Some notes and stuff from my trips around the web:
- Passion bounded by responsibility is one of the tenets of Open Space. To see how powerful this is in action, you should go and visit WikiClock. Very simply, it’s a clock that shows the current time if you update it to do so. It’s a ridiculous notion, until you realize that it actually works. And if you still don’t know what a wiki is, Viv McWaters has come across a video that might help you understand it a lot better.
- Jack Ricchiuto has discovered something about appreciative leadership in Aboriginal communities that has long formed the basis of my practice: “he understanding is that childhood traumas cause our souls to fragment. The work of healing is to enable the reclaiming of these parts of our souls – like wisdom, love, and courage – that are ours to reclaim.”
- It still amazes me how intimate people can be in person after engaging with each other over time on weblogs. Since my lunch with new friends in London last weekend, Richard and Kevin have both posted interesting thoughts about this particular lunch on their blogs. If you still haven’t had the experience of meeting someone physically whom you have known only through a blog, I recommend it. It will blow your mind.
- One of the processes we used in Belgium for looking at ourselves was a systemic constellation. I’m quite interested in this methodology (here is a website for the community of practice) and would welcome anythoughts from those who have used it in organizations and communities about resources that are useful for understanding it in those contexts.
- Finally this week, a note on a great looking training offered by my friend Christine Whitney Sanchez in Colorado this summer combining Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry, World Cafe and Polarity Management. It’s just one more offering on the kinds of things we teach at an art of hosting. You can also explore these ideas through a workshop with Myriam Laberge and Brenda Chaddock, which they call “Wise Action that Lasts.” (July 9-11 near Vancouver, BC) and of course you could also come to an Art of Hosting training, several of which are going on in Europe and North America this summer and fall.
(I’m posting this a day or two later than when I wrote it)
London, UK
I’m in London now, moving around with with Johnnie Moore and Euan Semple, Richard Oliver,Tanya and Kevin McLean, and Steve Moore seeing some plays, talking about our work and what it all means…
…and I have nearly lost my voice.
I’m quite intrigued actually with the fact that I am suffering from laryngitis. It was caused by an unholy scream I issued on day three of our gathering in Belgium, as I came into some quite strong and profound as a response to the invitation to our group of 26 to face the shadow present in our work. This was a deep exercise and it brought me to a level of presence and clarity about my work that has laid the ground work for my own practice to go to a deeper level.
The day began with an exercise designed I think to work our sensing capacities and our awareness of the very great field of generative support that exists in the mystery of the living system of the world. It’s very hard to write objectively about being at the centre of such experiences, but one thing that stuck out for me was a lingering sense of the power of dignity.
The house we were in at Heerlijckyt is 400 years old and it stands on a domain that is more than 700 years old. The family that owned it for that whole time recently sold it to the current owners and there is only a little of their presence left in the place. One thing that is left though is the dignity of the place and it occurred to me that dignity is a very important part of the work of hosting. I think Lieven and Judith, our hosts at Heerlickyt know this well, and they host each other and the place there with very palpable dignity. THey are good teachers of the lesson of the house.
And so it was with the present sense of dignity that I was prepared to face the shadows that the hosting team for day three put in front of us. And it was an incredibly powerful invitation to step into the shadow. We first chose sat with the strongest thing that our collective invoked in us, a powerful resource that we have to move to the next level. To me it was Sayt’ kuulum goot, the Tsimshian and Nisgaa principle of being of one heart. And then, with this resource in hand, and with our senses alive, Anita Paalvast, a very powerful aikidoka, drew her katana and walked the circle, lowering the blade in front of each of us and challenging us to identify our fear and the shadow that is in our midst. For me the invitation lay very much as an invitation from one warrior in training to another: we must know our opponent, honour the worthiness of that opponent and be prepared to engage with clarity to cut that opponent in one stroke or die to it with dignity.
We moved outside and took our places at the rim of a large circle with our resources spread out around us on the rim and the fears and the shadows collectively held, placed in the middle. We studied the offers, acquainted ourselves with who was at our backs and bowed to the oppoenents in the middle. And then with the intensity she showed in drawing her katana, Anita invited us to collectively come to the centre and engage with these shadows letting loose the most power kihop we could, acting from a deep sense of spirit filled committment. That was the moment I damaged my vocal chords.
My surrender to the task was total. I saw in the midst two of my greatest shadow enemies – greed and failure – and I sense the presence of one that wasn’t in the middle, but instead lurking on the edge: dishonesty. I see these three things as especially dangerous to the territory of the open heart, and in committing to engaging with these opponents I did so from the stance of defending the open heart.
I said in the circle that followed that I feel that if we are serious about this work of addressing our collective shadow, and we are prepared to wield a sword in the service of this work, the sword of clarity and total commitment, then we must be accurate in our engagement and insure that no more than one cut is needed. I thought of the places I work, the communities and people I work with, where the emergence of open heartedness is and has been a dangerous proposition for a long time. In Bella Coola, or on Vancouver Island or in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, opening one’s heart can be an invitation to a painful battle. If we are called to work with open hearts, then the shadows of greed, failure and dishonesty (and many others) will be there to stick us and we must be prepared, as warriors, to fight them or to die to them. They are mortal enemies and casting them in these terms is not a game. It requires a vigilance in practice to defend the open heart in ourselves and in the places where we work so that it may drive the change and healing that is needed.
