in community that we have forgotten (and many of us never learned). And i don't just mean human community; i mean the WHOLE. We also need to feel, really experientially, in our bones, feel our connection to earth and cosmos and all the life in it.

I see groups working to emerge these ways of being. Aikido is one place. We work there on ourselves within a community of care, to understand the deeper connections between us; how our intentions intertwine, how our energy flows and merges, how we can learn to treat each other with delicacy. As one teacher said, "Aikido is about caressing the soul". It is one of the places i feel seen and feel welcomed to see others.

I see the Non-Violent Communication community working to build the skills for verbally connecting in ways that we can truly give appreciation to each other. Working to learn and teach how to communicate in ways that honour the self and the other, without harm.

Again i am finding it hard to put words to this knowing. In order to thrive in complexity, we need each other like never before and yet we are stuck in this vise of not having the skills we need to live and work well together. That is the work i am passionately engaged in now. How can we transform ourselves into who we need to be to thrive? I have found that this work takes great personal courage to engage in. We all carry the grief around of the wounds we have received from those who were supposed to see and love and appreciate us and who didn't. So many are walking numbed, and deadened. So many of us don't even know how to accept appreciation and love when we are exposed to it.

So i say, these skills and patterns of connecting to the whole (self, family, community, world, cosmos) are vital to our future. Vital to our individual and collective health. Vital to life. We need to re-learn, to co-create, to co-emerge these skills and patterns of working and living well together.

We will know we have arrived when, as Harrison Owen has recently pointed out, Open Space Technology is just one of the ways we do things. I believe the deep inner resonance for this sense of one's place in the whole is what many people experience and enjoy about Open Space. And Aikido. onegai shimasu O Sensei. I don't want to bore all you non-aikidoists, but there is a jewel at the center of Aikido--a sparkling diamond gift of finding the connection to each other and the whole that gives us life.

Where have you found this resonance?

Change is dead.

2009-05-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

What?!? I hear you say. Change is dead? But isn't everybody talking about the pace of change, change management, how to be more resilient in the face of change? And the Buddhists in the group are going, but, everything is change, change is all. Yep. And that's the point actually.

The problem, as i see it, is that the word, change, has gathered to itself a terrible gravity and that is creating a damaging and painful illusion. Many people, if we're being honest about it, see change as what happens between the disruption of one status quo state and the emergence of another. And that assumption/belief/mindset/illusion served us okay while we lived in a largely simple or complicated world. The challenges we faced responded to analysis and our solutions were largely repeatable. Solutions also tended to be effective over relatively long periods of linear time. Hence the illusion of a status quo state that experienced episodes of change.

Enter the age of complexity. Our challenges are now complex. They don't readily yield to analysis, but demand of us new skills like pattern seeking and new ways of working together like collaboration (yes, new, but that's another conversation). Our solutions are seldom repeatable (although they may inform future challenges in an evolutionary way) as our challenges are embedded in unique contexts and histories. Our solutions converge in an evolutionary flow, each leading us in a spiraling pattern to the next iteration of the challenge. No more home base. No more status quo.

Welcome to chaos. Complexity if that scares you less. So, i say, "change is dead", to shake you awake. To invite you to loosen your grip on the idea of the shore and take the plunge into the flow. The pace of change isn't increasing. The degree of complexity is. The distance between the temporary handholds in the stream flowing from evolving now to evolving now is lessening. I am inviting you to learn to swim before they disappear altogether.

I am keeping some distance from the statement "change is all there is", because i am now seeing that as an illusion referencing an illusion. I am proposing that the ever-emergent flow is all there is. Take that into your body for a moment and see if there is a different response.

And how do we respond to that? With self-organization, like we always have. Like there was ever anything else. Only now, we can choose to do it consciously. We can choose to learn and create processes that leverage the power of emergence, of context, of relationship, of questions. So let go of change. It is a concept that no longer serves us or our organizations. It locks us in a jail of false hope and is creating increasingly disastrous consequences. We are simply in the flow of the ever-emergent. We shape our present and future through our collective intention. Might as well step up and start taking responsibility for what you care about and see who else shows up.

The journey to this place is not simply one of mind. To thrive here, we need integrated mind/body/heart/soul systems. We need all channels online and functioning.

Our organizations need a much better understanding of what level of response is necessary and how best to support those responses. Change Management?--bah humbug! How about Complexity Response Management? Or maybe Systems Resilience Patterning? Emergence Driven Strategic Leveraging? Strangely Attractive Critical Juncture Processing? Okay, now i'm having too much fun. What's your two-cents?

NB: A little esoterica for the aikidoka in the crowd: ever-emergent flow: Takemusu. (from calligraphy by O Sensei: Takemusu Aiki has descended and its energy can be felt everywhere.)

New poem up at oneplacemostsacred

2009-04-30T22:56:00.000-07:00

Well, after a very long hiatus, i have just posted a new poem up at my other blog. It's called Opening to the spring within. You can view it at oneplacemostsacred.

So ends a wonderful Poetry month and Poem in my pocket day. The poem i found in my pocket (really) is one of my favourites. "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Is #twitter changing #blogging?

2009-04-23T22:45:00.001-07:00

Anyone else noticing that we are witnessing a #tippingpoint? Something happened about 3 weeks ago with #twitter that moved it from the emerging edge to the mainstream. Just about everyone i know, including me started tweeting. Non-tweeters are already complaining about twitter updates on Facebook. #Hashtags are appearing everywhere. I'm contemplating filing to add an @ sign as my first initial. (okay, not really)

What i have noticed is that i am more conscious about what i put in the first 140 chars of my blog posts. That it sets the context and gives a good idea of the content of the post. I know this isn't and won't become an absolute. But there is certainly a solid awareness of all of the different places this will now show up and the different ways people will be looking to assess context and content.

Also, i am finding that i am turning to twitter as my main platform for watching for trends, emergent information, and new connections--rather than blog feeds or other aggregators. I am finding the enforced 140 char limit awesome in terms of helping to manage the signal to noise ratio.

As Bryan Alexander tweeted today:

"Managing feeds, in addition to (or instead of) managing items, is an aspect of digital literacy that’s only just emerging" - J. Udell

Thank goodness, it's not just me whose struggling to figure out how to manage all of the incredible amount of content generated. And how to leverage these interconnected flows of information, insight and opinion.

I am very curious to see how this will continue to unfold and how quickly we will see hashtags and @-signs become ubiquitous.

The other pattern that intrigues me is the speed with which this happened. I believe, if my understanding of his tweets are correct, that Neil Gaiman celebrated his 100,000 follower and his 333,333 follower within about 10 days of each other. My thought is that the 'viral' nature of the web is evolving and becoming more powerful. I struggle with the term 'viral' because it feels like it is a metaphor that is obscuring the deeper nature of what is happening here. The ecosytem (if i may use the term) of the internet is evolving. With its self-organizing, complex adaptive systems becoming more mature and robust. The interconnections are beginning to approach the level of those found in nature: like in a nervous system. This took a while and it looks to me like we are arriving at a level of complexity and fluidity that will make some very powerful things possible. Not judging good or bad, just noting the power factor.

What are you noticing? Any thoughts?

Easter on Gabriola

2009-04-11T22:47:00.000-07:00

This year was a special one: the 10th Anniversary of our Community Easter Egg Hunt. It was held at the Commons for the second time and it is such a special location. I feel so grateful to have this kind of community space. The Gabriola Commons is 26-acres of community coordinated land with an agricultural focus.

We were treated to a concert by the Juno-nominated, Gabriola-grown band the Kerplunks. (And they sang the new Lego song!) And then the wild hunt was on! Imagine a hundred or so 2-12'ers making like fox and hounds over the fields and through the bushes looking for eggs.

This is just one more reason why i love living here. Moms, Dads, kids, Grandparents, folks who just love kids and have to watch the gaiety--all gathered on the green. Dancing and singing, clapping and cheering. What a rare experience these days to have so much community out for kids. And we were joined this year by eagles and hawks, snakes and ants. Nobody left any litter, everybody had a terrific time, and money was raised to support our local 4-H club. A big cheer to the local businesses--esp. Village Foods and Coast Realty for their steady support.

Lots of pics:

Picnic before the show:

Tina Jones of the Kerplunks pointing out the eagle blessing the beginning of the show!

Everybody watching the show:

Do you like my Easter Bonnet?

Rowan & GranGran

They're Off!!

The Wild Hunt

Searching for the last few

That was fun!

Trust and Collaboration

2009-04-07T23:16:00.001-07:00

Trust is an essential ingredient in any true collaboration. The most important thing to understand about trust is that it is a result. Not a given, not an expectation--a result of a repeated pattern of behaviour. If you want someone to trust you, you need to demonstrate trustworthiness over time. How much you trust someone depends not only on your past experience of their behaviour, but also on the degree of risk you have shared.

There are two vital components to trust: letting go and engagement. If you want to be trusted you must be prepared to be fully engaged in the interaction. Half-hearted commitment to your actions will not inspire trust. And less than full engagement with the other sends a message to your partner that they may not be safe as your attention is divided or you are distracted. In collaboration this activated focus is so essential. Engagement evokes the energy for the group. Without it collaborations go flat and creativity dries up (because creativity is all about risk engagement).

If you have decided to trust someone, then you need to practice letting go into that trust. Attempting to manipulate a trust relationship by continuing to attach to outcomes or control of the situation, prevents the other from fully participating in the collaboration and inhibits your own performance. It endangers the collaborative effort by disturbing the delicate interplay and dynamics of creativity and emergence. Ultimately, not letting go into trust, once it has been reasonably established, defeats the entire point of collaboration.

NB: Photo is of Saito Sensei demonstrating loading for a hip throw. For practioners please note: head position of uke should have neck fully extended and relaxed down (but this would leave him headless in the photo, so he's holding it up so you can see him).

Pain

2009-04-04T23:37:00.000-07:00

The degree to which we turn our pain into suffering is the degree to which we obstruct our own healing.

Robert Augustus Masters

I've been engaging with pain a lot the past couple of days. The transitory physical pain of minor illness, the long term emotional pain of grief and heartbreak, the illuminating pain of spiritual exploration of the edges of compassion and conflict, courage and fear.

I am in the middle of a practicum in Integral Psychotherapy with Robert Masters and Diane Bardwell-Masters, so this is not simply a casual exploration. I am learning on myself, nothing new as y'all know, and also on fellow practicum mates and practice clients.

So the edge that fascinates me most is the dynamic space where pain and suffering dance. How quickly one becomes the other and how slowly and how much work it takes to unweave the knot of suffering from around our pain. And when i add on the layer of spirit, it gets even more interesting. Then compassion and its counterfeits enter the arena. Then my aspirations jostle with my abilities of the moment and reality and spiritual ambition spar.

I am amazed at how fast pain converts to suffering. When i pay attention, i find it is such an habituated response. Pain is felt and then almost immediately the storytelling starts. And then we're off into the dramatics of our suffering, the siren call that keeps us asleep. The song of Maya sinuously weaving a tapestry of illusion so tight and fine we mistake it for truth and name it our reality. Humming an addictive distraction from the simple pain that could awaken us--that could align our perception more closely to What-Matters-Most.

I'm still working on how to write about my own inner journey. So until next time, here are some gems i came across in my explorations today. First some lyrics from Melissa Etheridge that tell the harsh truth:

Everybody's got a hunger
No matter where they are
Everybody clings to their own fear
Everybody hides some scar

Precious pain
Empty and cold but it keeps me alive
I gave it my soul so that I could survive
Keeping me safe in these chains
Precious pain

Then some from Robert Masters' new book, "Meeting the Dragon" (avail free here):

Where pain is consciously felt hurt, suffering is the conversion or manipulation of that hurt into some level of melodrama, wherein we are likely so busy acting out --and being literally occupied by--our hurt role that we've little or no motivation to stand apart from or illuminate it.
As we step back from the dramatics of our suffering, we start to see through our role as the sufferer, and to also see our investment in that role.
It is in the conscious and compassionate entry into our pain that we begin to find some real freedom from our suffering.
The healing of pain is found in pain itself. As we become more intimate with our pain, we find that we are less and less troubled by it. Suffering is , among other things, a refusal to develop any intimacy with our pain. In fact, suffering jails our pain.

And from Barbara Kingsolver, some lyric prose:

In my own worst seasons i've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. and then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, i have taught myself joy, over and over again.

In solidarity with the broken many,

wendy

More on Coral vMeme

2009-04-01T22:27:00.000-07:00

More thoughts on Spiral Dynamics emergent Coral vMeme. Inspired by comment on my original post from tenzwarszawy:

...for me Coral would somehow reflect selfishness of Red but on different level where Self is wider and organizing systems according to it's needs would mean setting new standards, paradigms or system metacomments and playing with them with full respect of others needs.
So it is a selfish game but on the level where self is wider than individual ego structure - it's like discovering divine possibilities of mankind reflected in singular entity.
Curious what you think.

The way i see it emerging is this: Yellow is Survival meme transformed. This is where all systems are coming online; all 16+ senses are re-awakening to allow us to connect to immanent dangers and act for survival of self, species, planet. Awareness of transpersonal self, holonic free-agent functioning within holarchies. Turquoise is transformed/transpersonal tribalism. This is being enabled by social media. We are seeing the arising of holonic/holarchical clans within a global tribe consciousness.

So Coral, to me is transformed/transpersonal Warriorship. What you are talking about as the wider sense of self i think is captured by the anarchistic flavour and the following: "Seeks only to express the intent of the energy of the Universe as expressed in personal acts of presence, art, movement, love". This is the fully integrated ego--not transcended ego as many current practices and teachers are promoting, but the integrated ego--the divine experience as body, as human. There is moral fire here. As Marilyn Hamilton coined it to me, "it's the Kick Butt meme". This is warriorship transformed to guardianship. Warriorship arising as and from Being. And the butt is kicked with love in alignment with flow of Being Consciousness.

I like the way you put it: organizing systems according to it's needs, but with full respect of other's needs. This is the holonic nature. A lot of folks are talking about autonomy and radical autonomy in regards this; i challenge this. Autonomy precludes the essential integration of interdependence of the transpersonal perspective that is online for this vMeme. I am preferring to refer to this quality as mature-evolved-Being-centered-holonity. There is definitely, as you point out, a solid sense of unique personal center AND a full integration of interdependence and connection to Being. That is the phenomenon i find present in Aikido. This nurturing of both the unique center and a profound capacity to connect at the level of essence with the other. Language can still fail me. If you haven't experienced it, i invite you to look for a good dojo near you and try it out. (Look for a lot of smiling. That's the hallmark of good Aikido.) Sorry, gotta promote the art whenever i get a chance.

Would love to deepen this conversation. I can tell there is a lot more here if i had a reason to think about it further--and others to think with :)

Foolish blessings to you all

2009-04-01T21:44:00.000-07:00

A Happy Adventurous April Fool's Day to you all!

Foolishness i engaged in today:

White Rabbit, White Rabbit, White Rabbit as soon as i woke up (I love you Gracie! I miss you Gracie!)
Taught a sleepy Gareth about the tradition and worked on his routine with him (he told the bro's the Easter Bunny had come! TeeHee)
Took myself too seriously. (Only a little..i'm getting MUCH better ;))
Got on the ferry to Nanaimo, got off the Ferry in Nanaimo, took call on cell phone to say meeting was cancelled, turned around and got right back on the ferry from Nanaimo...
Had oatmeal and French Toast for dinner.
Watched Looney Tunes.
Engaged in a little pookoobraznost! (Please help my spelling here dear Rafushka!)
Blogged this (and played with tweeting all day long) I guess you just can't call it Twittering. That really sounds foolish!

Such an open space day. All about letting go and letting come. Being in the NOW. Whatever happens. Integrating it all with a sense of joyous abandon. Inviting intimacy with all that is--warts, alligators, tigers and all.

May you all be blessed with utter foolishness.

May, "I know nothing!" be your battle cry and prayer.

Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble!

The Venerable Reverend High Dupess, Wendy The Valorous (Church of St. Murphy the Divine); Dr. Wendetta When, Dean of Accidental Education, Titanic University; And Other Mystic Titles Too Arcane to Mention

Third Sector and the current economy

2009-03-31T22:03:00.000-07:00

While governments are busy bailing out failing banks and corporations, another significant driver of our economy and our society is struggling largely in silence. The so-called Third Sector, also known as Non-Profits or Charities.

An excerpt from the Government Non-Profit Initiative describes the scope and impact of the sector on the BC economy:

The non profit sector contributes an enormous amount to public life in British Columbia. The sector has a substantial economic presence, contributing 6.9 per cent of the province’s GDP and employing 7 per cent of the provincial workforce. The non profit sector employs more than 147,000 people (23 per cent of whom work in hospitals, colleges and universities) – a workforce larger than the total employment in the forestry, fishing, mining and oil and gas industries combined.

