Quinault Indian Nation, Washington
On the first fall storm night, with the wind rain and surf pouring in off the Pacific Ocean, I come across this:
“I do not know if I have found answers. When I first became a monk, yes, I was more sure of “answers.” But as I grow old in the monastic life and advance further into solitude, I become aware that I have only begun to seek the questions. And what are the questions? Can man make sense out of his existence? Can man honestly give his life meaning merely by adopting a certain set of explanations which pretend to tell him why the world began and where it will end, why there is evil and what is necessary for a good life? My brother, perhaps in my solitude I have become as it were an explorer for you, a searcher in realms which you are not able to visit . . . I have been summoned to explore a desert area of man’s heart in which explanations no longer suffice, and in which one learns that only experience counts. An arid, rocky, dark land of the soul, sometimes illuminated by strange fires which men fear and peopled by specters which men studiously avoid except in their nightmares. And in this area I have learned that one cannot truly know hope unless he has found out how like despair hope is.”
[tags]Thomas Merton, hope, questions[/tags]
Courtenay, BC
I’m coming to the end of a Moleskine notebook I’ve had since March, and it’s almost filled up. I’m going through it harvesting a few things, and thought I might post a series of notes here. The journal began with a few notes that I made about the preliminary design of an Art of Hosting we ran for VIATT on Quadra Island. This particular Art of Hosting was called to train with 40 or so people who are helping us to build an Aboriginal child and familiy services system on Vancouver Island. It’s big work, undoing 120 of colonization and history and taking advantage of an historic opportunity to build a community-owned system that puts children at the centre of our work. Here’s what the notes say:
- Be the healing organization
- Establish everybody’s authority
- Healing patterns connecting heart to heart
- Host for community to become conscious
- Our work: healing the relationships between people that have arisen from the history of being tied to stakeholders
- This circle seems to recommit us to the work
- Putting our purpose at the centre, build a process to do this.
It’s fitting that I’m reflecting on this harvest tonight. Tonight we ran our third regional assembly here on Vancouver Island, inviting people from this area to share what is exciting them about this work. The purpose of the assemblies is to create champions for the process and to enlist people into a more intensive experience of community-based dialogue and deliberation by creating community circles. These circles will do the work of incorporating the community voice into the decisions and policy making of this new Authority we are creating to take over Aboriginal child and family services from the provincial government. We can’t do this without the community being involved and we’ve been quite taken by the response of Elders, youth and parents to our invitation to join us in creating this new system.
These notes remind me that much of the work I do has a healing component to it, that the work of opening hearts and supporting movement in Aboriginal organizations and communities is about healing – making whole – and sustaining connection and belonging. That makes the work I am doing complex and many-aspected, but when we get it right, like tonight for example when we ran a cafe that tapped open heartedness, it does so much more than move the organization forward in strategic ways. It makes things stronger.
Strengthening is a powerful and needed quality in development work, whether it is in organizations or communities. Strengthening commitment, heart, leadership, quality, results…it is a pattern of “better” that is embedded in the nature of powerful conversations and participatory leadership.
In June I wrote about the work of living in the territory of the open heart. This is a strong personal claling for me.
Today I stumbled upon this video of the mayor of San Diego doing just that – approving a resolution to endorse same sex marriage in his city, in part because his daughter and some of his staff members are gay and lesbian. It’s a hard, tearful and emotional place to be, but it is worth it for the change that will come from decisions made in this place.
Liu Yang is a Chinese artist. This piece is from a series of works about huamn patterns in Chinese and German social settings. This one is called “At a Party.” German is blue, Chinese is red.
More here.
[tags]liu yang[/tags]
Harrison Owen – new age guru!
To celebrate the New York Times’ inspired decision to finally open up it’s archives to the public for free, here is a link to a famous article from 1994 on Harrison Owen, Open Space and Rockport shoes.
And as a bonus, here’s another from 1988, on the work of “New Age consultant” Harrison Owen who helped Owens-Corning Fiberglass find some spirit. This man has been ahead of his time for 30 years.
[tags]openspacetech, harrison owen, rockport, owens-corning[/tags]