There is a great flowering of dialogic facilitation training this month around these parts in southern British Columbia and northern Washington State. First Peggy Holman and Tom Cato are offering an Appreciative Inquiry training in Seattle from October 18-21. Following that, Toke Paludan Moeller and friends will be right here on Bowen Island offering the excellent Art of Hosting gathering which I can highly recommend. That workshop will run October 30 to November 3 which is a great time to be here on our island, as we celebrate Hallowe’en as a quasi-national holiday. That workshop will also feature an alumni …
It has occurred to me that the act of driving can be both the greatest source of stress in my life, or one of the best opportunities to develop a practice of compassion, relaxation and offering. Being the kind of guy that prefers the latter to the former, I have developed a driving practice to enhance those qualities. The basic theory is this: when you are on the road, driving in traffic you have unlimited space to give others. Ironically, there is only very limited space to TAKE, because taking space usually means speeding up, driving dangerously and aggressively. Giving …
On the weekend I was happy to be running an Open Space event for 125 people who live across British Columbia’s Gulf Islands. We had a ball, and I’ll write more shortly. One of the great things that happened there was that four amazing people joined me in holding space: Wendy Farmer-O’Neil, Valerie Embry, Nancy McPhee and Beverley Neff. A million small and interesting conversations happened between us during the event, a great side effect of working with a team. One of them was about the vagaries of praise and blame, and especially how important it is to be stable …
From Jack Richhiuto: “My college buddy Al was telling the story last night of a community meeting he had in one of his development district neighborhoods. They were presenting a whole project of new middle and upper income housing right in a neighborhood of poverty and low income folks that would significantly increase the neighborhood’s density and population. The presentation complete, Q&A opened with total silence, until someone from the back raised their hand and tendered a question: What will they think of us?”
From Jack Richhiuto: “My college buddy Al was telling the story last night of a community meeting he had in one of his development district neighborhoods. They were presenting a whole project of new middle and upper income housing right in a neighborhood of poverty and low income folks that would significantly increase the neighborhood’s density and population. The presentation complete, Q&A opened with total silence, until someone from the back raised their hand and tendered a question: What will they think of us?”