The non profit sector reports around $3 billion a year in revenue from provincial government sources, accounting for one-third of the sector’s total revenues. The sector contributes an additional $6 billion into the provincial economy, more than agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting and on par with mining, oil and gas. Not included in this equation is the monetary value of over 114 million hours in volunteer time mobilized by the sector – the equivalent of 69,000 full time employees.

So, with Canadian media beginning to take some notice, it's time for the rest of us to start speaking up. Canadian charities support our social safety net and are responsible for providing a lot of the services we have come to expect as an integral part of Canadian society. If we want to continue to enjoy the benefits of engaged and healthy communities, we need to step forward and support our local charities. As a fundraiser and organizational consultant, i am inviting leaders in my community to an Open Space-based meeting to plan what we can do to support our local charities in surviving the next three years. I will be suggesting we provide resources and training workshops (for free or cost only) to our local charities to help them prepare for what lies ahead.

So if you have a local (or national) charity that you love, sing their praises, let your local representatives know of your concern, encourage all of your networks to continue to give, and point the charity to this resource as a good place to start for ideas on how to survive.

Web 3.0

2009-03-30T20:57:00.000-07:00

Just can't stop now i'm started :).

I've been volunteering with a new social change initiative called Sound Connections. Their website will be up shortly. We've started with live meetings: Open Space Tech in a Whole Person Process wrapper. The idea is to create a platform to connect social entrepreneurs with each other and with those who have the skills and passion to support them.

What i've noticed: a new trend that i call web 3.0. We connect online to others who share our passions via web 2.0 social networking tools, then these connections become real-world as we meet in person, or create real-world projects that affect the lives of others. I love this pattern. It feels like the maturation of the promise of the internet. What could have become isolating is becoming a powerful tool for real world transformation and relationship.

It's about time

2009-03-30T20:50:00.000-07:00

It's about time i started blogging again on a regular basis don't you think?

Not possible to catch up. So just going to jump right in. Lots of new stuff in the cooker. James Lemmer and I are in the final stages of launching our new company: The Collaborative Experience. We have developed highly experiential workshops that include shadow process, genuine contact program, open space technology, integral theory, spiral dynamics, complexity theory and aikido to support teams and leaders working in collaboration locally and globally.

New website up soon. Watch all social media for the launch.

Celebrating an achievement

2008-09-03T00:55:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, August 31, 2008 i was honoured to receive my yellow belt in Aikido. I have been studying Takemusu Aikido with Victor Arcega Sensei for about 18 months. This has been a long and challenging journey and through it my commitment to this beautiful and transformative art has deepened to become the centering pillar of my life. Receiving my belt was a complete surprise--in our dojo, Sensei awards belts at his discretion when he feels that the student is ready to embrace the next level of responsibility. (And for yellow belt, it also means i don't need to look at my feet anymore! Which means i can now wear a hakama. Woohoo!)

I began this journey hoping to learn some things that would enhance my facilitation skills and support me in my quest to more fully embody my Open Space practice. I have found so much more. I can't really express how much this honour means to me. There were many times when i questioned my ability to manage the demands of the mat. I sometimes felt a bit cheeky about starting a martial art as a 40+ mother of young children with no background in any sport let alone a martial art. And here i was, bad knees, bad back--bad joints in general--out of shape, over-weight and scared as heck walking on the mat to try and learn what is widely regarded as the most demanding of all the martial arts. So let this serve as an encouragement to all of you who think you are too old or out-of-shape to live a dream. Find a group who will support you and go for it. Determination and guts will take you farther than you can imagine from where you sit now.

Which brings me to some appreciations: to my husband George and my parents for supporting me in the most practical way by their willingness to care for my children so i could attend class--even when they didn't understand the appeal (okay, okay, addiction); to my Sensei, Victor Arcega--for sharing his time and energy and irreplaceable knowledge and for creating a dojo where joy and love are what we practice most; to Senpai Floyd Blades for his teaching and sharing of his enthusiasm for this path; to Senpai Christle Blades for being a source of joy, inspiration, encouragement and just plain fun; to my classmates at the Vimy Dojo--Rob, Al, Robert, Miles, Christine, Van and David--and the Gabriola Dojo--Patrick, Judith, Leah, David, Jim, Alex, Jack, Viva, Kim, Daniel--a deep bow to you all for what has passed between us and for coming out to play!; and to Toke Moller for introducing me to the vibrations of Aikido.

And to finish off, the quote from O-Sensei that has upheld me most throughout this first stage of my training:

The Art of Peace begins with you. Work on yourself and your appointed task in the Art of Peace. Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here for no other purpose than to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment. Foster peace in your own life and then apply the Art of Peace to all that you encounter.

domo arigato

The Coral vMeme emerges?

2008-01-17T09:43:00.000-08:00

Since taking training in Spiral Dynamics with Don Beck a year ago, i have been on the lookout for the first signs of the emergence of the Coral vMeme. I have noticed that there is a parallel between the other first and second tier vMemes. The first tier Beige vMeme is a survival consciousness. Studies of the few extant beige cultures left on the planet have revealed (according to Don Beck, i haven't found a reference for this yet) as many as sixteen senses functioning, including things like remote viewing. We are seeing a re-emergence of these senses in the yellow second tier vMeme. As yellow evolves and expands, in my growing opinion to our bodies innate response to a sense of threat, not so much to the individual as to the species and biosphere. Turquoise echoes Purple. So i am proposing that Coral will echo Red.

If Red is the vMeme of Warriorship, Coral is the vMeme of Guardianship. I am proposing that this vMeme is emerging as a second tier response to the threat posed to life conditions by increasingly Red activity across the planet. I am seeing these traits emerge in advanced practitioners of Takemusu Aikido. My initial explorations are below. Are you seeing these traits anywhere in your experience? Is there any resonance for you?

Coral Vmeme Proposal

The Guardian Self

Sees self as connected to Universal energy, love for all beings, entrusted to guard life in all its forms. Conflict is seen as a path to harmony. Seeks confluence with energy of others and energy of environment. Sees relationships (power & interpersonal) as inter-related ecology of relationship with other radiant, charged, vibrating beings. Does not seek power over others. Does not seek power with others. Seeks only to express the intent of the energy of the Universe as expressed in personal acts of presence, art, movement, love--guardianship. Life and death are approached with an attitude of non-attachment and joy. The core motivation is Service: to the Universe, to others, to life. Body and mind function as an integrated system. Multiple intelligences and expanded senses are fully developed. Learning and work are both expressed as play. Intention forms the core of all action. Anarchistic.

How well do you really know yourself?

2007-11-08T10:20:00.001-08:00

Well, it got you reading didn't it? A colleague pointed me to Harvard University's Implicit Association Test. This nifty little test uses a random sequence of paired pictures and words to uncover hidden biases in our responses to a variety of cultural groups: African American or White, Old or Young, Straight or Gay, Fat or Thin, Multicultural or Unicultural, and lots of others. It takes about 10 minutes to complete each task. You will be warned that you may not like the results.

I am volunteering facilitation support to the Nanaimo committee planning our Dialogue on Multiculturalism sponsored by the Province and SFU Centre for Dialogue. I was naturally curious about what this tool might show and how useful it seemed for training and other awareness raising activities. It is very simple and quick to use. I would like to hear from others who have tried it to see what you think of its accuracy.

How did I do? Well as usually happens, I'm in the 2% minority. I apparently have a moderate preference for marginalized groups. This doesn't surprise me all that much. I have done a lot of unlearning racism work and for the past three years have been actively delving deep to root out unconscious colonized places in my heart and mind. And as a stealth radical and someone who is not very comfortable with mainstream culture, it's not really surprising that I might feel more warmly towards marginalized folks.

So give it a try and let me know what you think.
Cheers all!

2007-11-05T16:17:00.000-08:00

Love is the fabric of the Universe.

Antidote

2007-09-27T22:06:00.000-07:00

joy's bright blade

aroused to incandescence
in the fires of pain

hammered to trueness
by betrayal and forgiveness

quenched in the waters
of love and compassion

only weapon
of the guardian soul

true instrument of heaven

Beyond Intentional Community--Conscious Community

2007-09-19T23:14:00.000-07:00

A number of friends and colleagues have noted that the phrase Intentional Community is both inadequate to our understanding and possibly irredeemably tainted by the track record of many intentional communities. I have been thinking a lot about what phrase (signifier) might capture the deeper meaning and reality (signified) of the concepts we are tossing about. Today finally, the term Conscious Community came to me.

One of the sticking points i had with intentional community was a sense that at its very core, it was all about control. If you just get the right people, the right place, the right leadership, the right processes, the right economy, and so on, you can have the nirvana-esque community experience of your dreams. Those folks who failed, well, they just made mistakes in judgement--poor planning--bad personality mix...you've heard it. I propose that the reason most intentional communities fail, is that the meaning of intentional, implies at its deepest (unconscious) level the belief in control. And anybody who has taken a look at living ecologies of relationship can see that they are complex systems whose order emerges organically out of chaotic conditions always present at some level. It is the confusion of harmony with changeless bliss. Harmony is NOT static. It is the dynamic tension within healthy ecologies of relationship.

So instead i have proposed Conscious Community. Conscious implies that we are taking full responsibility for what we care about. We commit to be as aware as possible of the impact of our actions and we take personal responsibility for their consequences, even the unintended. Taking full personal responsibility does not mean we take blame or over-extend ourselves to accept responsibility for others reactions to our actions. It does mean that whatever consequences arise from our actions, we stand in mature relationship to ourselves, the other, and the Divine. The concept of Conscious Community includes the deep belief that we cannot control our living ecology of relationship--we can only ever co-create it emergent from mystery into the open space we hold and host together.

A Conscious Community is one in which members commit to bring consciousness to their lives and relationships. Its nature is exploratory and welcoming of deep diversity. Conflict is expected as an essential part of a healthy ecology of relationship and is greeted with an orientation of joy as an opportunity for personal and community growth and evolution. It is not a fail-safe environment; it is a safe-fail environment. It recognizes that all human beings have frailties, make mistakes, hurt those they love, have ugly sides, need solitude and privacy. It commits to provide its members with unconditional positive regard and love, regardless of their imperfections. It holds members accountable for their choices and the consequences of those choices. It is characterized by flow, states of grace, courage, discernment. A Conscious Community still has bad hair days--chaotic and challenging times. It also has the resiliency to thrive through them.

Does this resonate for you? Could you live in a community of belonging like this? Are you courageous enough to accept responsibility for what you care about? If yes, open your eyes and look around; see who is in the water with you and begin.

All for now.
Blessings and love to you all.

Opening Space for Organizational Systems Renewal

2007-06-03T09:58:00.000-07:00

Just got back from opening space for moving to action as the afternoon portion of the annual conference of the Organizational Systems Renewal program alumni at Seattle University. It was a total delight to share the facilitation of the day with Kathy Cramer of the Cramer Institute. Her most recent book “Change how you see everything” is an accessible and graphically lovely plea for appreciative thinking and living. She refers to it as asset-based thinking, which she has found is a more readily understood and stickier term than appreciative thinking.

We had a big circle with about 100 people ranging from current MBA students, alumni, faculty, and visiting professionals. We had one good hour-and-half session. With little time and lots to do, we went with flip-charting highlights and next steps up on a gallery. We took digital pictures of that to use to create the proceedings. We had a wonderful lightning report in from our 14 topic groups, with everyone speaking very directly.

As OD professionals who had spent two years learning various whole systems change approaches, they had asked to see the very pure form. Many had experienced some derivative of OS, but few had seen a really clean opening of space. So I obliged with the cleanest, purest version I know how. The opening took the usual 20 mins and they leapt up ready to go, creating their topic groups in amazingly short time. Kathy had warmed everyone up wonderfully, so they were ready with what they wanted to work on.

It was interesting to open space in the middle of the event. I wandered off around 10:30 to continue my personal prep. Had an hour of meditation followed by finishing prepping the space during the lunch break (making signs, etc) then working on the invitational section of my opening to ensure it was focused properly and reflected the work they had done in the morning session.

The only down side, and it was slight, but I noticed it, was that we had to have the participants rearrange their chairs themselves, on the fly, into a circle. There was one area that wasn’t quite visible from the whole circle and it was a lot harder to keep their energy in the container and draw them fully into the field. I did a lot of deliberate connection walking to compensate for the odd drift in the energy at that arc of the circle.

It was a very satisfying day. Had faith in who was there, watched the folks get down to work, the magic happen, deep connections made. Met lots of people doing deep change work out in the world and many others trying to open a bit of space in large companies (including Microsoft! Hi Iris and Mary Alice!).

Complexity for Regular Folks, Part 2

2007-03-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

Well, i had this post half written, lost my connection to the internet and lost the whole thing. So, this is the second necessarily shorter version... And i am not an expert in any way, so if you have additions or corrections to this, please send 'em along.

Atractors and scalar invariance.

Attractors are the simple rules that determine the direction of a system, its stability, its general trend. There are three groups of attractors: single point, periodic, and strange.

Single point attractors pull the energy of a system to one point or goal. A magnet is one good example of a single point attractor. If you sprinkle iron filings or some pins on a peice of paper and then put a magnet underneath it, the filings and the pins will be drawn towards a single point--the magnet. Another example, from palaeontology (for my kids): Many of us have seen films of palaeontologists working to remove massive chunks of stone--everyone on the dig site is drawn towards the work, lends shoulders and hands to move the boulder. All of their energy is directed towards a single goal--removing the rock. Systems governed by single point attractors tend to produce heroic model management.

Periodic attractors oscillate between two points. We have many experiences of periodic attractors, seasonality in employment, rush hour, and the most common--breathing.
We can cope with and benefit from systems governed by periodic attractors. We can get clarity from goals based on our knowledge of the oscillation. And we can recruit and train heroic model leaders with skills in anticipating and navigating the fluctuations.

Strange attractors were first described in the 1960's by Edward Lorenz (Lorenz attractor and graph) as he puzzled out the mysteries of the weather. While local weather patterns seemed completely unpredictable, when Lorenz modelled more global weather data on a computer, an interesting regularity appeared. The equations consistenty produced graphs in the shape of butterfly wings. At a larger scale, there were obviously rules at play that produced a predictable pattern. What those rules were, however, was difficult to tell, hence the name strange.

Complex systems are shaped by strange attractors that can be governed by a few simple rules. For example the movement of flocking birds is governed by three simple rules: stay equidistant from your neighbour and other objects, maintain the same speed as your neighbour, head toward the centre of the group. These simple rules allow a flock of birds (or fish or bees) to be 50 times more sensitive to changes in their environment than any one individual. (So complex systems are not well suited to the heroic leadership model. They are governed by interdependence, and so need a more interdependent style of leadership.)

So, to recap, strange attractors affect the flow of energy in complex systems. Strange attractors are comprised of a number of simple rules that interact with one another to produce the visible results we can observe. Discerning what these rules are is supported by certain attitudes and behaviours that Westley et al delineate--and that i will chat about in another post (hopefully also drawing some links to Spiral Dynamics).

So what is scalar invariance? Scalar means scale, or size. Invariance means not variable, unchanging. So put together, scalar invariance means that complex systems tend to act the same whether you are looking at only a few individuals (the micro level) or a mass (the macro level). You can extrapolate the simple rules governing the attractors of large systems by looking at the parts of those systems. In very simple terms, you can see the whole in the parts. As Blake would say, "the world in a grain of sand."

Both of these characteristics of complex systems are important to those wanting to effect social change. Identifying the strange attractors, and then looking under the surface to find the rules governing the attractors will have more leverage than attacking the surface characteristics. And scalar invariance means that local knowledge and expertise can effect change with global impact. And that small-scale efforts and experiments

Which leads us to one last concept from chaos science: complex systems are highly dependent on initial conditions. I am linking this to concepts from Aikido. In Aikido we have a very simple math. All systems have an energy of 10. If someone is attacking you with a force of 7, you only need to respond with a force of 3 to complete the system. In dealing with complex systems, the attractors hold a lot of the energy of the system, so a small input of energy at the right place and time can have significant results on the outcome.

There is good news here for those of us looking for ways to influence change. No guarantees, but lots of possibilities.

There is a lovely little animated game using attractors that you can play over at thecleverest.
Strange Attractor equations and graphs.
Formal definition of attractor.
Interesting discussion with illustrations of the four attractors of chaos science with speculative parallels to consciousness.
Some very cool 3-D images of attractors and other fractals.
Good next step for those wanting more information on attractors and complexity theory: Attractors Everywhere.

Next: a few more additions to our growing list of skills and attitudes for thriving in complexity.

