I’m preparing to teach at an Art of Hosting gathering in Nova Scotia in a few weeks and as part of the conversations on design, we have been talking a little about what is required in order to confidently step into chaotic and unknown spaces. This morning, my friend and other co-host Toke Paludan Moeller sent a short poem from an Aikido master that sums it up nicely: When you step up, claim the mat as your own. Everybody you encounter and everything that happens is there by your invitation and your invitation alone, even the unexpected ones. Your job …
David, a friend of mine, and I were having a conversation the other day about religion, We were both trying to understand our present day connection to Christianity. For him, he was trying to reconcile faith with his humanist upbringing and I related how I was very interested for a time in becoming a Minister when I was a teenager, and since then drifted away from mainstream Christianity although I have had an enduring, although somewhat academic, interest in Christian spirituality. It only creeps into practice through music: I sing in a Christian Evensong chorale and that experience has brought …
I am a very mindful driver. For me driving is an exercise in flow and self-organization and I even see it as a bit of a giving practice. So I was intensely interested when my friend Kathryn Thompson told me of an article entitled “Why don’t we do it in the road? recently published in Salon, which talks about how to make streets safer by removing controls. “One of the characteristics of a shared environment is that it appears chaotic, it appears very complex, and it demands a strong level of having your wits about you,” says U.K. traffic …
In a meeting yesterday we were discussing the fact that the human species is approaching a cliff, a massive precipice, and that we have so far been completely unable to figure out how to turn back from the edge. I suggested that maybe it’s too late for that and we only have time to teach each other how to fly.
Also in Peterbourgh I met with David Newhouse, perhaps my most influential university teacher and a good friend. David arrived at Trent in 1989 from the Department of Indian Affairs in Ottawa. He came to teach in the Native Management and Economic Development Program, which at that time was a fledgling effort, mostly focused on economic development and with no real management curriculum. I was hired in May of 1989 to help research the field of native management, and I spent the first month of my employment searching for one book – any book! – on the …