I was incredibly moved and surprised by my reaction to this exercise, and I sat for a long time after the circle ended. I was joined by my mates Carsten Ohm, Tom Hurley, Nicole Baussart, Maria Skordialou, Sarach Whitely and Toke Moeller. Carsten asked me what was in my heart, and I replied that I thought the call to address our enemies was a serious call and if we were to use the sword for this work, we had to know that there would be pain. Whether we hold our opponents with love or hate, if we are cutting them with precision, we are creating pain. I wondered aloud and asked my mates what they thought of the responsibility of love.
That day I felt a fierce commitment to defending the territory of the open heart and a fierce commitment to training in the practice of wielding love, for communities, people, ideals, possibilities and whatever else. For me, the Art of Hosting on Art of Hosting wrapped up after that circle, even though we still had a half day to go, During the open space I invited people to sit with me and teach me a song from their home place. I’ll post the recordings of these songs when I can get some time. They are beautiful gems, these songs, because they are offered out of a spirit of really open vulnerability, sung in the mother tongue of my mates, and watching them sing these songs opened my heart wide to who these friends really are.
I think this is our call. What do you think of the responsibility of love?
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A stunning video about the man who stood before the tanks in Tienanmen square
near Diest Belgium
Over the past two days I really discovered in myself the essence of the Art of Hosting. There has been a commitment here to searching for another level of the Art of Hosting as a practice, a community of people and as a teaching offering. Some of these conversations have felt more or less important to me but, if it is one think I have discovered for myself, it is that the Art of Hosting is actually the Art of the Open Heart, and in this deeper conception of the practices, I have discovered what it means to truly become a defender of the territory of the open heart, in service of the emergence which flows from open heartedness.
Our second day began with us returning to the pattern that we saw the day before, with the tarot cards. We were invited to spend a solid amount of time actually finding ourselves physically within each of the five stations of the Celtic cross pattern. Our host at Heerlijckyt, Lieven, led us through a process of creating a constellation, a process which is alive here in Belgium. This process resulted in us finding ourselves in relation to a small group of other people who were themselves in relation to the whole pattern. After twenty minutes of finding our place, we entered into conversations with those around us around the questions of why we were in the places we chose, what we have to offer from the whole and what we have need of from the whole.
I found myself in a group of five mates who were very close to the centre space, which represented the present. We were also oriented a little towards the side of what is not visible in the pattern, the pain that is in the community. From here we identified the need for a place of pure practice and a longing for mateship to support us in our work of facing the pain and helping healing. It’s difficult to talk about this exercise without getting into the detail of all of the relationships between the constellations of people in the room, but that was the essence.
Following that process, we entered into Open Space. I attended three sessions in Open Space, all dealing with different inquiries about what the Art of Hosting could become.
The first session was called by Monica Nissen and looked at the role of the Art of Hosting in facilitating long term social change. We looked at the work that is happening in Columbus, in the health care system in Wiltshire, UK and in our work with VIATT on Vancouver Island. We looked at the patterns of what happens as a calling group notices the deep need in a place, and comes together to embody the call by committing to hold the presence that is required to allow self-organization to take over at the level of projects, structure or action. We talked a great deal about the role of harvesting in this conversation as well, as it is good harvest and meaning making that allows a group to see how things are changing and to continue to keep the calling group in deep commitment to one another.
In the second open space session I attended, called by Toke, we looked what the Art of Hosting might be if we were a dojo, a place of training in martial arts. Many of us who work with the patterns of the Art of Hosting (it is really only a pattern and not a thing itself) feel the need to train in some core capacities that we can also teach to others. In fact it is these core capacities that lie at the essence of the Art of Hosting. To me, it is these five things that we really teach.
The five things are generosity, teaching, learning, friendship and courage. These five core capacities lie at the centre of our practice and there is a sense that the Art of Hosting is a dojo where we come and train these capacities in services of life and emergence in organizations and communities. I returned personally to these five capacities on day three.
The final open space session was one I convened on the Art of Governance. This has been a question that for me that is really important, arising out of conversation we had in April in Columbus Ohio where we deeply investigated the fifth organizational paradigm that transcends the combination of circle, hierarchy, bureaucracy and network that are present in the world right now. Thinking about what governance means in this context is very important, and I have a real need for learning on this topic as it is core to our work on Vancouver Island, where we are building community circles as a formal part of the work of implementing VIATT.
In this session, we began by noticing a very simple pattern about the art of governance. Toke spoke clearly that the art of governance was based on the three legs of leadership, structure and decision making. These areas are completely connected. Without attending to leadership and structure, decision making becomes superficial and pettiness enters it. Good leadership and decision making contribute to accountable and effective structure. Good structure and decision making demands refined and skillful leadership. When these three pillars are attended to, it is possible to go very deep into the art of governance. For me, what is clearly an edge is finding good decision making models especially for decisions that are “legal” as opposed to “social.” This is an edge.
Tom Hurley suggested we close this session by imagining that each person in the circle was a member of the community circles we are forming on Vancouver Island. From that place, people imagined what they would need from us at VIATT. I got some very practical and useful information from that exercise and will use that exercise with VIATT to presence our future when I am next with the organization.
At the conclusion of the open space, we returned to our meeting room to reoccupy the pattern and harvest the experience of our day in relation to the constellations that formed in the morning. That exercise concluded with a question about the pain and fear that lay in the shadow of our work and that is where we began day three.