On hosting meaningful conversations

2007-03-14T12:23:00.000-07:00

I am busy preparing a training manual on public speaking and public conversations for non-profit staff and volunteers. So, i have been musing a bit this morning on why i love facilitation when it is about hosting meaningful conversations.

What arose for me today was depth. I love asking the questions and holding the space for the questions that lead to depth. That let us get beyond the surface to the complexity that always is present. And i love it when that complexity gets unpacked, unfolded out in all its brilliance and unknowability. I love it when we get to a level of complexity where we must act out of the essence of who we are and not merely from what we know.

Complexity Theory for regular folks- pt 1

2007-03-02T11:31:00.000-08:00

The subtitle for this post should probably be: And why should i care anyway??

Authors Brenda Zimmerman, Frances Westley and Michael Quinn Patton give a compelling and highly readable answer in their new book, "Getting to Maybe" (Random House Canada, 2006). The other really cool thing about this book is that two of its authors are Canadian. Woohoo!

The short answer to why care about complexity: because it's how the world works and perhaps more importantly to many of us--it's how little old us can change the world--from where we are--NOW.

I have been working away in my brain on a blog post about working on the edge. And the edge i have been working on is all about complexity. It is the rub i find everyday in my conversations with leaders of organizations, with other consultants and with my friends and neighbours. Most of us have been taught skills and conditioning to help us thrive in a complicated world. Those skills are all about organizing, managing, and controlling. We are increasingly frustrated when these skills don't produce the results we are looking for.

In my work and in my life i am constantly communicating that the world has changed. We now live in the midst of complexity. And that calls for a very different skill set. A skill set that is often at odds with the way we have worked and lived in the past.

Over the next little while i want to share with you some of the skills, competencies, and mindsets (and reactions to them) that i am seeing emerge. I will also share the insights i am gathering from reading , "Getting to Maybe". And i will try to make the science behind complexity theory accessible to those of you for whom the words strange attractor, iteration, fractal, and scalar are seldom found in your recreational reading.

To begin, the number one reaction i see when folks start to explore working in ways that meet the demands of complexity is fear. This fear can manifest as resistance, hostility, anger, disbelief, mistrust. I believe that the fear has two main sources: certainty and grief.

What do I mean by certainty? When we make decisions, we like to feel that we have based them on an adequate amount of data that we can trust. When working with complexity, we often have to make decisions before we have that perfect data--in order to benefit from emerging trends and patterns. This can feel very uncomfortable--like leaping from a ledge without knowing what is below you. Even if the jump is a relatively short one, we all want to know that we are going to be okay--and that is something we can't know until we've landed. Some skills to cultivate: comfort with risk, ability to function with paradox, flow, letting go, intuition, pattern seeking, trust.

What do i mean by grief? In the past few months i have had the chance to learn a lot about grief--especially about grief as it is experienced by children. And of course, we are all children. What i have learned is that change, ALL and ANY change evokes the grief response. Think about that. In all change there is a loss--even if there is also a gain. Now consider the pace of change in the past 30 years. Birgitt Williams says, "there is always grief in the room". What does grief look like? Resistance, denial, anger, depression. When folks begin to understand that clarity is no longer possible (replaced by more relative qualities like discernment) and that paradox, risk, and flow are the new names of the game-most of us are looking at a truckload of loss. Some skills to cultivate: compassion, openness, letting go, resting down, faith in others and self.

So what are the new skills, attitudes and competencies for living in a complex world? For starters, as Westley et al state, "Getting to maybe has almost nothing to do with certainty and everything to do with serendipity, conviction, risk taking, and faith." Not very popular words in the offices of the world.

I hope together we can explore more of these new ways of thinking, living, working--being--over the coming weeks and perhaps generate a great resource for us all.

In the next post i will take a look at some of the jargon of complexity. Strange attractors, and scalar invariance. And why would you care? Because attractors are the tipping points of the system and scalar invariance helps you spot patterns at the micro level that can promote change at the macro level. Can't wait, can you ;)

Open Space memorial

2006-11-29T13:40:00.000-08:00

20061111_Funeral Flowers_9_7, originally uploaded by the view from in here.

While it feels strange to discuss my grandfather's Life Celebration in terms of facilitation practice, i want to capture and share the learning. I feel grateful to the minister of the Anglican Church where the celebration was held as he was knowledgeable about and supportive of Open Space. I am humbled by my grandmother's trust in me. She really has no idea what i do, and no understanding of what OS is, but still she was open to letting me share what i had to give. And for that i will be forever grateful.

I did not use pure OS--as you might imagine. My intention was to both honour my grandfather's life and to provide a meaningful ceremony for all present. In the end, i used a confluence of OS, circle, and Whole Person Process.

We set up in the afternoon, two days before. We were expecting about 60 people, so we set up in concentric circles of about 30 chairs each, with four aisles aligned to the altar and the main entry door of the church sanctuary. We placed three small coffee tables (okay one coffe table and two wonderfully colourful tables from the Sunday School) in the centre of the circle. It took a while to get them positioned properly, but in the end, they supported the energy flow by inviting people into the circle and creating a clockwise flow. We covered the tables with white and green church linen. On the central table, we placed an oval mirror and on this a floral centre piece with a candle. The inspiration for this was from circle practice where the fire in the centre draws people back to spirit when the conversation gets difficult. On the other two tables we placed photos of my grandfather from different times in his life; they were placed upside down. The photos were to be used for the transfer-in process from WPPF.

On the day of the ceremony, people gathered and i rang the bells to begin. I introduced myself and then introduced the minister who led everyone in prayer. Then it was time to open the space. I walked the circle
and invited everyone to look around and see who was here with us...to greet each other with their eyes. The principles were implicit rather than explicit--this was not the time for formality or rigidity--everything needed to be deeply personal.

Whoever comes became: We are all family, all friends. There are no strangers here.
Then i said, "We are all here to celebrate Len's life--to honour the life that he led and the legacy he has left. We are here to share a few of the moments where his life touched ours. To share what he meant to us--as best we can at this time. Please know that your tears are a blessing to that legacy and so is your laughter. His life was a special gift to each of us--and for a few minutes today, we can share that with each other."

Then it was time for the transfer in. I said that we had a gift for each of them and they were invited to come up and choose a picture from the tables. I invited everyone to believe that whatever picture they chose was the one they were meant to have. We took a minute of silence to reflect on the picture, on what it told us about Len. Then i invited everyone to find a partner or two and spend ten or fifteen minutes sharing whatever they wanted to. This is from WPPF and allows everyone to warm up their voices (it's tough to stand up and speak at these things--and my grandmother was scared that no one would). It also gives those who just couldn't possibly get up to speak a chance to share what they needed to share with someone else.

I rang the bells again after about 12 minutes and we all took our seats again. I invited each person who felt like it (and nobody had to) to come and take the microphone and share a memory of Len or what he had meant to them. I added that: "There may be silences and that is fine. We are all here to share what we can and sometimes silence is what we need to share."

People got up and shared stories, some read what they had brought to share, email messages were shared out and read into our circle. At one point my mother suggested that i offer to take the microphone to anyone who felt they couldn't get up. I honoured her request and was glad i had. It's not what i would usually do, but grief needs accommodation. There were several people who wanted to share, but just couldn't bear the idea of meeting anyone's eyes. They were so glad to be able to contribute by having the mike passed to them.

In about 50 minutes it felt like we were done. I said, "We may be finished, we may not be." i gave us all a minute in case someone was still gathering their thoughts. Then finished up with, "Our formal time for sharing is ending." I invited the minister back into the circle for a final blessing. When he finished i thanked everyone for what they had shared and for their presence and support. I invited those who wanted to do so to light a candle in Len's memory from the one on the central table. And we adjourned for refreshments and more sharing. The circle was open. The whole ceremony took about one hour and fifteen minutes.

Open Space invited the presence of Spirit and let us all feel each other's presence. It allowed for each of us to contribute as we felt able. It honoured the grief present and gave us all a brief glimpse of what lay beyond it. Circle supported us with fire in the centre, the heart of family and community. WPPF supported us in bringing our whole self present. It supported healing by integrating both sides of the brain, by inviting our voices, and by helping us to hear each other with open hearts. It provided a liberating structure to what might otherwise have felt overwhelming.

The feedback has been very positive. Many people have remarked on how fulfilling it was--on how it was just what they needed. That was what i had hoped for: to provide an honouring space and time that would be meaningful and healing for those who came.

I did not have long to prepare for this, as you might imagine, so it just flowed from my heart and what felt right and possible in the moment for all of us closest to it.

In Memoriam Len Turner 1913-2006

2006-11-06T23:48:00.000-08:00

gramps and me, originally uploaded by the view from in here.

My Grandfather, Len Turner, died just after 11:00 on Saturday night. It has been a long 14 months and it was a longer 4 days for those of us who sat by his bedside as he struggled for each breath. His final moments were peaceful and we all feel a huge sense of relief that he has finally found freedom after being a prisoner in a body that no longer served his will.

He loved life so much. He loved this beautiful earth and didn't want to miss a minute of what might happen next. His love for his family, for my grandmother, for my mother, for me and my brother was a blessing and privilege to witness and receive.

His stories, his humour, his smiles, his ingenuity, and his gentle strength have been a daily part of my life for 40 years. He was a blacksmith's apprentice, a welder, a builder of planes, a fireman, a maker of jewelery, an artisan, a handyman, a gardener, a trickser, a farmer, a fisherman, a naturalist, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather.

I have been thinking a lot over the past few days about all of the things that i learned from him. He taught me to fish. He tried to teach me to fight (but i was a hopeless non-violence practitioner, even at ten.) He taught me how to light a campfire--my status as a fire goddess is largely due to his example. But of all the lessons that i learned from him, two stand out as most important.

I learned from him the belief that what you can imagine you can create. He could coax beauty and usefulness from anything--bits of wood and string, scraps of metal, discarded perspex-- with a bit of glue and paint, or some whittling, under his hands they became a mobile of airy delight, an eternal rose, an exotic parrot. Thanks to him i can see beauty and possibility everywhere.

He also gave me the gift of companionable silence. You can't fish and chatter. You can't see a deer or a purple finch or a drowsy snake if you're always filling the silent spaces. Those daily adventures in the woods, and wandering along streams and beaches--quiet. Listening together for the mystery in the spaces of life.

I love you Gramps. And i can't quite yet absorb that you're gone.

horror--and its remedy?

2006-10-09T22:30:00.000-07:00

Today a colleague sent me images by email of an 8-year-old boy having his arm crushed by the wheel of a car for stealing bread in a market. Last week, as i sat in my car in the ferry line with my children waiting to take them to school we listened to news of a mother who had murdered her children. The day before, we heard news of ten girls bound and shot in an Amish school. Every day they die of hunger. Every day they die of AIDS. Every day they are shot by militias because they got in the way, or they were homeless. Every day they are neglected in orphanges. Every day they suffer in the bondage of slavery. Every day they watch their mothers beaten and murdered. Every day they are beaten and murdered.

I sit here almost incapacitated by horror. There are images and sounds and stories of torture and murder burned in my memory from the past fifteen years of work. I know i am tired. I know i don't usually consume ANY media for good reason. I know I will wake up in the morning, having managed to fall asleep somehow, and get on with my day, my work, loving my children, my family, my friends. I know that somehow, beyond this moment, i will find again the hope and determination to imagine a future for my species that is free from hatred, fear, and cruelty. A future where each child can grow up unharmed. I will somehow, once again manage to choose compassion over despair. But right now all i can do is shake and cry with the horror of what we can do to each other.

This news that bathes and barrages us with the basest of who we are, depletes us and alters us in dangerous ways. We can lose hope; we can lose faith in ourselves and our species. We can slide from horror to numbness to incapacity. It fuels our flight from reality into endless entertainment. It fuels hatred and suspicion. And most of all it fuels fear--the kind of fear that can be used to manipulate, to silence, to subvert, to oppress.

I don't know if those photos were real. They looked real. They could have been faked. They could have been from a movie. They could have been staged by the CIA or any number of other special interest groups dedicated to promoting hatred between people to further some project or other through a disinformation campaign. I'll never know the truth. Neither will you. What i do know is real is the trauma in my body. The disruption at a cellular level of my self and my energy. My heart contracts in self-protection. Can you feel it too?

It hurts--and it's hard work!--to open and soften that heart again. I am working at it as it type this because i choose to believe that compassion is the only response that will change us--that has any chance of success. And so i breathe in the suffering and terror of the child and breathe out compassion--because it's all i can give him--because i choose to believe that at some level it matters. And then it gets harder--i extend compassion to the man who is holding him down (it could be his father) because i choose to believe that only someone who is experiencing tremendous suffering could harm a child that way. So i breathe in that suffering and breathe out compassion--because i choose to believe that it matters. And i choose to break the cycle. I will not perpetuate the energy of hate and fear.

I don't believe it's about right and wrong anymore. I choose to believe it's about the energy of love and compassion versus the energy of fear. And i choose to believe that it matters at the level of energy--regardless of distance or time.

And i say choose to believe, because i have learned that faith is not a rock that we stand on, but is an activity we engage in moment by moment as life presents us with each new opportunity to be present in a different way.

So the horror and despair are receding--replaced by the ache of a soft and open heart.

-----author's aside to self:
A wondering to capture for further reflection: Things seem to be moving beyond questions--or at least verbalized questions--and into a realm of being or flow. There seems to be no question relevant other than to perhaps be a question. Or be a response. Perhaps we can find repose in our response-ability?

balance

2006-09-21T01:01:00.000-07:00

So much one could say about this...but sometimes pictures are worth more. And when it's pushing one A.M. and one's children are heading off to their first day of school in the morning, and one is still jet-lagged and totally bagged...a picture it will have to be.

If you haven't seen the incredible West German short film BALANCE, then do. It's seven minutes you won't regret. This is a pretty decent version up on youtube.

questions on human competencies and complexity

2006-09-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

In our workshop today there were some really interesting discussions and questions raised. Marquis Bureau suggested that perhaps we should look at nomadic people for the skills and competencies that would help us to function and thrive in more fluid and changing organizations. That led me to think of the Lakota people who offer that their particular genius is in human relationships (Dr. Martin Brokenleg). And we certainly could use improved competencies in that area. Birgitt Williams pointed out that many nomadic people still had a cycle of regular places that they stayed. This leads to a couple of questions...what other competencies do nomadic people demonstrate that might be helpful for us to learn from? Are there any truly nomadic people--those who have no regular round of locations?

Another question that arose as we pondered where untapped treasure troves of human understanding might lie, was: When was the last time (if any) the human species (or its predecessor) has been faced with this degree of complexity and change? I posited the Ice Age. It would be really interesting to take a look at this and see not only if there are times that compare well, but what arose out of those times. Memes for example; that we may still be carrying today.

Well, as you might expect after a long day of stiff brain work, i'm toasted. So i leave you to ponder along with me. Looking forward to your thoughts.

(Sorry for the lack of pics. I forgot to bring along the camera cable.)

argghhh. social engineering meets the web?!?

2006-09-11T19:15:00.000-07:00

This is one of the horrors i imagined happening when i fully grokked what Stephen Downes was talking about during Northern Voice 2005. When he was trying to disenchant us all about the big spike-long tail thing and started getting into how power, control, heirarchy, etc is built right into the coding that makes our beloved web work.

The last thing we all need is software that engineers social interaction--facilitates fine, engineers....eeek!!!

community and leadership

2006-09-10T18:47:00.000-07:00

Great post from Gardner Campbell over at Gardner Writes on leadership and growing community:

On the topic of leadership, this quotation also seems striking to me.
He who loves community, destroys community. He who loves the brethren, builds community. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

With allowances for the androcentric language, which I’m confident Bonhoeffer meant inclusively, the observation is keen and apt. The idea as I understand it is that communities are built out of persons, not out of ideologies, and that one of the most insidious traps a leader can fall into is that of advocating community while evading engagement with persons in all their alterity, all their knotty complexities.

There's more good stuff to read here about personal integrity and learning communities.

There's a real link here to what we are practicing with Community Weaving. Weaving a social safety net and creating a village effect by connecting with one person at a time, meeting them where they are, however they are, and inviting them to ask for what they need and offer what they can--believing that the resources required to resolve local problems reside in the hands and hearts of local people. As each person responds to an invitation to step forward and take responsibility for what they care about, they become a vital and creative organ in a self-organizing body of increasing civic health and wellbeing.

I am working with People for a Healthy Community on Gabriola to pioneer this approach in Canada. I also presented on this approach when i was in Moscow and there are now several initiatives begun there as a result.

Well, i am in North Carolina with Birgitt and Ward Williams and a group of wonderful folk from around the world. We are all learning together and sharing our experiences of helping organizations integrate Open Space principles into their daily way of working.

The conversations are deep and there is much to ponder and much fodder for future bloggin'!

