Here’s an ambient track to start your week. This is called “Hermit Thrush” from a San Francisco-based outfit called Airking. Minimalism may not be your cup of tea, but as I’ve been talking a little about the combination of nature and technology, I thought I would blog this piece.
The piece features a loop of a lush synth chord, one that contains a suspended fourth, giving the feeling that there is something to resolve. Over this are some heavily modified samples of a hermit thrush call (click here for .wav file of such) and some synth fills that mimic the call and some of it’s elements.
To the extent that people separate themselves from nature, they spin out further and further from the centre. At the same time, a centripetal effect asserts itself and the desire to return to nature arises. But if people merely become caught up in reacting, moving to the left or to the right, depending on conditions, the result is only more activity. The non-moving point of origin, which lies outside the realm of relativity, is passed over, unnoticed.
— Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, quoted in TC McLuhan’s The Way of the Earth, p. 151
My work with group processes has always moved towards what comes to us most naturally. This is why my facilitation practice seems to culminate in Open Space Technology, where the natural and pervasive dynamics of self-organization can take over. Being a conscious part of a self-organizing system requires that we remember how to be a part of nature again. And so the four practices of Open Space – opening, inviting, holding and grounding – become essential for creating a container in which people return to their most basic and intuitive processes – conversation, choice, collaboration and contemplation – to help move them forward. When a group is truly ready to come back to what has always been Open Space, one finds reactions of astonishment and surprise that work could really be this easy and this deep, all at the same time.
It’s worth looking at what we are as humans – parts of the vast whole that holds us – and remember that our very oldest teachings tell us how to live within this enfolded context rather than futilely struggle against it.
Port Alberni, BC
I was speaking with a client the other day about an Open Space event we are planning. The theme of the event has to do with slowing down communities, to get a handle on the pace of change. We were reflecting on one of the pre-conditions for a good Open Space event being urgency. We had a good chuckle at the notion that, in these communities, there is an urgent need to slow down! I love the creative tension of this paradox.
We build in time for ourselves personally to slow down and reflect and sometimes we do the same for organizations. But it’s rare that communities do this. I love working with communities where we build community-wide reflection into the life of the community. If you live in a place, like I do, where development pressures threaten to drive the agenda for how the whole community will evolve, then you can appreciate the urgency for slow.
Forest Pool, by Frances and Mary Allen
If you know the Chronicles of Narnia at all, you will of course know about the world between worlds. In C.S. Lewis’ series, characters must travel to a bizarre middle world between the one they live in and the one they might travel too. This world is a comfortable purgatory, an emerald green forest full of pools into which one jumps to travel between worlds. It’s a lovely place to stay and there is always a danger that the enchantment of that place will leave you there.
I like this image because as an autodidact, it sums up a particular mood or time when I am between learnings. For the last little while I’ve been studying and prototyping conversational processes. More recently, I have been looking again at the natural world and seeing what various people have been saying over time about nature, in an effort to draw those learnings into my practice. This has taken me away from explicitly reading and writing about facilitation and more about nature itself. And my reading has been very far away from my usual work, back into the realms of Thoreau, T.C. McLuhan and Barry Lopez.
In this transition between areas of interest, I find myself reading very shallowly, skimming blogs and books and not coming to rest on anything. I’ve noticed a reaction to this blog as well. I’ve had fewer posts, and I’m not really saying anything new. Instead I’ve been just reporting on stuff I’m doing. My hits have been down almost 40 percent in the last month, which I find fascinating. I have been looking at the stats for this blog over the past couple of years and see a heavy correlation with my engagement with ideas and my readers willingness to visit, link and spend time here. I noticed the same thing when I first started taking this blog seriously, when I spent a lot of time reading poetry a few years ago, when I turned my attention towards beauty and finally where I integrated my old Open Space weblog and this one became more about business, organizations, and facilitation.
So my thinking is that a lot more of what you’ll read here over the next little while will involve looking at the natural world and figuring out what it teaches us about our natural ways of being with each other. I’m looking for principles and lessons that can help me ground my life and facilitation practice in the way in which we really are.
So this is just a note…a bookmark to hold space to notice a subtle shift. I’ll hang out in the forest for a while before diving into a pool.
I was saddened to learn today that Bernie Whiteford – Wap-Pisk-Ki-Kakiw Isqueo (White Raven Woman) – passed away on April 28. Her obituary at RedwayBC mentions a short illness.
Bernie was a strong advocate for the rights of Aboriginal women in BC and was the executive director of the Helping Spirit Lodge Society.. Helping Spirit Lodge is an organization on the front lines of stopping violence and creating healthy families and communities. It is an important part of the Vancouver Aboriginal community and Bernie was a key voice in that community. I knew her from various community events I facilitated and work I did on child welfare over the years. She’ll be missed greatly.