Stunning weekend here on Bowen Island. Yesterday was 25 degrees and clear and Aine and I went walking along the south shore of Cape Roger Curtis, watching cruise ships sail and surf scoters dart by. Today it was a late brunch, some football at the artificial turf field and lunch at Artisan Eats with the kids and then relaxing on the sleeping porch in the cool afternoon breeze.
Nothing remarkable, and yet it is this miracle of stillness and relaxation that I live for.
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I’m about to board a flight from Toronto to Vancouver and I had the thought this morning that I might share this flight with the Vancouver Whitecaps FC my local football (soccer) team. I am a huge fan of these guys, a member of one of the supporters groups and a seasons ticket holder. And I was dreading sharing the flight with the team.
The reason? The Whitecaps absolutely blew the best chance they have had in years of inning the Canadian Championship cup final last night. They came out against Toronto FC – a team that has lost its first 9 games of the season, a team that one of heir own called “the worst in the world” – and they lost. They needed a goal to go ahead in the second leg and they failed to score. They put on the most dismal performance I have ever seen them play. They didn’t link up, they didn’t have a shot on goal, they stood in against a crappy team that was determined to foul them, waste time and destroy the pace of the game and they caved in.
I can only imagine this morning the heartbreak and disappointment they must be feeling. I have had days like that – when nothing goes right despite your best intentions. When something that seems easy and straightforward gets completely overtaken by circumstance. When complacency creates a cascade of effects that tips the system towards chaos and there is nothing to do but retreat and hit reset.
There is no guaranteed results in sport, and football is one of those sports that will always surprise you. There is never a guarantee that even the easiest of tasks in the most favourable of circumstances will work out. Disappointment is an inevitable part of working in the unknown. Heartbreak is a possible outcome.
So live it and move on. There is nothing else to do but host yourself through it and realize that, in the game of complex outcomes, the next possibility has arisen right now.
Go Caps. We have a derby against Portland on the weekend. Reset and kick some ass.
“Conversation demands equality between participants. Indeed, it is one of the most important ways of establishing equality. Its enemies are rhetoric, disputation, jargon and private languages, or despair at not being listened to and not being understood.”
– Theodore Zeldin
To sit in the presence of one another, to open to each others deepest longings, o host the space that makes room for silence and the most earnest murmurs of the heart. To see another as they see you, to pay respect to the story of a human being who sits with you and who is curious about your own.
All this is the greatest practice for restoring our humanity and our relations to one another. And this practice should not be deferred to some future time when the conditions are ripe. To sit in the present act of conversation is to be creating the preferred world now.
Working with 8 programs in the state of Minnesota this week, all of whom are putting together projects in local communities that work on acute health issues by creating upstream solutions. This is the third residential retreat with the 8 propoenent groups. all of whom are engaged in a year long planning process through which they are learning participatory leadership practices and are getting soaked in the Art of Hosting.
There are two things going on here. First is the design of an actual project that will move “upstream” and tackle one or more social determinants of health. For example, a group working on indigenous health and nutrition issues is building an indigenous food network that aims to bring people into better relationship with food through growing and cooking while addressing the need for available healthy food. While there is a program aspect to this there is also a capacity building aspect to it too.
Alone, small projects that are are linked to social determinants of health don’t stand much chance of long term success, especially if the long term sustainability of the project is anchored to a three year implementation grant. But a key piece of the work we are doing is also teaching hosting practices. Our cohort last year began work on their projects around creating healthy communities but have since been using participatory methods to organize in the community. They have been tackling racism, systemic abuses in the education system and saying no to arbitrary policy decisions. One hundred people in the community are signed up for Art of Hosting training in the fall which will probably also result in 25 new projects – safefail probes if you like – activated to effect changes in the community.
I’m skeptical about any given project to make a difference, but projects that are led with the purpose of learning how to lead help to develop practices that launch and spread leadership throughout the community. To me this is “there” to get to from “here.”
Now if only evaluators would catch up.
Early morning trip to Minnesota on a holiday Monday. One downside of working a lot in the United States is that American clients often book me for long weekends. It’s free on my calendar, so it must be okay!
Not too choked to leave on a little trip today though. The weather has been glorious the past few days, the Vancouver Whitecaps have treated us to some fabulous games at BC Place, including a thrilling comeback in the opening leg of the Canadian Championship Cup final and a terrific derby match against Seattle.
But now the rainy weather has moved in, the Pacific high which gets established over the Gulf of Alaska every summer, is yet to settle in so it’s bright grey cloud with light rain, moderate temperatures and no wind. I’m off to Minnesota where I’m looking forward to sunshine and thunderstorms.
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