The two most important women in my life
In my work with a new hospital north of Denver yesterday, one of the senior managers commented that one of the things that struck him most was the idea that people do not feel an authentic sense of accountability simply because we place on them demands that take away their freedom of choice. We feel this when people have faith in us.
Would you rather be accountable to a friend or a contract? Is it friendship or paper that binds two people’s integrity together?
My modus operandi in the world is working with friends. The vast majority of clients of mine quickly become friends and our working relationship almost always deepens beyond the “project outcomes” or “scope of work” laid out in our contracts. With many clients, including those with whom I work on large projects, there are no contracts whatsoever. Our working relationship is based on the trust that comes from the deep accounatbility of friends working together.
For sure there is a place for contracts and paper-based accountability in the world, but isn’t interesting note how much shorter those agreements get the closer the partners are? Isn’t it interesting to note the distaste most of us feel for “pre-nuptual agreements” which seem to reduce the commitment of marriage – a lifelong friendship – to a mere contract?
Contracts limit our freedom of choice, friendships open up freedom of choice. ANd the very best friendships, like the one I celebrated tonight, result in something emergent, something surprising and unexpected and new. It is out of those relationships that my best work comes.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Just back from a qucik trip to Victoria. Flew Harbour Air, sat up front in the co-pilot’s seat with my new friend Brad, who is an aspiring musician, autodidact, and all round curious dude. I’ve flown with Brad a couple of times now and we have great conversations about technology, susbistence, land, First Nations, community building, music and culture. It’s always a full 40 minute flight.
I snapped a few cool photos on the way:
- Brad’s office: the cockpit of HA309 a Turbo Otter (and an outside view)
- “Freighters on the nod, on the surface of the bay, one of these days they’re gonna sail away” – Bruce Cockburn
- My home island from 2500 feet.
- And a bonus: Facilitator art – Flipchart still life (and a novel agenda)
Photo by Santa Rosa
“The wise ones of olden times say that the hearts of men and women are in the shape of a caracol, and that those who have good in their hearts and thoughts walk from one place to the other, awakening gods and men for them to check that the world remains right. They say that they say that they said that the caracol represents entering into the heart, that this is what the very first ones called knowledge. They say that they say that they said that the caracol also represents exiting from the heart to walk the world”. The caracoles will be like doors to enter into the communities and for the communities to come out; like windows to see us inside and also for us to see outside; like loudspeakers in order to send far and wide our word and also to hear the words from the one who is far away.”
A beautiful story of the Zapatista revolution in Mexico. In the 14 years since the Zapatistas pressed their claims in Chiapas, the architecture of the snail has become the way that the people talk about their revolution: it starts in the centre and spirals outward, and slowly and surely, it gets where it is going:
The United States and Mexico both have eagles as their emblems, predators which attack from above. The Zapatistas have chosen a snail in a spiral shell, a small creature, easy to overlook. It speaks of modesty, humility, closeness to the earth, and of the recognition that a revolution may start like lightning but is realized slowly, patiently, steadily. The old idea of revolution was that we would trade one government for another and somehow this new government would set us free and change everything. More and more of us now understand that change is a discipline lived every day, as those women standing before us testified; that revolution only secures the territory in which life can change. Launching a revolution is not easy, as the decade of planning before the 1994 Zapatista uprising demonstrated, and living one is hard too, a faith and discipline that must not falter until the threats and old habits are gone – if then. True revolution is slow.
Photo by Nathan Ward
Little elements that showed up lately:
- A beautiful periodic table of the elements by printmakers
- A reason why I love the web: Indian cooking on YouTube
- Johnnie brings it on with a great find on power. Bonus is that he also introduces me to Greater Good magazine.
- Dustin Rivers on unschooling as decolonizing liberation. Dude rocks my world.
- Jack Martin Leith, a fellow Open Space traveller, has been providing interesting resources on collective genius and innovation for years. This is his recent offering, an engaging power point presentation on world views and pathways to collective innovation.
- I’ve pointed to her before, but here again is Kavana Tree Bressen’s facilitation resources. Tree is a long time member of intentional communities and so these resources have especially useful application there. But I love her deep practice of consensus.
- “We come up the hard way, and blues is the way you feel…”
- The Mindmapping Software weblog
- Niyaz: new music for the 21st century.
- MungBeing magazine: worth a look and a listen.
