Steamed and ready to eat: Dave Pollard publishes a valuable personal redux of Joanna Macy’s work. Holger Nauheimer on whether people resist change. George Por on connecting our conversations Jaime Casico on how collective intellegence makes us smarter Sustaining powerful collective conversations – a discussion at The Presencing Institute
“My grandmother was the one that inspired me,” said my friend Liz over lunch at the Valley Inn in Bella Coola. “She said that the world was once all together, and then it came apart and one day it will be all together again. So I just try to bring things together.” Liz is a pretty remarkable woman. She worked for years in family reunification in Vancouver, bringing together First Nations kids with their birth families, reconnecting them to their culture and communities. She is at home now in Bella Coola on council, working for the Ministry as a social …
Fascinating read about the fall of East Germany and how the leaders in West, especially Thatcher, loved freedom, but loved order even more. For her, reunification was too chaotic. For Moscow, used to imposed control, they had no idea what people were thinking. The people finally just acted out of a basic self-organizing impulse, and Gorbachev, confused but bemused, let them go: Moscow probably thought it could have it both ways: earn the gratitude of the East by liberalising the system and the gratitude of the West for promoting democracy and human rights. In fact, it reaped only mistrust and …
A cafe today, with littler preparation on the ground and a tricky issue in a community, but a good result today and some good learnings about harvesting. Here are my notes: Before we began the chief invited us to stand in a circle to pray and to have some introductions. I was introduced and invited the group to find beauty in the work here, identifying what they really cared about for the education of their young people. We stayed standing in the circle for a half hour while some of the Elders talked about how hurt they had been over …
Ensconced at the head of an inlet in what has to be the most beautiful valley in BC. My commute yesterday to get here was a one hour flight from Vancouver over huge icefields, 9000 foot peaks, high mountain lakes and deep forested cirques. The landscape here is forbiddingly raw, and when the morning sun catches the blue glint of glacial ice in the cracks and crevacies on the icefall you are flying PAST (not over!) your heart just sings. In this tight little valley – now rain soaked and cloud choked – a few thousand people live cheek by …