Very short absence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

Fundraising and organizational transformation

When a non-profit organization takes the plunge and decides to hire a professional fundraising consultant, they are most often in dire financial straights or see impending cutbacks in the near future. This means that they are usually focused on short term financial improvements--and that, of course, while perfectly natural, often means that they haven't considered the impact of implementing fundraising on their staff, board, infrastructure, or culture. As a consultant, I come into the situation knowing that undertaking a relationship fundraising program is going to transform the organization from top to bottom in unexpected and sometimes painful ways.

It's odd how many social service organizations are essentially closed systems. They have mechanisms to get client referrals, both in and out, and have a network of other agencies and contract funders, but they often have no publicly accessible face for the non-client community at large. Some even have large volunteer components--but these are also often seen, in a basic and important way, as separate from the core staff or work of the organization. The general public can be seen as essentially unknown and unknowable. Hence the huge fear that accompanies decisions to undertake a fundraising program and hurdle number one in implementing a successful relationship building program.

I often begin by reframing the fundraising program as a friend-raising program. We are not going out there to pressure people who essentially don't care about what we do to give us cash...we are heading out to connect with people who share our values, concerns and passions and to invite them to join us in our work. They care about it, but can't personally do the work, so they invest in the agency's capacity to do the work on their behalf. This reframe can begin to create the first crack in what is often an actual barricade between the organization and the community. And by this I mean a functional barricade created out of fear, mistrust, and lack of knowledge--them out there and us in here.

Continuing with this program of positive reframing, I will often engage in conversations about how the community can support and enhance the work of the agency--through things like growing a basic sense of belonging to a caring community (supports both staff and clients), acting as a positive, free, PR mechanism (happy, engaged donors spread the word), bringing a host of life experience and skills to the organization (increasing capacity). Together, we slowly grow the understanding of an open organization that has structures and attitudes that welcome and invite community participation at many levels. To me, this is an essential part of developing the fundraising function within an organization. It is about ethical asking and inviting, about true accountability and transparency.

Another facet of my practice is to work with and acknowledge what's there. In other words, an organization is people--people who are usually tired, stressed and overworked. People who have strong investments in the status quo and who may have strong opinions about how things get done. People for whom the merest mention of the word 'fundraising' sends them flying for the nearest cover. Welcome to hurdle number two. These are the folks who will have to shoulder the extra burden of work and who will be the organizational face that greets the public. Again, by involving them as much as possible from the beginning and by telling lots of success stories and framing change in terms that clearly show the benefit to them personally wherever possible, we begin a slow shift.

I truly believe in the value of the consultative part of consulting and in collaboration. My practice is to build the capacity of the organization to carry on a professional program under its own steam. Ultimately, implementing a relationship fundraising program is about transformation from an inward-looking, protective organization to one that is open, inviting and engaged vibrantly with the community.

I have found, as a consultant, that listening with the heart, understanding where people are at and working from there, taking time, and being flexible while moving gently and steadily forward, grows a healthier, stronger organization along with the revenue.

Ding Dong the Duke is dead!

The wicked Duke Point Gas Plant threat is officially no more. This is just one more of those occasions when I am proud to be a Gabriolan. Three cheers and huge appreciation to all of those who worked so hard preparing the case against the plant. And a big Gabriolan hug to all of us who participated in Power Down to show that we can reduce consumption and have a lot of fun doing it. Now the ball is in our court to make sustainable changes and reduce our consumption on a regular basis.

Picnics and bedtime stories

Tonight we had a picnic supper. We packed gourmet fare of tuna sandwiches, baby carrots, peaches, milk and water and headed out to Long Lane...just at the end of our street.

Long Lane is an old access road that is re-greening. Big-leaf maples arch across creating a green tunnel bordered by ferns on one side and tall lacy-headed grass and daisies on the other. We all ambled down, the boys picking grass, buttercups and daisies. We spread our blanket out on a sunny spot deep in the long grass and we all laid down for a minute looking up into the so-blue sky.

After the eating and a bit of running around, we settled down again to watch the sky. The half-moon was up and a bald-eagle was circling round and round it--lofting slowly higher in a lazy spiral. Rowan was the first to spot the flash of white head feathers. We saw two turkey vultures and lots of our favourite zippy little martins.

On our way back, I was informed in no uncertain terms by Gareth (20 months) that my help in putting his boots back on was in no way required or wanted. He did ask for, "Hand" and let me walk with him for a way. After a hundred metres or so, he stopped, delighted in shredding one of last year's leaf fall, and when finished instructed, "Uppy". Once in my arms, he directed (as usual) with extended arm and finger pointing down the path, "That way!" (If you are a fan of the movie Willow, you will get this little visual joke. It always makes me smile...)

Back home, after bath and brushing, George put Gareth to bed and I went with Beric and Rowan. I got a request for a Bob and Stanley story. This is always fun...I never know where it will go. Bob and Stanley are my own creations. Bob is a garden gnome who specializes in radishes. Stanley is a red dragon who Bob discovered as an egg in his radish patch. Red dragon eggs look like really big radishes and as the radish is their favourite food, laying eggs in radish patches is an effective adaptive strategy. Bob and Stanley are best friends and live in a really big tree and have cool adventures. Today they went for a picnic up in the mountains by a glacial lake filled with rainbow trout, sunfish, goldfish and clownfish (who the sunfish apparently like to bite...). Of course they ate radish sandwiches (Stanley's extra spicy), radish juice and bird's nest cookies with radish jelly. What a feast!

And what fun!