Starfish tracks

2006-09-09T01:57:00.000-07:00

Starfish tracks, originally uploaded by the view from in here.

On our jaunt to Sandwell Park a couple of days ago...we saw this beautiful rarity of nature: a starfish making tracks. It was about 30 cm across and moved about 60 cm every five minutes or so--a real racer!

The beauty of the tracks just stopped me.

fishing for words?

2006-09-08T19:58:00.000-07:00

you have to be still
for the words to come
like minnows under
cedar roots
even a shadow of movement
and they flit back
into darkness

Moscow OSonOS photos up on flickr

2006-09-08T00:52:00.000-07:00

DSC07303
Originally uploaded by the view from in here.

Hi everyone,

Finally! I have uploaded the official picture set from the OSonOS proceedings in Moscow. You can view them here.
Descriptions will have to wait until later.

The photos of my trip, with basic descriptions are here. Some of the photos still need work, but at least they are all up.

And kids are kids everywhere. Child playing in a fountain near Red Square.

P8110406
Originally uploaded by the view from in here.

another reason for more open space in schools

2006-09-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Stephen Downes posts this excerpt and comments on Kindergarten Gulag:

The headline says it all, doesn't it? "Instead of story time, finger painting, tracing letters and snack, first graders are spending hours doing math work sheets and sounding out words in reading groups. In some places, recess, music, art and even social studies are being replaced by writing exercises and spelling quizzes."

I would add as well that a fundamental purpose of recess, arts and social studies is to promote freedom by enabling it - and so I wonder about this unfree generation of children now being raised. Remember, how we used to hear, that freedom and democracy may have flaws, but they are much better than any other form of government? I wonder when people stopped believing this, and how it is that they feel that a command economy is somehow better. Remember - the lessons we teach our children are based, not on the content we teach, but on how we act, how we behave. Authoritarian teachers raise dictators, even if they teach Rousseau.

"To promote freedom by enabling it" isn't that what Open Space is all about? I appreciate all the work done by open space colleagues to introduce OS into schools at any level. There is a collection of stories about this here.

And this is why i can't send my children to public school. But i still feel a deep unease and concern about the reasons underlying the way the school system has changed (and not changed) in the past 35 years. Out of seven of my children's friends who are starting school this year, only one is attending the mainstream public school here on Gabriola. With the funding structure of the public system, what does this mean to the future of public education? And i believe that future does matter--just ask someone from a country that has no public education system.

Some of the things i wonder about: Is the system being purposefully starved and left to rot in a backwater of unproven and inappropriate methodology? Is it hopelessly out of step with the needs and desires of modern parents for a reason--or is it just an accident of complexity? Is it worth saving? Is it possible to save? Is this the beginning of a two-tier system or even the leading edge of the demise of the right to public education, or the unfettered privatization of that system?

A real catch-22 for parents who care--not just about their own children's education, but all children's access to education (as my friend Keira has so passionately described to me--i know, you will blog oneday, in your best time).

So, while i reluctantly entrust my children to a semi-private learning environment, i ponder about a new publicly supported system of distributed learning networks--locally driven, globally linked. And a new social culture where parents and community are able to create the learning space our children are asking for. Any thoughts?

Just read my blogroll and there is more on the Great Canadian Homework Ban and links to some great resources at parkinglot.

Design in translation

2006-09-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

Perhaps not the deepest, or most enthralling learning from Moscow OSonOS, but a useful one to capture is about designing an event where there will be a lot of translation happening.

A few things i learned:

Do not attempt to cut short the time for the sessions. Alot at least the 1.5 hours recommended and perhaps even extend that by 15 minutes or so. I have noticed the dampening effect of shorter time slots before, but it was more pronounced here where conversations were all translated and so the effective conversational time was often halved. (But we got better at getting more concise as the days progressed.)
Allow a bit more time for the opening and closing segments. Again, with translation, we ran into trouble staying on schedule for the first session each day (there were some other reasons for that, too...) and inviting a focus to the closing comments and reminding folks to please keep things brief at the end of the day is a necessity.
Using translators that have a grasp of the subject matter is a huge benefit. For those of us who have no experience with translating into other languages, it is easy to forget that a lot of words and concepts do not have direct translations and that subtle shades of meaning can be very tricky to convey. Translators who have some exposure already to the field of conversation can really enrich the experience for everyone.
Inviting volunteer translators from within the participants can really boost your translating power.
Translation support in the newsroom and extra hands on deck to help get all the reports in order would be handy (especially when the character set is different--very tricky to match up reports with their translations if you not only don't speak the language, but also can't decipher it either...).

Well, those are the main points i noticed. Did you notice anything else Raffi?

I want to commend the organizing team of OSonOS in Moscow for creating an incredibly flexible and rich translation environment. It was a wonderful experience.

Спасйбо!

a few thoughts as an update

2006-09-02T22:37:00.000-07:00

Still returning to the world. A world that is in more flux and flow than usual--and that's saying something. It took me about five days to recover from my trip to Moscow. I slept a lot of that.

I have so much to report about that trip that i can only hope to capture it all before it slips away. i have some thoughts recorded and ready to jumpstart me and i wanted to just check in quickly with you all--to let you know it was an incredible experience and that i returned home safe and sound.

OSonOS. Three days out of time and place. i am still left in awe and wonder at how deeply we can know each other in so short a time. Friends, and more than friends-- a family of the heart and soul--discovered there. Dear ones who will dwell now always and everpresent in my heart--Mussarrat, Raffi, Birgitt, Carol, Netra, Funda, Lada, Marina, Alex, Vera. And those who i carried with me in heart and Spirit--so that their essence and contributions could also bless that gathering--Lisa, Chris, Michael, Tree, Peggy. You are a beautiful host to hold in one's heart.

And after the event, Raffi supported me in hosting a Community Weaving workshop in Moscow. I was humbled again by how powerful people find this approach and how quickly they are willing to grasp it and run with it. Community Weaving is now taking root in organisations in Moscow, Ukraine, Chechnya, the Altai region, and the Baikal region. Those attending plan to use it to support their work in restorative justice, juvenile justice, homeless women and children, preservation of the environment, and indigenous rights.

Much has happened since my return...the first family camping trip (with both dogs!!) to Newcastle Island; a surprise visit this week from my brother and his family; getting back to work--or trying to; preparing to go off to North Carolina week after next; and then the start of school for the boys.

Yes, school...many of you know how hard we have struggled with this decision. And in the end we have opted to go with Montessori. I am still torn--i would love to be able to keep them home--but without unreasonable sacrifice and constant chaos, neither of us can find a way at this time to make it work. So far, we like what we are hearing--own pace, child centred, co-learning atmosphere, follow their passions. We will see how it goes. At least i don't have an anxiety attack when i walk into the place. For those who are also struggling with this decision, Chris has some cogent and heartfelt thoughts on the subjects of homework and unschooling.

Will be slowly returning to this space with stories and PHOTOS!!! from the trip as my time and energy allow over the next month.

Blessings to you all and thank you for your patience over this last extended dry patch.

Road to Moscow part 1

2006-08-01T13:14:00.001-07:00

So here I am, sitting in the cafeteria of the Queen of Oak Bay on my way to Vancouver. I left home in a cab this morning, the car having lost a brake cylinder yesterday—Oh Murphy loves me yes he does! So the journey began at 9:30 am PST. I took the 10:05 am ferry (Quinsam). This is the 12:50 ferry to Horseshoe Bay. I’m off to get my bus ticket in a few minutes that should take me all the way to the Airport (YVR)

Leaving was difficult. The boys were all sad that I was going and I felt badly about having to leave in the taxi and not be able to set our own time and pace. It has been a difficult decision to go to Moscow and I still feel somewhat conflicted about it. I’m not sure if either the boys or I am ready to be away from each other for this long. I’m sure the exhaustion of the last week isn’t helping me cope as well as I might either. The trip is truly under way. And I know that the anxiousness I feel now will slowly ebb into a growing excitement.

I am practicing my Cyrillic in an effort to be able to make sense of signs and such. I’ll catch up on some sleep on the bus. I may try and make a podcast of the journey. Either way, see you later.

Alien Abduction--No Really

2006-07-24T00:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, i was going to claim to have been abducted by aliens, but it was really just way too much work and needing to spend more time with my children. I cut my childcare days down because we were seeing symptoms of real stress in the kids and so, with more mommy time, something had to give and unfortunately it seems to have been this space.

I have missed you all, and hope to be able to come back with shorter posts once or twice a week. We'll see. I can but try.

Next up...countdown to Moscow....Day 8

An Appreciative Approach to Community

2006-03-23T21:17:00.000-08:00

Well, you all know how i (and many of you) dream about intentional community. Well, i've been having these amazing conversations lately that have spawned some questions around a different approach.

Talking with seasoned vets of communes and other intentional communities has highlighted just how difficult it is to artificially construct a viable community. How leadership is usually a thorny issue--a bit of a catch-22 really--you need a strong and visionary leader to actually make one of these things happen, and then after a few years, everybody is sick of the "controlling, overbearing, sob"... And then there's money...some have it, some don't; some earn it, some don't. How do you make it all equitable and what kind of internal economy will help the community flourish? And what about the interface with the external economy? Then there's the question of numbers--how many folks do you need to make a vibrant and viable community? And what about the mix of skills and professions (to say nothing of personalities or ages)? And this is just scratching the surface.

So, i have started wondering, what might emerge if i began to apply an appreciative approach to the issue of intentional community? What if i looked at the community i already live in as one which is largely functional, viable, and sustainable? What would change if i tried believing that the distance between what we have and what we need to create is very small? What would be different if i began to ask, "What is working well here and how can we grow more of it?" instead of, "What is wrong here and how can we escape it?" I am really interested to see what small steps and actions suggest themselves to me as i sit with this new set of wonderings.
It is absolutely entrancing to my writer's mind to look at my community through this new lens. What if i imagine that my community is an intentional community that has been thriving for 100 years? How would i approach my neighbours differently? What would i think was possible? How would my assumptions about how change happens be different? What if i began acting as if Gabriola is an intentional community of 5,000 souls that is threatened by external and internal changes and pressures? What invitations could i issue from this new perspective?

It is just flipping the paradigm around. I would be bringing intention to my community rather than attempting to attract a community to my intention.

PS: Further to my post of March 02, here is a link to a letter from Starhawk reflecting on her work of the past three years and in remembrance of Rachel Corrie, the peace activist who was crushed to death by a bulldozer in Gaza. You can access her other writings about her work in New Orleans and at the G8 summit via this site also.

For your listening pleasure

2006-03-22T20:30:00.000-08:00

I have been wanting to post about the wonderful music coming out of CHLY Community Radio for a while now (available on the web). One of my favourite shows, Third Stone from the Sun (Wednesdays from 3:00 pm to 6:00pm) is hosted by friend and fellow Gabriolan Fergus Foley. George and I saw Fergus tonight on our way to and from Nanaimo and he very kindly sent a set out to us. Thanks, Fergus!

This is a pic of Fergus relaxing at his Gabriola digs. Several people are encouraging Fergus to start a wee blog, so perhaps we will be hearing more from him in the future. At the moment, you can find his top 10 list from 2005 here.

Some of the other shows i have been checking out...Eclectic Celtic--just what it sounds like and American Crossroads--live bluegrass--oh yes, and Indiecontextual--it's an absolute hoot if you are, were, or love a GRRL and serious RnR. You can check out the whole line up here.

Time for a change?

2006-03-02T23:38:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it's spring or the alignment of the planets, but i'm all revved up again about making big transformations and having another go at changing my life and maybe helping to change the world. My friend Dave Pollard has been blogging about the same sort of thing over at How to Save the World. Interesting that he has been on my mind a lot the last few days--must be that group soul thing...

In his post, Taking Things into our own Hands, he suggests a cell-based, distributed system to just get things done locally that can have global implications. He asks for suggestions for a code of principles and silly as it may seem, my kids have been getting into Dinotopia recently and the Dinotopian code isn't a bad start. Needs some tweaking, but:

1. Survival of all or none. (recognizes our interconnection)
2. One raindrop raises the sea. (recognizes our uniqueness and its value to the community)
3. Weapons are enemies even to their owners. (nuff said)

4. Give more, take less.
5. Others first, self last.
6. Observe, listen, and learn.
7. Do one thing at a time. (Ah, the temptation of sanity)

8. Sing every day.
9. Exercise imagination.
10. Eat to live, don't live to eat.
11. Don't p...remaining text missing. ( The movie says: Find the light.)

So there you go Dave! If five-year-olds find it meaningful, it must have something going for it. I'll keep thinking about a name, although i almost wish it could be nameless. Somehow, everytime we name something, we close a bit of space and all of a sudden there's us and them.

And in his post for today, he points out the insanity of modern life--all work and no (meaningful) play. I was talking to a sister parent on Monday about how we seem to be caught in a new feudal system, continuing to work for subsistence rather than sustenance. Wondering how we can shift out of it. Continuing to have these conversations is part of it. Continuing to name it, raise our awareness, and support each other is another. And maybe it's past time i started demonstrating it.

A couple of women who are doing amazing work demonstrating the power of the people to create their own solutions and just doin' it are Starhawk, who is supporting incredible bioremediation work in New Orleans, and Cheryl Honey, founder of the Family Support Network.

The importance of practice

2006-03-02T21:33:00.000-08:00

I have written a lot about why we find it difficult to achieve peace, about the need to reinforce good intentions and desires with practical skill-building and daily practice. Here is a story passed along by Jack Ricchiuto from jack/zen:

For decades after his enlightenment, the Buddha found it necessary to meditate 3 times a day and take 3 months a year off to meditate. Seriously. So what does that say about the importance of practice?

Thanks for the reminder.

How to change the world with blogging

2006-02-11T16:15:00.000-08:00

NV06
Originally uploaded by the view from in here.

Registering for Moose Camp.

I was at the Northern Voice blogging conference last Friday and Saturday. Lots of juicy stuff going on, and one of the highlights that i figured you guys would enjoy the most was a presentation by Rob Cottingham on how your blog can change the world.

NVRob
Originally uploaded by the view from in here.

Here's a blurry picture of Rob holding up a cell phone on which Marnie Webb was able to contribute her portion of the presentation. Bloggers are nothing if not resourceful!

Here's my notes on his presentation...

Rob suggested that there are five kinds of change we can bring about, specifically the kinds of changes where people can act on something:

building community
connecting resources and needs
advocacy
providing information
supporting or enabling others

He warned that bloggers for change can encounter the echo chamber effect where the communication becomes circular, with little dialogue, and ultimately few people are persuaded to change. He suggests that we need to know what the goal is and to remember that the change we seek is in the physical world, not just the digital.

We need to ask, what do people need and how do we reach them? Our thinking needs to be strategic, but perform that fine balancing act between personal authenticity and strategy to achieve goals. He offers sustainablog--as a good example of this balance.

Rob suggests that ways to avoid the echo chamber and to widen your sphere of influence is to invite others to speak through your blog either as a guest post or guest editor. And to join an existing effort, by adding a web badge for instance (for example human rights watch produces an rss feed), by providing information on other blogs and websites related to your goals, by using common tags for your topic, and by using flickr tags. All of these will help you to draw a wider audience. Also consider contributing reasoned comments on the blogs of those who oppose you. Where better to find new readers?

Some other great examples of blogs that are changing the world:

interplast-blog --creates an ongoing connection. They use a flickr feed. They connect the community and tell a story
march of dimes --dealing with critical childhood illness. Was originally set up for parents (by Nancy White), but became a powerful fundraising tool. It is used in addition to traditional websites.
jetsgo--When it failed suddenly and thousands were left jobless, one person set up a simple blog and invited people to share their stories -- it became a job connection site.

The invitation to a broad scope and letting go of control brings in wider audience and increases what you can cover.

Some sites offered by audience members as examples of social change/networking blogging:
bc3.ca/wiki - an amazing site about planning, developing and operating wireless broadband networks in northern BC communities.
myknet.org; youth in the north linking to each other
werenotafraid.com - after the london bombing
iamfuckingterrified.com - reaction site to werenotafraid.com

There was also a suggestion for the creation of a drupal module to help with decision making for online groups.

There was a reflection that this medium of communication is transformative for an organization and to remember that there is a bifurcation between people who are comfortable with digital world vs those that are not.

Awesome contribution, Rob. Well done, espeicially in light of losing so many panel members at the last minute.

NVlunch
Originally uploaded by the view from in here.

Lunch at Templeton, 1087 Granville St., Vancouver. Great organic burgers and other cool eats for under $12! Groovy!

Here's to a great Film Festival!

2006-01-30T14:17:00.000-08:00

Congratulations and thank-you to Nick Halpin of Eyes Wide Open Photography and Paul and Sapora of Moonfire Studio for all their work in pulling together an inspiring and thought-provoking film festival for Gabriola this weekend.

