I had dinner with Hanns and Marlene Skoutajan tonight here in Ottawa. Hanns was the my minister at my church when I was a teenager and he was largely responsible for supporting my call which was at one time to join the United Church of Canada as a minister. He was also responsible for introducing me to church politics and structure such that I decided not to pursue my career for that employer. Hanns and Marlene were a particular anamoly in my upper middle class neighbourhood, where they stood out as the most visible members of the New …
The Globe and Mail: An unnamed source told CNN that “she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party.” And on Saturday, Politico’s Ben Smith wrote of an emerging “Palin insurgency,” quoting four unnamed Republican insiders who said Ms. Palin blames McCain handlers for her negative image and has “gone rogue.” When she described herself as “a maverick” what did people think that meant? At least you couldn’t accuse her of false advertising, for this is how a maverick really behaves.
I’ve spent most of the last week in some deep practice with my close friends Toke Moeller, Monica Nissen, Caitlin Frost and Bob Wing. The practice we were in this week is called “Warrior of the Heart” and it’s a combination of aikido, other martial arts and art of hosting, a blend of practices and disciplines that leads to great insight about oneself and helps develop the clarity of heart required to develop our own leadership and our personal capacity to host conversations that matter and to act powerfully for good in the world. Warrior of the Heart evolved from …
A request to the blogosphere… I am organizing a large conference and part of the work we are doing as we sense into the need and purpose of the gathering is to understand the people who will be coming. The conference is a gathering for a large national movement, and although we know many of the people who will be there, the purpose of the gathering may be different this year, necessitating different participants. We have a core team designing the gathering and we’d like to use an effective, relatively quick low tech method to map out and overview of …
This post from Jack is so useful and powerful that I’m quoting it whole here: One of my seatmates from Phili to Boston last night was Portland’s city planner, a gentle giant of an AfricanAmerican man who spent the post-war Bosnian years doing amazing work in economic development and country re-building. He lead the first public school integration in the country, a school where Serb, Croat and Muslim children went to school at the same building in 8 hour shifts in order to prevent any inter-contact. Taking key leaders and school administrators for a month in Geneva, he asked …