On my way back to Toronto after spending time with my mom and dad in Thornbury Ontario. If I have time I like to stop by the grave of my great great grandparents Mungo Dand and Catherine Ann Munro who are buried in the cemetery of Burns Presbyterian Church in Feversham Ontario. My great great great grandparents William and Marion Dand are also buried here, but their graves are unmarked. These two are a tragic story. Catherine died in childbirth delivering her fifth child who himself died two months and 20 days later. Mungo remarried but lost his second wife …
There are conversations I don’t want to have and there are conversations I show up in and where I don’t like how I show up there. How to change these? We are always inside the conversations we don’t want to have. We cannot leave them. We always have to host from inside this place. At some level you can never leave earth. You belong here and to every conversation that is happening here. You are invited to host it all. That is your obligation for being given the gift of life.
Martin Luther King Jr., writing from teh Birmingham City jail in April of 1963, mused a little on time: I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers …
Bruce Cockburn is probably my favourite songwriter. This is Pacing the Cage, a hymn for our times: Sometimes the best maps will not guide you You can’t see what’s round the bend Sometimes the road leads through dark places Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Last month I was in Chicago working with a great group of Art of Hosting practitioners in the Illinois community of practice. We ran a three day Art of Hosting and then did a one day Art of Harvesting workshop with about 40 members of the community of practice in Chicago. The focus of the day was on the art and practice of harvesting. Our design was simple…we began in circle with a check in around questions and thoughts about harvesting. Those of us on the stewarding team – myself, Teresa Posakony and Kathy Jourdain – spoke a little on …
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