I was lucky enough to be able to catch two films: A New World is Possible, and The Indigo Evolution. A New World is Possible documents the 2002 World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where 51,000 people from 113 countries gathered in response to the elite World Economic Forum in New York. The Gabriola film festival coincided with this year's Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela, where more than 100,000 now gather to share in collective action.

I had an interesting experience as i watched it and reflected on some of the converging currents of the previous week. On OSlist, Harrison and others were debating the merits of having regional OSonOS events (the annual international learning gathering of OS practitioners) and while all agreed that having an international event was important, and should be preserved to continue growing the community, the value of having more accessible regional events that could feed into or share learnings from the Int'l OSonOs was made clearer. Often in the past, as i have watched footage of events like the Social Forum, i have felt a need to be there, to be present and a part of it--but this time i had a different experience. As i looked around the room and saw neighbours and friends and folks i had opened space with around our community commons project, i felt already connected--already a well-woven strand in the web. The work we are doing on Gabriola is directly connected to the work of the Social Forum and the movements it represents. It was an amazing feeling of solidarity.

And the Indigo Evolution...well, having three indigo's at home, i thought i had better go have a look see. Well, to paraphrase Robert Anton Wilson, it's not that i believe in all of this, it's that i am simply willing to believe in it. (if you decide to check out the link, be warned this guy is a satirist, a trickster, a disrupter, and a discordian and totally unrepentant--not to mention an amazing Joyce scholar)

Reminder...Don't miss the Moose!

2006-01-20T02:58:00.000-08:00

Just a reminder that the Northern Voice Blogging Conference is coming up fast! Check out the offerings.

See you there!

A few links

2006-01-20T02:40:00.000-08:00

A bit of linkage for you:

A beautiful and thoughtful blog by colleague Filiz Telek.

The new Open Space World newsblog--all the latest and some of the greatest from the Open Space community of practice.

A fun reminder about our interconnection -- turn on your speakers for the One World Wombat!

The Shire: An ecological learning community near Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Supporting leadership and hosting conversations that matter.

The Berkana Institute: (from their homepage) ...is a growing community of life-affirming leaders around the world. We define a leader as anyone who wants to help, anyone who is willing to step forward to help create change in their world. We are everyday people who hold visions of new possibility for our local communities, nations, and our shared global village. If this describes you, we hope you will join us.

Long dark night of the soul -- for facilitators

2006-01-13T21:10:00.000-08:00

Facilitated an Open Space yesterday for a small group (11) that was hosted in a beautiful private home. We had enough space, three! fires, awesome food, and a singing dog named Darby.

What i noticed in this small group and relatively small space, was that it is a lot harder to be invisible. I worked extra hard not to be too large a presence in the opening, and then was very careful to be as unseen and inobtrusive as possible, while still being present. While i was busy not-doing (more than usual), i had lots of time to observe the inner activity.

Now, facilitation is not usually seen as a spiritual practice, but i think i can now heartily recommend it to any serious student of any spiritual path. If you are looking to come face to face with all your stuff, to engage with your own long dark night of the soul--facilitation is good hunting ground.

During the hours while everyone else was deep in juicy conversation and dialogue, i was sitting/standing/pacing around listening to my brain do a number on my ego by inventing all sorts of stories about what was happening with those gathered and the day. Thank Spirit that i know that it's not about me and that i have faith in the folks gathered to do the work.

I have got to the point now, where this aspect of holding space is as close to fun as it's ever going to get. It's kind of like when you know you are dreaming--you can go along for the ride if you like and try to learn something. I know what my head is telling me is utter fabrication--but, of course, faith is not real unless it has something to test it/challenge it--yes? So the voices are necessary to strenghten the faith. At least that's my story at this point.

So there i am, for hours and hours, watching this incredible dance inside myself--aware of the space i am holding, aware of the strength of my faith in those gathered, aware of my insecurities and frailities--present with it all. Just sitting with it all. How glorious. What another gift.

What is it about facilitating that in order to truly serve those we host, we must lose faith in ourselves and everything else except those who are on the voyage with us?

Eye of the Storm

2006-01-03T21:33:00.000-08:00

51677main_isabel_new_4
Originally uploaded by the view from in here.

Once in a while you get a gift. In this case it was at the end of a lot of hard work, risk, and grief, but it was still a gift. I'm not sure when the seed of this particular insight was planted, but i know it began to uncurl into the light of awareness during the Art of Hosting training i attended on Bowen Island in November.

I believe that i get more out of a training or conference if i go with a personal quest--so this time out i went to challenge myself at a very deep level. I asked myself, if I believe that facilitation is what i am called to do, if it is what i am focusing my career and a lot of life energy on right now, can i be (let me say that again, can i BE, as in embody) the very best host possible--for me. In other words, i wanted to walk straight into the heart of what i know are my greatest fears and weaknesses and see if i could overcome them or if they would stop me from being the best i believe i can be. Sound like fun?

Anyway...one of the learnings that i harvested from those three days of challenge was that the veil of fear is very thin. It looks fearsome and feels deadly, but if i pushed through it, i found that it was almost insubstantial. Once moving over the first hurdle, a path through emerged--even if twisted and shrouded in mystery and unknowing.

After the training, i went directly into a three-day facilitation for a community project on Gabriola Island, where i live. I will write more about this in the days to come, but the link to this idea came on the third morning. It was that moment when a facilitator really earns their keep--the groan zone as some call it--you can feel it when all the wonderful divergence stops and the whole enterprise has to begin to converge in to new emerging ideas and outcomes...the hard work, when everyone feels overwhelmed, loses faith and just plain gets ornery.

To me, it sometimes feels like a swirling storm of chaos and energy that i am both holding and remaining apart from. (At least that's the plan...) This event was a particularly strong example of it and it was remarkable to watch it unfold and see how my holding of the space was like the eye of the storm--an anchor of calm and stillness at the centre of the swirling work of the group. It is a challenging place to stand, but there is also an ease that comes and the same sense of emerging through a very thin barrier to what lies beyond when you get it just right.

I have talked before about the importance of stillness at the centre--that i believe it is the fifth practice of open space facilitation--and this seems to be further learning.

And finally, a personal challenge--aren't they always the toughest? When it's not about a client or a group, but just about you and something or someone you care about. So there i was...face to face with an intractable old pattern of defensiveness--not wanting to go there again--not wanting the same old, same old, but still feeling in the middle of the raging storm of emotion and history--you know that one, right? And there it was...the eye of the storm...Pema Chodron's words, and Goenka's teachings, the pains of birthing, and so many other influences all converged...i stood back, watched the storm swirl, saw the eye--through the centre of the pain. That was where the path was laid...the shortest and surest route out of the suffering was right through the middle of it all. Through the eye of the storm.

What it taught me, was that the eye of the storm, the centre of suffering and pain, is the place where our courage can be sufficient to the task. It is the thinnest place, the place where all the rest anchors and spins from. Act at the centre and you move beyond--all the dangerous energy of the storm uncoils behind you as you slip through into an uncharted open space. Watch for it and let me know what you find.

Happy New Year

2006-01-02T23:31:00.000-08:00

New Year's
Originally uploaded by the view from in here.

Happy New Year everyone! And here's to more regular appearances--as promised.

The photo was taken on New Year's Eve outside the Gabriola Community Centre. We were just loading the kids into the van when i looked up and saw this and knew it was the photo i'd been waiting for. The branches of this lovely old twin maple seemed to curve up and embrace the light. What a beautiful image for the new year.

Well, lots of plans and new projects. Three more Open Space projects on the go, a new Open Space e-book project, website revamps, blog updates, a new hair colour, even a new business and partnership in the works.

Up next on the menu for tomorrow...The eye of the storm. Followed by my very late reports from the field on a one-day strategic planning OS with convergence and priority setting and a three-day OS for Gabriola Commons to produce a land use proposal with map! Lots of learning and thinking to share over the next month.

See you tomorrow,

Cheers,

Wendy

Has it really been that long?!

2005-12-01T09:50:00.000-08:00

Gosh, i had no idea it had been this long since i posted. I have been sunk in work and family. And, unusually for me, i am struggling with the capacity to match words to my thoughts. I have needed to give myself permission to let go of some of my obligations (even the pleasant ones like this blog!) so that i can get more rest and engage in a bit more self-care. I can't say for sure when i will be back to posting more often, but it will likely be the New Year. Hope you will hang in there with me...

It is not necessary to choose a life of dramatic sacrifice: it is necesary that we discover what we love that is beyond our own concerns, and love it actively. To work in the world lovingly means that we are defining what we will be for, rather than reacting to what we are against.
~Christina Baldwin

The facilitator as Artist

2005-11-19T12:26:00.000-08:00

There has been a long thread running on the OSList lately about whether those who Open Space call ourselves facilitators or what. Many fessed up and declared that we feel uncomfortable with the term, but that we often continue to use it, because clients/sponsors understand it.

“If the group is an art form of the future, then convening groups is an artistry we must cultivate to fully harvest the promise of the future.”
Jacob Needleman, Centered on the Edge

This quote arrived in my Art of Hosting package and on the heels of re-reading, for the first time in ages, Eric Maisel's, Fearless Creating. Which had got me thinking about myself as an artist again. So much of his description of the artistic process reflects the practices of open space.

So i am offering this up to you all for consideration. The facilitator as Artist. Artist in the creative sense and Artist in the alchemical sense as well--taking the common stuff of the Now, that which Is, and with Artful intent mixing it in the crucible of chaos. Then dancing on the edge of the feather of uncertainty, with only the lodestone of faith in those present as a guide, and gently holding the energetic flame beneath until something new emerges.

During a recent three-day OS, i had the opportunity to observe myself in this light and wonder about the metaphor. Here are the results of this initial wondering: artistic medium: the quantum stuff of chaos, the emergent field; artist's tools: OST and other dialogic methods, personal preparation/spiritual practice, creativity and design, energy awareness/work; the work of art: the liberation of the human spirit. (Which i believe, like all works of Art, is not of the Artist, but comes through the Artist. The Artist as conduit for the expression of Spirit in the material world.)

So i'm going to play with being a facilitator-Artist for a while and wait for the next bold thing to emerge--i can already feel the field of potentiality swirling...[grin]

Language not supporting our answers

2005-11-15T09:57:00.000-08:00

Raffi asked to hear a bit more about our language not supporting the answers to our questions. The whole initial impetus for this blog came from my wondering about this very thing. Word gravity...that our words, because of their collective and individual history, can impede our capacity to understand each other. And at this particular time, when communication and dialogue are so important, this quality and/or effect seems to me to become even more essential to grasp and grapple with.

In Halifax at OSonOS, i had a wonderful butterfly conversation with Henri Lipmanowicz (Board Chair, Plexus Institute) in which he said that our language is failing us. That we have no language to talk about what we do (as OS facilitator-artists or change agents). And that our current language is structured on an action/reaction worldview--leaving no room for mystery or open space in which to allow the emergence of new forms.

At the Art of Hosting, one of our threads of inquiry was about wicked questions--what they are, how to ask them, how to find them. One of the insights generated from those conversations, was that our language lets us down by not supporting the answers to those questions we most need to explore. Again, i think it is connected to what Henri observed about the action/reaction base--the often dualistic stance we are forced to maintain by the inner structure of English. It actually influences our thought processes. And our culture either reinforces or is reinforced by this. In English-speaking culture, we have an unconscious expectation of instant response--usually opinion. This sets up a dynamic in which we are constantly under the iron weight of expection of response (and intelligent at that) with no space for reflection on or honouring of what we have just heard. This dynamic also seems to set up the competitive, evaluative, externalizing, and us/them engagement style most of us end up enmeshed in. None of this is helpful in developing skills for dialogue.

There are examples of our language strain all around us. Quantum physics has encountered it and ends up sounding just like metaphysics. We often have to turn to poetry and poetic devices to attempt explanations of our intuitions of emergent concepts/forms/processes. We feel the need to create elaborate explanations of even the most simple statement (this whole blog post, for example) and, i don't know about you, but i always feel like i've failed to communicate the thought-form in my mind. Read a little Buckminster Fuller if you want another example of someone actively (and often impenetrably) grappling with this.

You may have noticed that i often use what appear to be passive constructions on this blog. It seems to me, it may be, i posit that, i wonder if, i suggest...and so on. This is intentional usage to attempt to reflect and grow an appreciation of the concepts of relativity. There are a lot of venues in which this is taken for uncertainty, lack of confidence, lack of forceful presentation--as opposed to my intention of attempting to reflect more accurately the nature of time, space, experience and knowledge.

Want to experience what i'm talking about? Try a couple of these wicked questions on for a moment and see what happens. Maybe try answering them and then reading them back to yourself using a different understanding of the words you have used (use a dictionary if you need inspiration). Just see what happens. Or better yet!!! Host a conversation with a couple of good friends or complete strangers using these questions (strive for understanding, rather than agreement):

What is the antidote to fear?
What is sacred?
What is worth living for?
How can we become our best selves?

I am certain (and that's unusual for me), that at some point in this exercise, you will find yourself struggling to find words to express your thought-sense. And if we are lucky, we will witness the reluctant birth of a new poet.

Yes, I'm still alive

2005-11-08T23:18:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

Yes, I'm still out here. I've been working way too much (60 hours week before, 87 hours last week). I have sooooo much to write about i hardly know where to start. Which, of course, is a big part of the problem.

I was at the Art of Hosting on Bowen Island last week and have so much to unpack still. But will drop a few choice gleanings here and write more later...

Follow your thread.

Never work alone.

A wicked question is one that is more important to ask than to answer.

Our language doesn't support the answers to our questions. (This came up at Halifax OSonOS, too).

Believe in the vast possibility that exists beyond fear. The veil of fear is very thin. If we can push beyond that first boundary, there is often a path, mysterious and overgrown, but if we walk with care it can be navigated.

Glad i asked

2005-10-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, as i was enjoying the increasingly rare opportunity to be just Mommy all day, something interesting and wonderful happened. Beric came up to me as i was sitting in the chair in the living room and he put both of his hands around my arm and gave a squeeze and at the same time he made a very intense face. Maybe because i had been holding space the day before and was still in that holding/noticing mode, i thought to stop him and ask what he was thinking as he did that. He climbed up and curled up into my lap and looked into my face very thoughtfully. Then said, "I was thinking of all the love I share with you."

Mmmmmmm. Total body hum....

After the moment ended and he went back to rolling around with his brother, i found myself reflecting a bit as i watched them wrestling like little kittens. Children are so connected to their hearts and their bodies. They can still experience directly the heart as a generous organ. When a child tells you they love you, it just spills out of them--an overflow of the openness and joy of the present moment. And we hear it as the gift it is. Simple and direct.

Watching them wrestle i see the message of love too. The way they touch each other in play constantly communicates and reaffirms the bond of love they share. There is no separation; feeling, thought and action are in alignment. And i wonder, as their mother, how can i help to preserve this instinct for authenticity, as the dulling pressure of propriety encroaches?

And how do we do that for ourselves--reclaim that gift? --those of us who play with the idea that a different consciousness is possible and therefore a different way of being together. What a challenging thought experiment to try and discern which boundaries actually matter (good and wise structure) and which merely repress. To cast the mind forward into a potentiality where alignment is the norm--and to wonder what we might be like.

No answers here...just more shining questions...and a full and generous heart.

Love ya all
Mmmmmmmmm

Away for a couple of days

2005-10-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be offline again for a few days. See you early next week.

a little riff on contraction

2005-10-08T21:53:00.000-07:00

Contraction. From the Latin, con - trakere...to draw together.

I have been expending a lot of energy for some time now--okay years--in working to deepen my understanding of defendedness or the contraction of the heart. Why does it happen? 'Cause it seems to happen all the time...even when we are conscious and have strong intent...fear, the great contractor, is ever-present it seems. Through our conscious practice, we can intercede and remain open, we can choose to act, speak, risk, connect. But isn't it interesting that a word that means something as simple as to draw together, has such painful associations.

Here's just a few...
Of course, the one that is still pretty present in my mind...the contractions of labour...lots of pain--got to keep thinking about opening--and on the other side a new life is born into the world.

And then there's the contraction of the heart...that cold and painful feeling when the heart closes in on itself in the presence of fear. The feeling of smallness, of failure, of loss of self...when our courage doesn't match our intention. And if our courage is up to the test, there's the pain of stretching open the heart, of surrendering to the emergent moment. Drawing together is always a significant act of faith.

Ken Wilber describes the ego as the contraction of the Self. And i have experienced this so far, only when sitting with and exploring the nature of defendedness. Then i can feel the painful contraction, the drawing in, the shortening, the narrowing, of the expansive Self. The ego at these times feels like some little creature fluttering fearfully, heart pounding, subject to so many judgements, desires, and attachments.

