My friend Toke Paludan Moller gave me a huge gift at the Practice of Peace conference. He issued a challenge and an invitation to work at a deep, deep level. Since I heard him speak these words, my work has changed measurably.
After the conference was over I asked if he could remember what he said and asked him if he could write it down. He did his best to put the ideas in an email, which I have recast as the poem that it is.
it is time!the training time is over
for those of us who can hear the call
of the heart and the timesmy real soul work
has begun on the next level
for me at leastcourage is
to do what calls me
but I may be afraidwe need to work together
in a very deep sense
to open and hold spaces
fields
spheres of energy
in which our
and other people’s
transformation can occurnone of us can do it alone
the warriors of joy are gathering
to find each other
to train together
to do some good work
from the heart with no attachment
and throw it
in the riverno religion, no cult, no politics
just flow with life itself as it
unfolds in the now…what is my Work?
what is our Work?
Joseph Allard 1873-1947
From The Virtual Gramophone
The National Library of Canada has published hundreds of 78s of early Canadian music in their Virtual gramophone project.
Joseph Allard was a superstar in his day, recording dozens of traditional tunes on fiddle with a sparse and tasteful guitar accompaniment. Sample Reel du capitaine (mp3) and then head over to the audio page to hear more. Do what I did: spend the day there.
Circle of Courage, from the Reclaiming Youth Network
Port Hardy, BC
Port Hardy is near the northern most tip of Vancouver Island. The fastest way to get here is by a Pacific Coastal Airlines Short 360 which is the only plane I know of with a square fuselage. We flew up through the first rains of the late summer, a storm system that has tracked low into Southern BC as the jet stream has begun to sink southwards. in the mist and fog, two ravens were playing next to the runway as we touched down.
I�m here to open space for the Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transition Team which is a group responsible for setting out a service delivery model for Aboriginal child welfare. This is the first of three community consultations that are being held around the Island.
Tomorrow I will do my thing, which is to say I will facilitate a meeting for 60 people with thoughts and passions for the kinds of systems and services children at risk need. I’m following hot on the heels of what was apparently a tremendous day of learning facilitated by Dr. Martin Brokenleg, a Lakota professor who is well known for his teachings on reclaiming Aboriginal youth at risk. His teaching model is called the Circle of Courage, and it is a medicine wheel.
The Circle of Courage, being a medicine wheel, is made up of four quadrants: Belonging, Generosity, Mastery and Independence. Brokenleg teaches that these capacities are inherent in each of us and need to be relatively balanced for us to live balanced social lives. It’s fairly obvious that any services directed towards children need to foster all four of these areas.
As I am thinking about my opening for tomorrow, I am thinking about the posting I made earlier today about places to intervene in a system and how one creates new paradigms by, as Donella Meadows says, coming “yourself, loudly, with assurance, from the new one, you insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power.” So i will use Dr. Brokenleg’s framework to suggest that as we contribute ideas to this process, we do so out of the paradigm that he advocates. In short, we have an opportunity to practice that paradigm right now, in Open Space.
Open Space acknowledges the four quadrants of Dr. Brokenleg�s teachings by inviting each person to see themselves as belonging to a whole, using generosity to contribute their wisdom to the group, drawing on their inherent mastery of life to share ideas and thoughts about what works and taking the step forward as independent folks with two feet, able to make choices about how they will spend their time and energy.
It is so important to embody new paradigms. We cannot expect the new ones to arise spontaneously without fully entering them and living within them. Tomorrow we’ll try a little new living.
Harrison Hot Springs, BC.
Spent the day in a meeting at Seabird Island First Nation, a large community which is part of the Sto:lo Nation located in the upper Fraser Valley about 150 kms east of Vancouver. I was working with a group who was in some internal conflict, and I was very privileged to be working with Herb and Helen Joe, two respected Sto:lo Elders and traditional teachers.
Herb told a very interesting story today. It was part of the Sto:lo creation story and it had to do with the destiny of human beings.
In the story, the Creator makes the earth and then creates all the creatures of the earth, including the winged animals that fly, the four-leggeds that run on the land, the animals that crawl across the earth and the animals that swim. Each of these animals were created perfectly.
When all these animals were created, the Creator looked around and noticed that something was missing. So humans were created. To do this, the Creator took a little bit from each animal and rolled it up into what Herb called “poor, weak, human beings.” The reason we are poor and weak is that we can do lots of things, but none of it well. We can fly a little, but we fall heavily to earth. We can run, but not as fast as a deer or a cougar. We crawl, but beetles and spiders can stick to the ceiling. And we swim, but nothing like a salmon. In short we struggle.
Herb finished the story by saying that it is our destiny to struggle because by struggling we learn and that is what we are put on earth to do.
The other day Michael Herman and were talking about compassion and mutuality. The idea is that mutuality is making someone appear as real to you as you appear to yourself.
Naturally this means understanding that the person sitting across the room from you at this moment is full of an inner life that is as rich as yours. Confidence, self-esteem, confusion, love, pain, grief, celebration – all of these things are known to them too.
It sounds so trite on one hand, but it is incredibly powerful the more I dig into this thought. So often we see others as “punching bags” able to absorb hurt that we project without any internal effect. And yet, we know damn well how it feels to be cursed at (or smiled at for that matter).
To say that someone appears as real to you as you appear to yourself is to understand that when we think of ourselves we rarely think about our bodies. As Douglas and Catherine Harding would say, we don�t even know we have a head. We don�t see our back…we only see a small percentage of the body that other’s see. What makes us real to ourselves in our inner lives of thoughts emotions and sensations. With practice it is possible to sense that every other person in the world also has this inner life, despite that fact that we usually only perceive them as bodies.
* * *
In a related move, Euan Semple at The Obvious? points me to The Global Rich List, which tells me that in an average year I am about the 50,000,000th richest person in the world, which puts me in the top 0.836 percentile.
I have a lot of work to do to understand compassionate relations when 5,949,632,435 are poorer than me. Five billion is a number I can’t even conceive of, but it does put minor aches and pains in context.