We have opened our Art of Hosting at Rivendell, on Bowen Island. These words are in my ear, words spoken by Elrond at his Council at the mythical Rivendell in The Fellowship of the Ring. The council was deliberating on who should carry out the quest to destroy the One Ring, and so end the world and nrid it of the domination of the evil Sauron. The question of the humble hobbits ndoing the work came up and this was Elrond’s response:
“The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere”
Come, hobbits. The time for work is here.
Bowen Island oriented with Snug Cove pointing towards you, as the entrance to the Island.
Yesterday in our five day residential we invited the participants out on the land for a solo retreat. Bowen Island, where I live, is an incredible place. To get here, you have to take a boat across the Queen Charlotte Channel, a deep body of water at the entrance to Howe Sound. Howe Sounda was formed by glaciers and mountain making processes, and now is a fjord surround by walls of 1200 meters or more.
Entry to Bowen is through Snug Cove, a small and protected harbour that s part of of a bigger bay called Mannion Bay. it is a deep round sanctuary that serves as a channel into the island, and a kind of birth canal when you leave. I have never tired of the process of crossing this threshold.
Once you are here, the Island draws you ever inward, with our one main road branching into three at the crossroads and later into dozens of ever smaller roads and lanes ending at beaches, bays, lakes, mountains or sometimes just petering out into the forest. There are no real loop roads here: once you take a path you have to retunr pretty much the way you came.
This landscape sets us up for a beautiful retreat. When I have helped people have solo experiences here I have always framed them first with a noticing of the threshold that is crossed. Richard Rohr captures the power of these kinds of thresholds here:
The edge of things is a liminal space – a very sacred place where guardian angels are especially available and needed. The edge is a holy place, or as the Celts called it, “a thin place” and you have to be taught how to live there. To take your position on the spiritual edge of things is to learn how to move safely in and out, back and forth, across and return. It is a prophetic position, not a rebellious or antisocial one. When you live on the edge of anything with respect and honor, you are in a very auspicious position. You are free from its central seductions, but also free to hear its core message in very new and creative ways. When you are at the center of something, you usually confuse the essentials with the non-essentials, and get tied down by trivia, loyalty tests, and job security. Not much truth can happen there.
via On the Edge of the Inside: The Prophetic Position by Richard Rohr, OFM.
Once we have crossed the threshold, typically a person’s experience will consist of three phases: a moving out onto the land, a resting phases in stillness and a return. It is a mythic journey in many ways. In going out I invite people to dwell on what they are getting ready to leave. In resting I invite people to be still for at least an hour in the forest or by the sea, which is enough time to let the forest close back around a person and let it reveal itself to you. And the return journey is always accompanied by a gift; you are bringing something back. These little out and back pilgrimages are important and very powerful for people. As I learn more about the way this land works us, I feel like I can let it more fully host me and the people I work with and the insights can come.
Halfway through our five day residency with leaders from the community sector and the Ministry for Children and Families here in BC. Times like this, at middle of a five day retreat, we turn our thoughts to what comes next and we forget to be present. This is our day of practicing presence however, and later today we will be going out on the land and allow ourselves to be hosted by the forest, the rain and our island. This is the time for a fierce recommitment to the here and now.
My colleague and friend Annemarie Travers, who is on our hosting team and who leads learning in the Ministry shared a beautiful framing for our day together. She and her husband Geoff recently completed the Camino pilgrimage and she wrote dozens of poems during her journey. This morning she shared one that speaks powerfully to what it is like to be distracted by the near end:
Staying “Here”
The closer we get to the end of our walk, the harder it is to stay present
We think ahead to achieving our goal, beginning to be proud of our accomplishmentWe have also started to think about home, and all that waits for us there
But we need to focus on enjoying these last few days as much as we dareWhile we feel the Camino has given us both what we need
We know it’s not done with us yet, their is still more to come, indeed!These last few days are characterized by more traffic on the paths
And as we weave our way through, some draw our wrathThen we remind ourselves of the Camino spirit, and breathe deeply, just let it go
(Hopefully not while passing a farm – we are regularly assaulted by manure smells you know)We forget to be grateful for the simple pleasures of the day
It was supposed to rain today, but the rain stayed away!This all has the effect of limiting our opportunities for meditative walking
Our minds go to the usual worries, and we begin talkingAbout the end of the trip, and what we will do when we return
So we made a pact with ourselves with the intent to turnThe train of our thoughts, to focus on the here and now
Enjoy what this day brings, not the manure, but the beauty of the cow…
Such a beautiful reminder to remain present, to enjoy the source of everything that continues to work with us!
…is the best wisdom for yourself:
The advice you’ve been giving your family and friends turns out to be advice for you to live, not us. You become the wise teacher as you become a student of yourself. It stops mattering if anyone else hears you, because you’re listening. You are the wisdom you offer us, breathing and walking and effortlessly moving on, as you make your business deal, buy your groceries, or do the dishes.
— Byron Katie
Loving being with my partner Caitlin Frost as she teaches this powerful stuff to a group of leaders whose freedom and resourcefulness makes a huge difference in the lives of vulnerable humans in this world.
Working with a group of leaders this week all of whom are engaged in bringing their full selves to complex problems largely in the community, family and social services sector. Tonight we are co-initiating our work together and I led them through this exercise which was inspired by my friend and colleague Roq Garreau of Centrespoke Consulting:.
- Take a piece of paper and fold it in half so that you have a little book with four pages.
- On the front of the little book write your leadership challenge, something that you are called into doing, something that occupies much of your attention and that seems unresolvable, something you feel you have to DO.
- Write 12 questions down relating to this challenge. Make them open ended questions and spread out the Who, What, Why, When, Where and How. These are questions you cannot easily answer.
- Turn to a fresh page in your litle book and rewrite your challenge
- Now mill in the room and pair up with another person. Simply read your leadership challenge and listen as they offer you three questions. Don’t explain, don’t justify, just listen. Those offering questions can just offer the first three things that come to mind.
- Once you have collected nine questions, rest and rewrite your challenge one more time.
We then went around the circle and had people read these challenges out. It is a very vulnerable exercise as people shared what they don’t know how to do. And they become equipped with questions that are deeply embedded in the centre of their work and curveball questions that come from the margins. These marginal questions have a powerful effect on people and it is a useful reminder that change and challenge often comes from outside of what we think we know.
In the debrief a participant suggested a further step: she offered that embedded in every challenge is a vision of how we want things to be and that in rushing to DOING, we forget PURPOSE. This is a useful antidote to the more common complaint that “we are spending too much time thinking about PURPOSE and not enough attention on ACTION.” Purpose and Action are therefore held in a creative tension.
These challenges and questions will travel with people this week, and we have invited our participants to see these as friends.