Contraction--to draw together. Not so simple. And just that simple. When we talk about drawing together, when we form the intention to create intimacy, we will encounter contraction. And what can keep us moving forward, what can open the heart in the face of fear, is faith in the significance and the joy of what can be born on the other side of uncertainty.

If we want more intimacy, if we want more peace, if we want to truly know each other, then we have to practice jumping into space without a net--often. (Now you don't have to start out with a mountain cliff, mind you...the couch will do for a start...) (Certain readers of this blog will recognize this as a note to self...i have a habit of cliff jumping...problem with beginner's mind and all...)

poverty and regionalism in Canada

2005-10-05T22:53:00.000-07:00

From Charity Village this morning:

According to the most recent report released by Social Watch, a coalition of 400 non-governmental organizations from 50 countries, poverty is rising among children and new immigrants in Canada, and the middle class is finding it increasingly difficult to afford education and housing. The report on Canada examines why the country has failed to make serious progress in the fight against poverty and inequality. It also demonstrates how a commitment to "small government" feeds regionalism and inequality, and how economic growth alone cannot reduce poverty and inequality, or improve access to basics needs and services.

The report is available here: Social Watch Report on Canada 2005
And consider a visit to the Social Watch site itself...some very interesting information available there .

Open Space Sangha debuts

2005-10-04T23:30:00.000-07:00

Well, it's finally done--enough. I can't get the template the way i want it, but so be it...enough fiddling! It's time to announce the birth of Open Space Sangha, a new team blog that i am administering. Go have a peek and see what it's all about ... in the beginning...

the fifth practice?

2005-10-04T16:17:00.000-07:00

orb spider in web
Originally uploaded by the view from in here.

With our upcoming Open Space practice workshop taking up much of my reflective time, i have, of course, been dwelling on the practices even more than usual. And one of the things that seems to be emerging out of all this, is that perhaps there are actually five practices, not four. The four practices emerged out of a blend of the work and thinking of Angeles Arrien (Four-fold way), Ken Wilber (Brief History of Everything, etc..), Harrison Owen (Open Space Tech), Michael Herman and Chris Corrigan (Open Space Tech: A User's Non-Guide). The four-fold nature of the maps used in uncovering the practices don't explicitly name the fifth dimension, but it is present in all of them--the centre/perimeter.

As we explore the interconnections and watch carefully for the essential practices for growing the capacity to open space, we have noticed that the quality of the centre/perimeter is stillness. And that inner stillness can sure come in handy in many situations that arise when we work with others. The centre also can be the symbol for mystery and Spirit. Two other things it's good to remember and think about as we work in open space.

Here's an excerpt from an article in a series called Peaceful Practices that i wrote about five or six years ago. It addresses the first essential practice for peaceful living.

We begin by taking time to stop—by sitting quietly and beginning to observe the inner and outer dimensions of our lives. We take time to look at our busyness, the constant distractions around and within us. We can begin to observe the thoughts that flicker constantly through our minds and how we react and feel towards them. When we stop, we encourage our minds and our bodies to relax. We learn to be still and to slow down. When we begin from stillness, from the place of stopping, our actions become more effective—we do more things well, more peacefully.

Some practices i know of that support inner stillness are meditation, yoga, and prayer. Do you know of others?

And what do you think? What has your experience been? Is stillness at the centre the fifth practice?

oh how deep it's buried...

2005-10-03T23:17:00.000-07:00

I was reading Raffi's blog this evening and was surprised by my reaction to one of the photos. It shows a couple of soldiers at Lenin's tomb. And the caption asks, "Why the guards?" What surprised me was the shiver of fear that I felt as I looked at the image of the Russian soldiers. Particularly surprised, because as a teenager, during the cold war, i worked extensively as a volunteer writer, editor, moderator and coordinator with a program that promoted global awareness. I met many Russians. I wrote articles on disarmament and peace. I read and educated myself. And still the iconic cold-war image of the Russian soldier snuck its way in there.

Here at home, most of our national monuments have guards. They're part of the experience--i hate to say it, but honestly, they are part of the scenery. I don't even think about them. I'm certainly not afraid of them...so why when i think about seeing foreign military guarding a national monument, do i feel fear? And it was definitely iconic--the whole parade in Red Square kind of thing--not just fear of men with guns in general (which is a perfectly reasonable fear in my books). It's interesting how these triggers lie hidden, like land mines, in the unconscious. How many of these unrecognized fears assault us every day? How often are we held back--or is an unnecessary separation created--by old, unconscious patterns, icons, images, beliefs, fears--on a daily basis?

So much work to do...so little brain to spare...

a new blog to open our i's to

2005-09-30T13:05:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

My buddy Raffi in Moscow has just joined the ranks of the blog-and-post. His bilingual blog (English/Russian) Maaskva Nashimi glazami, Moscow in our i's, is trip into the heart of Moscow and the heart of Raffi. A couple of wee samples...

Might it be then, that "creating time and space" is first of all about being at home with yourself? Might it be that being at home with oneself is essentially all that we are called to do in life?

I met Larisa today walking out of the metro. She wanted to hit me up for 10 rubles. As a rule, I don't like to give spare, er, banknotes. And, if have a chance, I do offer to buy a person food. Larisa wanted a belyash, a fried meat pastry. The belyashi stand was too far away, so she settled for a ham and cheese stand at a Kroshka Kartoshka fast food stand. Kroshka Kartoshka's main menu item are baked potatoes and toppings. They are a must-try for anyone wanting to experience local fast food.
Larisa refers to Moscow as full of proizvol (despotism, tyranny, arbitrariness) because of her plight. She is on the street because she can't get an internal passport. She can't get an internal passport because the local militsia (police) have designs on her apartment. She can't prove it's her apartment because she doesn't have a passport. Her story is a common one.

For those who enjoy an insiders look into a different world, i think this will be one to watch.

ecology of thought

2005-09-29T23:14:00.000-07:00

I am just digging into William Isaacs, "Dialogue" and if possible i am growing even more excited about this path i am on. The potential for transformation inherent in bringing people together in meaningful dialogue about what matters is immense--and the reality of becoming an ever more skillful host of these conversations is compelling. With every page i turn my sense of delight and joy increases. Here is my favourite bit from today, talking about the underlying atmosphere that is critical to whether we can talk together well or not:

This atmosphere within our own consciousness is generated, very simply, by the ways we think and feel--the levels of internal freedom we allow oursleves, the inclusiveness we are able to sustain, the authenticity we are able to muster, the flexibility of perspective we are able to take, and the stability and spaciousness we have in our hearts.

Of course our atmosphere is not separate from others. Our feelings and habits of thinking are part of a complex web that links us all together; it is our "ecology of thought." This ecology is the living network of memory and awareness, one that is not limited to any single person but is in fact held collectively. It is the matrix that informs us the world is a certain way and that problems can be solved in only a certain way. Out of this ecology comes the collective atmosphere in which we all live and work.

I find the four practices reflected strongly here. The capacity for spaciousness in the heart and internal freedom--opening; inclusiveness and authenticity--invitation; flexibility of perspective--holding; stability of the heart--the still centre; and the fourth--grounding--is implied in the capacity these others create for learning new behaviours.

Gonna be a lot more of this one quoted here in the next few weeks, i'm thinking....

Couple of priceless family moments

2005-09-28T22:33:00.000-07:00

A mother's delight...
Yesterday morning i came round to conciousness about 6:30 and the house was still all quiet, so i laid there enjoying the last few moments of rest and listening for the first stirring of the little ones. And what beautiful sounds come to my ears?

Beric: I love you Ro Ro.
Rowan: I love you Ber Ber.
Beric: I love you Ro Ro.
Rowan: I love you Ber Ber.

This continues for about five minutes and i can hear them hugging each other. It doesn't get any better.

And over dishes...
George: Leadership is dead...Sorry, but it is...We've gone beyond it. What we need are examples.

You just never know what's gonna be next around here...Anybody want some Ogre-urt?

symbolic violence

2005-09-28T20:42:00.000-07:00

I was doing a little reading on narrative analysis and came across a new concept...symbolic violence. This term relates to behaviour whereby one party is asserting that what matters to the other party is inferior and therefore the other party is inferior. I guess this really comes into play when we are examining our stories and storytelling for their moral value. If we understand that a lot of learning occurs through storytelling and other dialogic means, then the respecting of the value of the inherent moral content, worldview, or cultural context of the story is essential to the respecting of the speaker and our capacity to learn or create meaning from what we hear. By devaluing the moral/cultural/symbolic content of the story, the perpetrator does violence to the speaker and the speaker's culture. Interesting.

This article is full of interesting goodies, like this...

How does the act of storytelling work dialogically, not so much to claim others’ recognition for the self’s authenticity, but rather to fashion that authenticity out of recognitions that the story provides for? How are dialogical relationships both the topic of the story, its content, and also the goal of telling the story, its process? Again, authenticity is interpersonal. Before Taylor’s emphasis on dialogue comes the classic statement of Mikhail Bakhtin (1929/1984), writing on Dostoevsky: "To portray the inner man…was possible only by portraying his communion with another. Only in communion, in the interactions of one person with another, can the ‘man in man’ be revealed, for others as well as for oneself" (p. 252). Stories, as dialogue, do not present a self formed before the story is told. Rather in stories the person "becomes for the first time that which [she or] he is–and we repeat, not only for others but for himself [or herself] as well" (p. 252). Narrative analysis can show how that process of becoming "for the first time" works, even as the analysis itself is another stage in this on-going process.

Nifty.

Opening Space, questions, trust, and the still centre

2005-09-27T22:06:00.000-07:00

Roots the centre
Originally uploaded by the view from in here.

Back from more Open Space. This time as part of a team of five Gulf Island OSers lead by Chris Corrigan and including Val Embree, Beverly Neff, and Nancy McPhee. Much appreciation, love and gratitude to all of them for an amazing weekend of co-learning, conversation, and fun.

The Open Space brought together citizen representatives from all of the Island's in the Islands Trust. They spent two days in dialogue about the future of the Islands Trust and ways they could support its preserve and protect mandate.

There were many learning conversations that took place across the weekend, and one that is still unfolding and capturing my attention is about questions. As always, when the initial learning is significant, i tend to keep pushing at the edges to uncover more mysteries beneath...having had a taste of the juiciness of the topic. I have started to pay attention to how i respond when asked a question, to what i am about when i ask a question, and to what others seem to be about when they ask questions.

There's way too much here to post all at once, so i am going to focus on one bit. I would like you to ask yourself, "How often do i actually ask the question i mean to ask?" I am guessing that you are like me in this and that often, probably more often than either of us realize, the real question and the true need that underlay it, gets sensored-out, watered-down--basically left on the cutting room floor. And what comes out is something only distantly related to what we really desire or need to know. Why? Well, i've done a bit of feeling around and i have come up with several possibilities--the main one being fear, probably fear of rejection/exile. That's always the big one. And i also come up against a politeness thing--but i think that is probably just the same fear in different clothes.

And i wonder how often questions cover our inability or unwillingness to trust each other with the contents of our hearts. How often do we ask a polite and innocuous question, because we need to engage or because engagement is expected, when there is something else, wild and inappropriate inside. What does that mean? And what would it be like if we could unlock the fearlessness to say what is true for us in this moment right now--always? And what would it mean to hold space for that--as the receiver of such communication?

I was googling around and at Space to Think, came across a link to Trevor's Blog with this quote: “Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.” Mister (Fred) Rogers

The key here, for me, is "the people we trust with that important talk". What a gift and a blessing it is to be trusted so. And what a responsibility.
This happens in facilitating. People trust you to hold the space strongly enough for them to do and say what they need to do and say. I think this is where the practice of the still centre meets the practice of holding. In order to be not only worthy of that trust, but also capable of fulfilling it, i must do my own work to grow an authentic sense of self (a healthy ego, if you will) that can remain centred and still under the pressures of witnessing other's truth. The centre is involved further here, as the process of holding and opening more space when the group hits rough waters is also one of faith. We must be able to maintain faith in ourselves and most importantly, we must maintain an unshakeable faith in the capacity of those who are with us to find their own way forward.

Another short absence-apologies

2005-09-22T22:24:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I am going to be away again for a few days. I will be back posting mid-next week.

See you then,
Wendy

Woohoo! The Moose is Loose!

2005-09-17T22:16:00.000-07:00

From buddy Brian Lamb at Abject Learning...Northern Voice 2 raises its head from the misty waters and waggles its antlers for another appearance in Feb 2006! And check this out...

We've tried to grow the event gently, without losing the informal community-oriented feel that we had last year. NV2006 won't be in a bigger venue, but we've added an extra day slated for Moose Camp:

What is Moose Camp? A self-organizing series of events modelled on Bar Camp and Foo Camp. Moose Camp is, to use the cliché, for the people, by the people. We’ve booked some rooms at the UBC downtown campus, you register for Friday and anyone participating in Moose Camp can post to our wiki to collaborate with other attendees. You can give a presentation, lead a discussion, or just attend.

Sounds like an Open Space conference variant to me! Go Moose!

Open Space Practice Workshop

2005-09-15T20:48:00.000-07:00

My buddy (and awesome facilitator) Chris Corrigan and I are offering a 3-day Open Space Practice Workshop on Vancouver Island from November 15-17.

If you are interested, you can find an invitation here.

This is a new 3-day design built on the original 2-day workshop pioneered by Chris and colleague Michael Herman. We will be focusing on the four practices that support the facilitation of Open Space (and many other dialogic group processes): opening, inviting, holding, and grounding. It should be an amazingly deep three days full of experiential and co-creative learning to engage the mind, heart and body.

We would love to see you there!

Nesting cat and gardening guilt

2005-09-14T22:14:00.000-07:00

nesting cat
Originally uploaded by the view from in here.

There are few things more enviable than a sun-warmed nesting cat. This is our cat, enjoying the sunshine outside my office window. You can see how much trouble i have gone to with my landscaping. I would like to say it' s permaculture...and I suppose it is, in a purist sense. My gardener works 365 days a year, i never pay her, don't have to tell her what to do, she consumes no fossil fuels, uses no man-made chemicals, and unfolds a thousand little surprises every day for my delight. She and i don't always see eye to eye--she thinks the middle of the driveway is an excellent place for growing grass, the raised beds are good for dandelions and thistles, and the kid's sandpile should be ringed with nettles. But then, as she is doing all the work, i don't feel i can push my opinions too strenuously or too often.

Ah yes, humour, the balm of the guilty conscience. One has neighbours you know...and family...with expectations...Okay, and one has a few expectations herself...

But, i have this ten year plan, you see. In ten years there will then be three teenage boys hanging about the place just waiting to show off to their mother how many rocks they can haul, flower beds they can dig, gravel they can spread...right? Right? Do not deprive me of my little illusions....

Ah well, I grew up in the middle of a mown field, that was occasionally an unmown field and i loved the wild tangle of it all. And while I sometimes wish for a planned and planted garden, i know i would miss the ferns and nettles, the self-heal and sorrel, the daisies and foxgloves, the vanilla leaf and salmonberries. A wild tangle outside can be its own kind of sanctuary--for the wild tangle inside.

Burns Bog is burning

2005-09-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

Burns Bog is on fire again. Story here. We had haze and could smell the fire in Nanaimo today. Maybe it's a statement about the general level of cynicism around these days, but the first person i mentioned it to said, "Do you think it was sabotage? Started by the people who want to develop it?"

No, i don't. Not this time anyway. But it seems to be another demonstration of how poor we are at sharing space with our fellow creatures. Our needs first and theirs...well...somewhere way down the list.

Accountability site

2005-09-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

Interesting site on accountability for government.
http://accountabilitycircle.org/

Fun blog

2005-09-09T21:41:00.000-07:00

Just discovered Susan Juby's blog. She's funny--the saga of her last year's vacation with sick dog rides the quirky edge where pathos meets hilarity (entries for July 30th). She's also an award-winning Young Adult's author. Check it out.

What I've learned from Celtic Folktales

2005-09-09T14:13:00.000-07:00

1. You know that yogic contortion involving a bathtub, a goat, and a spear that the oracle told you would be bad for your health, and at the time you thought to yourself, “Well, that should be easy to avoid.”? Don’t demonstrate it for the new girlfriend; she does not have your best interests at heart.

2. Avoid beautiful women singing in trees; avoid beautiful men singing anywhere.

3. Avoid beautiful women in general—go for the plain one with lots of cows, no jealous sisters, and a visible lack of male relatives of any kind.

4. If you come across a very large fish in clear pond in the dell and it speaks to you, contrary to what you might otherwise think, it will be good advice or at least reliable information.

5. If you are an unusually large porcine animal, don’t carry a grooming set between your ears. It will attract unwanted attention.

6. Jumping over branches of mistletoe can cause spontaneous pregnancy (even if it’s your first time).

7. Size does matter.

8. The guy with the biggest bull wins. See above.

9. Unusually intelligent or talking animals are probably somebody’s relative and do not make good pets. Their families (and a large number of well-armed friends) are looking for them. You may want to ask yourself if you really want to be around when they find them.

10. If your generations-old, bred-in-the-bone, orders-to-kill-on-sight enemies invite you over to their place for dinner, think twice. They have probably not had a sudden and unexpected change of heart or converted to Buddhism.

The bonus one: If you are a giant/king/supernatural being and you have a really beautiful daughter and some git with a claymore wants to marry her…just say, “YES!”. Throw a big party, embrace the guy, make him one of the family. It may not help, but it’s your best chance. Good luck.

Thanks to Jim Macdonald of Making Light for the inspiration and to Chris for the linkage.

short musing on invitation

2005-09-08T23:45:00.000-07:00

I had one of those aha moments this morning. i've been concentrating on the practice of opening for the last little while and this morning got a glimpse into the place where opening and inviting meet. There have been plenty of opportunities to practice opening into discomfort and pain, to notice contraction and closing, and to exercise opening and breathing into them. i finally got it this morning that i don't have to wait for these experiences to arrive. i can go out and invite them. (har har har) Yep. That invitation isn't just about following attention or stretching to embrace a new possibility. It's about the everyday stuff too--you know, the icky stuff. The things that make your guts churn--that normally you'd avoid like the plague. Yes, THAT CONVERSATION...you know the one...

While invitation is about the good and the true, we sometimes forget that the true often doesn't look so good--that it can be scary and ugly. I saw this morning that there is a beauty in inviting the ugly truth--a real power and joy in inviting the willingness to open into our suffering. A next depth of practice, if you will--that opening to suffering and pain as they arise is one thing and actively inviting the possibility of opening to them is another.

Chris Corrigan writes at Michael Herman's great wiki collection of OST resources, "Invitation...follows on the openess of vulnerable intention, intention that wants to reach into the world." I am glimpsing an interesting flow between opening and invitation--where the vulnerability and letting go of opening meets the probe?, the gentle current, of invitation.

Not a big aha, just a quiet expansion into what's next.

Very short absence

2005-08-31T22:55:00.000-07:00

I may be unable to post over the next couple of days. I am on the road and also have an elderly family member very ill.

The Open Space of the Body

2005-08-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

I have been blessed today with a wonderful experience. After working into the wee hours of the night and then again this morning, I finished up the funding proposal i have been working on just in time to go and have a visit with my friend K. Louise and to experience the amazing therapeutic massage she has been learning. In our conversation over tea beforehand, i was amazed to hear K. Louise speak of her practice in terms that sounded just like Open Space--but for the body! She spoke of opening and holding space in the body for me to rest in, to simply be with what is. And if i chose, i could experience what was there for me, what was held in the body--or simply rest and experience ease and bodily presence.

It was wonderful to hear her speak of her integrative practice--of truly embracing and caring for the body, mind, soul, and spirit--for the self and the social--of being present and fine with whatever arose, with whatever needed expression--in whatever way it needed to be expressed.

The experience was very deep. As i said to her, it was like going through a three day Open Space in an hour-and-a-half--in terms of the depth and openness achieved.

She finished by massaging my head which resulted in the most amazing state: total bodily relaxation, complete waking awareness, and dreaming--alpha and theta waves present at the same time--an experience i have only had before during meditation retreats--and this was definitely a result of what she was doing...really remarkable. (okay, okay...i was open to it and yah, have an awareness trained to recognize it...but still...so cool)

And afterwards I was left with a sensation of complete permeability of the body. It's hard to put words to it really...not a sense of larger at all, but like all the atoms of me had been made more discrete and the space between more visible/sensable--and air and breath and sunshine and birdsong were passing through this light and open structure that was almost not there, but still very present and grounded...a truly unique experience.

So now i know...spirit is open space, soul is open space, heart can expand to be open space, mind can expand and relax to be open space...and the BODY can be open space too. What a gift. Thank you K.

(This should really help me to achieve perfection in Open Space facilitation--the totally present and completely invisible facilitator...[big grin, tongue in cheek]...)

One of the other things that we talked about was the real dearth of cherishing practices in our culture. Our bodies end up isolated and exiled and we are left with few ways to express how we feel for each other. There is this exhausting, malnourishing dualistic tension between the casual and the sexual, the acquaintance and the lover. Where is the place for the sensual and the dear?

We are a bunch of primates--for whom grooming activities (physical attention and closeness, non-sexual caress)are essential bonding, stress reduction and health improving behaviours. The narrow band of acceptable exchange creates needless pain and leaves many people literally starved for adequate physical contact. We know that babies thrive with physical touch, massage, and skin-to-skin contact of any kind. Why do we think that repressing this innate need for communion later in life is okay and has no significant consequence? Actually, i think a lot of us fully recognize the consequence, but, like me, have such deep conditioning, that it takes significant will and determination to break through the fear/shame/judgement to reach out across the abyss that divides us--for a simple touch of human kindness.

So, engage in an act of resistance on behalf of the revolution--next time you are out with someone dear to you--hold hands, link arms, give each other a shoulder massage, brush each others hair, pick nits...whatever...just do it...

Okay, i'm getting silly now...g'night dear hearts

Dreaming in The Green Room

2005-08-27T21:40:00.000-07:00

Well, it's my 17th Wedding Anniversary today (and 20 years of being together) and George is working the afternoon shift on the boat. So...I am consoling myself by spending some time with the work of someone else I love dearly, my friend and colleague K. Louise Vincent. K. gifted me with a copy of her new chapbook of poetry very recently, The Green Room. I love that more and more often now poetry is being published in handmade chapbooks. The love, care and attention that has been put into the making of this book is palpable--it seeps into my fingers as i turn the pages--reflecting the love and care of the poet. As my friend Tim Landers writes into the copywrite statement of all of his chapbooks, "Do not reproduce without love."

With K's gracious permission, I will share a bit with you from the poem, A Fine Line:

The future is dark, which is on the whole,
the best thing a future can be, I think.
~ Virginia Woolf
As in inscrutable--
not terrible
As in transparent--
as in all the beauty
As in grief from left field--
knocking her flat
As in somewhere between
naked and protection
As in tree frog, as in child--
as in a fine line
...
This holding back from the sweet
receptive earth inside
is madness. This morning
she will be easy
with what is human. She will write
these words. She will remember
to dream. And dreaming is the one thing
we have that's really ours, vulnerably
and unalterably, ours.
...
We need dreamers. She will write this
simply and slowly. Our capacity to dream
is linked in marriage to the green world.
Dreaming is natural, is necessary.
Dreaming is non-strategic
space. Seeing the world as it is.
Dreaming is the deepest way
of thinking. Co-emergent wisdom.

Before language dreamed
endlessly in green.
Anything natural bends, trees
are complete circles.

~K.Louise Vincent

Ahhhh. Trees are complete circles. And our breath. And the space between us--all the beautiful open space.

Peace and love to you all, dear ones.

G'Night.

PS: If you are interested in K. Louise's work, please email me for contact info. The Green Room is published by Leaf Press, Lantzville, BC, Canada, 2005. www.leafpress.ca

non-profit tech and philanthropy

2005-08-25T20:34:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Keira McPhee sent this wonderful excerpt along from Marnie Webb at ext337...

It’s really my fault. I try to make the hook fundraising because I think that’ll pull people into the conversation. But utilizing social tools on the web—wikis and blogs and RSS—participating in web-wide conversations, all of that, it’s not about the fundraising potential.
Sure, I’m convinced that translates into engaged users and those engaged users are more likely to support your organization in a variety of ways. But if we think of it as only about fundraising then it’s only about marketing. And if it’s only about marketing, it’s a trick. It’s a slick new version of a postcard dropped in the mail to 10,000 of your closest friends.
It’s about turning over part of yourself. In two essays (1, 2) Peter Merholz argues that it’s not about the technology. He writes: “Web 2.0 is primarily interesting from a philosophical standpoint. It’s about relinquishing control, it’s about openness, it’s about trust and authenticity. APIs, Tags, Ajax, mashups, and all that are symptoms, outputs, results of this philosophical bent.”

And that’s true for nonprofits. It’s about opening up your organization so that you can achieve greater impact and create the change you seek by allowing your constituency to take pieces of your organization and make something out of them. It’s making the ideas portable and actionable. In the language of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, it’s about giving your constituency the power to figure out their own next actions and the tools to do them.

Saddhu. Well said. Sounds like Open Space to me. The only thing I would add is that the same is true for good fundraising... it isn't about the money either--or marketing. It's about creating an open and inviting organization. It's about connecting to people at the level of what matters to them...what they have a passion for. And then inviting them to step forward and take responsibility for that--and creating the opportunities (holding the space) for them to do so. To paraphrase the above, the money is a symptom, an output, a result, of this practice.

Potty talk

2005-08-24T22:15:00.000-07:00

Okay, happy little story for you today...

In my house, there is almost no potty privacy...something i am working at changing, but when you're four and two, it's just one more cool thing to share...

So...Beric (4) announces that he needs to go poo (warning...i will not be mincing words here) and that he needs my help...mostly he wants my company, so off we go down the hall to the potty. Gareth (2) announces that he is coming also, and that he is going to "sit down here" on the stool across from the potty. He has brought along two large rubber dinosaurs to entertain the bunch of us. The dinosaurs give each other big hugs and some kisses...and then at one point Beric says, "What did you say?" This phrase has obviously come to have a special and secret meaning between Beric and Gareth, because immediately Gareth grins one of THOSE grins and starts yelling.

Now, to really appreciate this next bit, you need to imagine Marlon Brando...with golden curls...at two...about 30" tall or so...doing an impression of himself screaming "STELLA". Only he is screaming "URSULA" (because we have been watching WAY too much George of the Jungle.) i mean really, just like Brando--top of lungs, red face, neck veins bulging--the whole bit...and when I remark that he sounds like Brando screaming STELLA, he immediately begins to oblige. "STELLA" "STELLA" Of course by now, all three of us are laughing our heads off.

You haven't forgotten that someone is on the potty have you?

At this point, Beric catches his breath, and says, "That was really funny. Even my poo was laughing."

Gotta love it...
Does this sort of thing happen at your house?

Getting esoteric on Open Space with Ken Wilber

2005-08-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

Getting through the final...and i gotta say pretty dense pages...of Ken Wilber's One Taste...and this passage caught my brain as it seems to shed some light on the intuition i had in a previous post. Here's the pertinent part from my post:

Chaos draws the attention of the soul (rather than merely mind). Mattering is the quality of attention that drives the self-organising principle. So what is 'mattering'? The recognition/ mirroring of the soul's purpose?/passion? in another being/object/idea... from which connection, the chain of action/arising unfolds...thought, action, and so on...

And here is the passage from Wilber (pg. 275):

...the Self or Witness is the seat of attention, the root of the separate-self sense, and the home of the last and sublest duality, namely, that between the Seer and the seen. It is both the highest Self, and the final barrier, to nondual One Taste.

Nonetheless, the power of Witnessing is the power of liberation from all lower domains, and the Witness itself is present, even if latently, at all previous stages. Each developmental stage transcends and includes" its predecessor, and the "transcend" aspect, in every case, is the power of the higher to be aware of the lower (the soul is aware of the mind, the mind is aware of the body, the body is aware of matter). And in each case, the "is aware of" is simply the power of the Witness shining through at that stage.

Although the Witness is present as the power of transcendental growth at every stage, it comes to its own fruition in the causal realm. As the ego orients consciousness to the gross, and the soul orients consciousness to the subtle, the Self orients consciousness to the causal.

Now, i need to be upfront here and admit that this is the first of Wilber's books that i have read, so my grasp of his jargon is still unripe, and my capacity to translate from his jargon to mine, is even greener, so here, for those of you who enjoy the tartness of early produce...is my first go at it...

I will suggest that chaos is Spirit which dwells in what Wilber would term the nondual. So to translate the first line of my earlier post...Spirit (or the nondual; chaos) invites the presence of the Witness (the seat of attention). So, how does the presence of the Witness drive the self-organizing principle? The Witness roots in the causal, which is transpersonal and transformative by nature. So, perhaps, the presence of the Witness sets up a powerful harmonic that consists of the transpersonal and transformative vibration of the causal and the unique vibration of the separate-self sense. The causal vibration allows for the organization to occur as it synchronizes between the individuals present in the Open Space. The emergence and the transformative product we often see in Open Space are, if i may suggest, the visible evidence of the harmonic--a symphony created by the interweaving of the separate-self vibrations of the participants upon the underlying One Taste--the mystery and radiance of the nondual.

So, whaddya think? Am i totally in outer space here? Or can we build something on this?

Fearlessness and the Genuine heart of sadness

2005-08-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

From Chögyam Trungpa , Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior:

The genuine heart of sadness comes from feeling that your non-existent heart is full. You would like to spill your heart's blood, give your heart to others. For the warrior, this experience of sad and tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness. Conventionally, being fearless means that you are not afraid or that, if someone hits you, you will hit him back. However, we are not talking about that street-fighter level of fearlessness. Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.

Before i went to OSonOS in Halifax and even more so since, this is a quality i have been working on in myself. This is one of the qualities that i hope to develop, share and explore with those interested in intentional community.

What i have been working on links directly to Open Space practice. How to be Open Space rather than do Open Space. How to open more...and then more...and then more...How to be ever more present in the moment, more able to authentically issue and accept invitation...How to sit and hold this raw and tender heart without closing, without giving in to fear of judgement or blame, without attachment to any outcomes or reactions...How to be more absolutely direct in relating to the world, with actions springing from deep connection of intuition, heart, mind and body.

The third morning in Halifax was really remarkable. Talk about being prepared to be surprised! Ever since my dear colleague, K. Louise Vincent, exposed me to an exercise in sustaining the gaze (where you sit knee to knee with someone and maintain eye contact while being directed to think about that person in various ways) where we were encouraged to think about that person's pain, strength, beauty...and ultimately that this might be the last time we ever see each other...i am always so aware of this...especially in gatherings where people have travelled a long way. There is such a presence of the sad and tender heart for me in these situations. So in the closing circle, i took the time to hold each person in my heart for a while...and felt so deeply appreciation, gratitude and joy in their presence and their unique contribution. A sensation of love for each person arose. And the sense of separation dissolved.

The session that morning had been opened with a message from the Hopi elders and the line: "We are the ones we have been waiting for", became the theme for the day. Another passage from that message came forward with great meaning for me: "See who is there with you and celebrate....The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves."

So let's begin to gather ourselves...to see who is with us here...to celebrate...with raw and tender hearts...stretched on a gossamer web resonant with uncertainty...with a sweet willingness to be blown by the breeze of Spirit to an unimaginable new land, fearless.

A Provocative Proposition

2005-08-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

As promised, here is the post about intentional community...This post was originally written on June 30th.

I have been busy dreaming again. And what I have dreamed, i now want to share with you. i have been dreaming of a village. a village of artists and thinkers, of growers and teachers, of shapers and spinners. i have been dreaming of a village of beautiful, ecological, sustainable, self-sufficient design. a village where there is a core of members who work with and around each other, as well as a flow of visitors who nourish and are nourished by those around them. i have been dreaming of common open spaces surrounded by private spheres. i have been dreaming of having space for children to grow and flourish in the care and love of a community. this place would be a living experiment in culture-creation, in modelling a possible future, in co-learning, co-living, collaboration and joy. i have been dreaming that this place could be here now.

i know there are many others out there who want to bring their lives into congruence with their values and vision. i know a lot of us are trying to build this with our networks, our communities of practice, our business partners, our neighbours. i have recently read that radical change often works more effectively than incremental change. This is an invitation to share in this dream. I often ask myself, how can i write and think about all this and continue to live in a conflicted and non-congruent way? If it was just me, I think I would jump ship and make it happen tomorrow. Contemplating dragging my probably reluctant family along is deeply frightening. But i am starting to talk about it and ask what it would take to get to maybe. (Thanks Chris for that phrase.)

So here is a first provocative proposition. There is a 38-acre piece of land on Gabriola (it's been clear cut...so reclamation would be needed) that can be sub-divided into 7 parcels (Cost of land would be about $60,000 per parcel) (Take a look at www.pacificdomes.com for amazing potential living spaces.) Anybody out there interested in talking about jumping ship...putting our brain/heart/soul/spirit power where our mouths and keyboards are and trying to create an integral, model locus of radical thought, practice, and culture?

Here's a pic of the land:

The land is high up on the plateau of Gabriola. Would have been great if it had a view. Dave Pollard has suggested we could see about buying an additional piece on the edge to access a view. To the right on the picture. the land abuts a parcel of about 800 acres that is in the process of becoming rezoned as a wilderness recreation area.

My thinking has developed a bit since I first wrote this...but that can be for another day...

Absences and non-safety

2005-08-16T23:14:00.000-07:00

Many apologies. I can't believe that I have been away for so long...believe me it only feels like days...

I will chalk it up to inexperience. The next time I start to feel overwhelmed and blocked... the next time I start saving all my posts as drafts...I will know it's time for a short break and will let you all know. Promise.

I will also try to master the art of the short post. Way harder than it sounds. Tips anyone?

What have I been up to? Well, for the last three weeks I have been travelling. Some business, some personal. Went to Ontario with the whole family to visit my husband's family. His mom is quite ill with cancer and it was her 65th Birthday and retirement...so we really needed to be there.

It was an interesting experience to revisit all of the major landmarks of my history--with my children...The Royal Ontario Museum was a hit (my favourite place since I was 3...and my brother-in-law works there now--way cool.)

Then my brother contacted the folks who live in the house I grew up in and we visited and had a tour and then had a walk "over the back" into the valley behind...the ground of my being...

View to the south from the deck of my old house in Newmarket.

My brother and niece walking in the valley.

Seeing my children walk and play where I had walked and played at their age...in a place that holds such precious and essential memories for me...was a profound experience. And to be back on that land was an experience like no other. I am most myself in wild places and that place most of all. There is no experience like walking the land that raised you...the land you know like your own body--no matter how the years have changed its face and contours.

Then we dropped by Rockwood Conservation Area where we were married (in the ruins of the old mill there--we were the first! And apparently started something...there was a rehersal there during our visit).

Then on to Sandy Lake in the Kawarthas, for a visit to my husband's family cottage (site of first kiss ;-) )The kid's and George stayed on there while I went back to the city and then off to Halifax for Open Space on Open Space. Which I had hoped to blog from...yah, right...I know better now. More inexperience. You can't blog and be capable of deep contribution at the same time. Presence is presence. I will unpack it here over the next couple of weeks.

Back to T.O. and a family reunion, then off to the Zoo. Then a fabulous lunch and conversation with Dave Pollard. Who knew he would be so open to exploring intentional community? So, we are getting serious about it...(That's one of those posts that got stuffed in the draft box. I shared it with Dave, and I will share it with you in the next couple of days...)More on all this will come later...

There were so many more places visited and connections made, but I'll save them for another day.

I'm back...in so many more words than necessary...exhausted but so full.

And what has been on my mind a lot? The concept of non-safety. This has come up in so many venues, both personal and professional, lately. For many years, I have believed that safety is an illusion that serves to distance us from each other; that prevents us from expressing our most remarkable selves; and that hampers the growth of true freedom. Risk-taking, in the service of the greatest good, and life in general, is becoming a vital survival skill--at least for those who would see peace and sustainability grow. In thinking about this (and it really helps to have a real life situation to experiment with--like intentional community)I have been contrasting unsafe with non-safe. The kind of risk-taking I am considering is not so much about the unsafe, or dangerous, as it is about the non-safe. The non-safe to me is about non-engagement with the concept of safety--rather than an absence of it. It is about recognizing that safety isn't the issue--intimacy, connection and communication are. It isn't even about risk-taking, really, it is about openness, vulnerability, non-attachment, invitation, commitment, courage and daring in the face of fear and uncertainty. So I'm thinking about living in the non-safe zone. In that place where creativity, intuition and inspiration meet emergence and Spirit. What are you thinking about?

And here's a smile from the littlest angel to thank you all for your patience and caring.

Conversation and place

2005-07-15T22:58:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night we had a long wait for the ferry home as we arrived back from a long trip just at refueling time. I took Rowan and Gareth (Beric was alseep) for a walk along the seawall and down the visiting vessel pier. They had a marvelous time running up and down the metal gangway making it reverberate to their footsteps. They were laughing their heads off--to the great amusement of all passersby. While i was watching them I found that my thoughts were drawn back to the week before when I had walked in the same place while having a conversation with a friend.

We had used some of the physical features of the place to illustrate some of the points of a complex idea. I found that as I approached those features again, the ideas we had connected to them, sprang strongly to mind. This put me in mind of the Aboriginal concepts in T.C.McLuhan's, The Way of the Earth. The Australian Aboriginies see the landscape as imbued with sacredness--teachings, songs, spirits, ancestors. Every rock, stream, tree, vine, gully represents a unique and essential concept. It was interesting to experience place as a mnemonic device--as a key to deep learning--and the learning will also always be attached to the person who shared it with me. The visiting vessel pier will now always 'hold' this deep concept for me. Person+concept+place...so fascinating....it adds a whole new dimension to the landscape.

I am appreciating the richness and depth that McLuhan's book is adding to my experience. It is a rare privilege to be invited into such different ways of experiencing the world.

Comments not fully functioning

2005-07-15T22:56:00.000-07:00

Apologies to all those who have left comments recently. The comments are being posted, but they are not showing up on the counter, so I didn't know they were there until a couple of you alerted me that you had left comments. They were there alright...but just not showing. I will investigate further...

Passion versus motivation

2005-07-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

I was in a planning meeting today to design a program for an upcoming funding proposal. One of the challenges we had to address was how to create real and lasting change for participants who had a long history of being stuck. Our conversation drifted a bit into how we had seen this happen for previous clients and for ourselves. The insight arose that traditional forms of motivation or motivational coaching were fairly ineffective. Especially when compared to engagement with a true passion. Our collective experience seemed to support the concept that if we can generate a true and deep passion, that has the power to overcome entrenched resistance and old defeating patterns. We are now thinking about how to incorporate this element of passion generation into the program. And of course we are talking about Open Space... How can we open space and hold it long enough and strong enough that these participants will begin to fill it up with their dreams and aspirations?

Thoughts from the G-8 activist camp

2005-07-12T09:57:00.000-07:00

Starhawk has been sending email reports from her work with the G-8 activist camp. They have been inspiring and challenging. Her latest post, as they take apart the camp that housed several thousand people for the past week, is beautiful and thought-provoking.

By setting up an encampment, where we all had to live together for a week, we were constantly faced with the real life, practical implications of our politics. Does anarchism simply mean that no one can ever tell me what to do, whatever state of consciousness I’m in or however I’m affecting the good of the whole? How do we respect the individual freedom of those who are in no state to make rational decisions or listen to the needs of others, and who gets to decide? And at what point does the good of the whole override the absolute freedom of the individual? It’s one thing to consider these issues in the abstract, another to spend half an hour at 2:30 AM trying to get a drunk to move back from the police lines.
And there were also many moments of wondrous beauty. At night, before the disco music started, groups would gather in the eddies of the meandering path through camp and play African drums or Scottish pipes. The Irish barrio, each night, would be gathered around the campfire, playing fiddle, singing songs, or listening to each others’ poetry as their ancestors have done for centuries. One night the Infernal Noise Brigade, a radical marching band from Seattle, led us all in a procession around camp, joined by a samba band and challenged by the disco block. Another night, a midnight candlelit vigil walked from the gate to the police lines, carrying with it a palpable blanket of silence, and placed its candles at the feet of the riot cops. We had rituals around the faery hawthorne tree at the edge of camp, and deep conversations around the kitchens and campfires. We had meetings where people listened to each other and let their opinions change, where we brought our best collective thinking to a problem and went away heartened by the experience.
Saturday night, we were taking apart our improvised road, made of softboard laid over sticks that were milling waste from a local timber company. There was no practical way to re-use or recycle the sticks, so we pulled the boards off, piled up the sticks into pyramids, and burned them. One by one, bonfires came alight: five, eight, thirteen, seventeen, dancing beacons of flame under a new moon. A woman told me that this was one of the fields where William Wallace, Scotland’s great hero, had called people to fight against the English invaders by lighting beacons in the field. We were all feeling sad at the ending of the camp, but the fires cheered our hearts and seemed to burn away any stuck or negative energies. John, the Irish fiddler, Brice, who is an expert at both renewable power and psychic energies, and I stood in the center, playing music, singing, and drumming, with an abundance of fire all around us, beacons calling us all to the ongoing fights for freedom. The faeries were very pleased.
And now the camp is gone, the field is bare again, the experiment is done. But because it existed for a short time, in some realm of being it exists for all time, complete with all its problems and promise, a seed of what is possible.

Starhawk's reflections reaffirm my belief that more of us need to begin actually experimenting with our lives. We need to consider seriously taking the risks inherent in creating new ways of living together. If those of us with the commitment and vision to change and to discover and develop the skills necessary for sustainable living don't couple this with actual experimentation, we will never reach the stage of practice. It will all remain theory. At some point we need to be willing to embrace and go beyond our fears. We need to walk into the messy, uncomfortable, humanity of living together, before we can create a viable new alternative--an alternative that is provable and replicable across a wide range of contexts.

I know that many of us are doing this in small and large ways in our own communities and work. But I have this sense of it not being enough...of needing to see radical and holistic engagements with all levels and facets of daily life. (And that could just be me--feeling frustrated with my own transformative struggles...) I think a lot of us are looking for that last little unknowable piece of information that will make it all okay to move forward. But the mystery of the future isn't like that...we have to jump in with both feet (and all our faith and heart and courage and best intention). We need the taste of the new in our mouths, the feel of it between our fingers, the sound of it roaring in our ears, and with our hearts pounding from our struggle to learn to swim in its vast expanse.

I am so grateful and indebted to Starhawk and all the other courageous and fragile human beings who are putting their safety, security, comfort, and futures at risk by daily living their commitment to a mere possibility...to a dream of a better way of being together with each other and all of life.

Conversation as peak experience

2005-07-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

I came across this quote from Anais Nin yesterday:

"The value of the personal relationship to all things is that it creates intimacy and intimacy creates understanding and understanding creates love."

This connected to some thinking I have been doing about peak experiences, flow, and emergence. I was lucky enough to have a conversation with Chris Corrigan on Wednesday about sensing the emergent, that flowed from this comment in his blog:

I find myself more and more focused on finding the questions that help us discern these two subtle presences: the seed of the emergent future crossing the abyss back to our present moment, and the place where our feet fall on the other side of that abyss, the place where our hearts are all ready present in that desired future.

The emergent in this case is being encountered in facilitated conversations. Chris referenced Otto Scharmer's U-Theory and the practice of 'presencing'. As I am currently understanding it, the emergent is encountered in a state of flow--or no thought--when moments and actions are not separated by thought, but rather are connected by something more subtle (soul or spirit?). In order to engage with emergent thought we often use the practice of conversation. I started wondering what the quality of conversation would be that would fulfill the no-thought requirement.

Several of the peak experiences in my life have been conversations. The only common characteristics of these conversations have been that they were with intimate friends and they were about emergent understanding or thoughts. The experience of these conversations verged on one-mind. Where the emergent thought was all--centre stage--egos disappeared in its service. Thought-speech was all of a piece, flowing--not without effort--but with a quality of inspiration and immediacy. There was a sensation of being transported--pulled up out of the normal self--almost like descriptions of channelling.

So, I further wonder, if these conversations exemplify the kind of conversation necessary to engage with the emergent, is an intimate relationship a necessary precursor? Which brings us back the the Anais Nin quote. Intimacy creates understanding creates love. For me the concept of love has always stretched to include the unseen force of the Absolute (or Spirit or God or Goddess or Brahman or whatever makes you happy) and serves me as a cypher for the action/information of the Absolute as it acts upon/influences the manifest. To me the emergent is all about sensing the presence of the Absolute and engaging with (or downloading) the information being made available.

So, to rephrase Nin, intimacy creates the conditions for peak conversation (deep understanding and trust; sympathy) which creates the conditions for the presence of the Absolute to be sensed which is the condition necessary to engage with the emergent. Implications...a lot of us are relying heavily on the internet and other technologies to connect us to have these essential conversations (you know about saving the world and all...), but can these technologies provide the necessary intimacy that seems to me to be prerequisite? Or do we still need serious face time? If that is so (and i *am* willing to be wrong about it) do we need to pay more attention to creating co-learning, co-living space for those who need/want to engage in these conversations? What is the necessary level of intimacy? What conditions and skills support the development of intimacy? Or is it all in the emanations of the Absolute? ;-)

Looming crisis in communication?

2005-07-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

Are we on the verge of a looming crisis in interpersonal communication? This blog was named after an insight i had while listening to Stephen Downes talk at the Northern Voice blogging conference. The concept is that words are not neutral tags, they are deeply embedded in and imbued with contextual baggage that warps or draws meaning to themselves and away from the communicator's true intention--the way the orbits of planets are altered by the gravitational pull of other large objects.

This contextual baggage is of two basic natures: historical and experiential. Every word has a history of usage. This history is generally known and shared among speakers from within a specific cultural (and sometimes a whole language) group. This history, we as communicators can become aware of and to some extent mitigate for. We often know when a word has more than one strong meaning and can specify which we are using.

The other kind of baggage--experiential--is almost impossible to know or accomodate for. Each person has a unique set of experiences of a word-concept and word-connections that subtly alter the meaning of what is heard. It is a part of the subjective filter we all bring to our communication. We can become more aware of this filter, but very few of us can avoid its functioning at least on some level.

Now, pull to this the concepts of the evolution of consciousness and the functioning of memes. For those of you who haven't encountered the Spiral Dynamics folks, you can check this out more fully at their website. To keep this short ( I will 'cause I have an intransigent cold and need to get some sleep--which has been more than elusive lately.) I see a schism developing that is not merely about generations, but about levels and types of consciousness (in SD terms--I think particularly strong between yellow or turquoise types and the others.). This difference in consciousness creates a wider gap in experience and hence a greater gravitational effect on the words we use to attempt to convey our thoughts and meaning to each other.

It seems to me that communicating ideas is becoming increasingly difficult. The words are elusive, often completely misunderstood, and building bridges of understanding seems to take either an immense effort of background defining or falls into metaphor and poetics--the calling card of the mystic...

How does it seem to you? What might this mean to the art of conversation? Or to the great work of transformation (ie: saving what's left of the planet) that is before us?

Will try to break this down a bit more in future posts.

On re-reading old favourites

2005-06-29T22:09:00.000-07:00

My children have arrived at the age where I can begin sharing some of my favourite longer books with them--from when I was young. The opportunity to revisit these old favourites is a delight and full of self-discovery. I know I loved the books as a child and young adult and cared deeply about the characters in them, but my memories of why I loved and cared for them had faded. Rediscovering these stories is creating an opportunity for re-membering who I was and is casting a wonderful light on how I became who I am now.

One example: We are currently reading the second book in Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series, The Black Cauldron. I remembered that the character of Adaon was one of my all-time favourites (George's too, we even considered the name at baby-naming time.) But I couldn't really have said why the character had been important to me. Two nights ago, I read this:

..."There is much to be known", said Adaon, "and above all much to be loved, be it the turn of the seasons or the shape of a river pebble. Indeed, the more we find to love, the more we add to the measure of our hearts."

We seldom get to know what goes in to shaping who we have become. These little glimpses are treasures. And I get to fall in love all over again...being a mom is just the greatest gift...

Humanitarian Intervention and Neo Colonialism

2005-06-28T22:33:00.000-07:00

I've always felt a bit uneasy about the concept of military Humanitarian Intervention--particularly as it has been unfolding in the recent past. The presentation last week by Jim Harding at the World Tribunal on Iraq has given me a lot more reasons to hesitate and think twice. His presentation is one of an incredible collection available at the World Tribunal site. Here is a small excerpt...
On the history of HI:

The doctrine was criticized for its lack of precision regarding what constitutes humanitarianism, as well as the inconsistent practices of colonial powers. It was seen to be a doctrine of double standards, with ‘human rights’ as only an “accessory motive of intervention.” The colonial powers decided the criteria for applying the doctrine and were also their own judges. There was no democratic division of power between the authority formulating these criteria and the one executing the intervention. It was therefore a “tool of power politics” which
shielded the fundamental inequality between the European and colonial states as well as the authoritarian relationship between the rulers and their own “citizens”.

True humanitarian intervention may be possible, but only when carried out by disinterested parties under the guidance and control of an international body with stringent definitions of human rights and a real commitment to uphold them in all circumstances. True humanitarian intervention would look a lot more like food aid, infrastructure support, respectful and culturally appropriate resource provision...and would be proactive, building collaborations between nations before events escalate to unbearable levels.

As individuals, we can participate, right now, in our own humanitarian interventions by becoming aware of how we contribute to the pressures on non-North American or European countries. We can begin to make different decisions that affect the inequitable distribution of wealth and resources. We can attend to the inequities, injustice, and oppression at our own doorsteps. We can engage in personal processes of transformation to gain the skills and consciousness necessary to co-exist in peaceful, sustainable, and egalitarian communities.

I'm not saying any of that is easy...just necessary.