Just spent a delightful afternoon with Rob Patterson and his wife Robin here on Bowen Island. Rob is from Prince Edward Island and is a friend of my old pal from Peterborough, Peter Rukavina. We had a great afternoon wandering around Bowen and talking about a number of the subjects we have both been blogging recently, including a very cool conversation over lunch about transformation stories including Beowulf, the crucifixion story and the Ojibway creation story. We were struck by how many cultures use the image of water and a journey into water as a metaphor for the psychological journey …
From whiskey river: I thank God for most this …..amazing day; for the leaping greenly …..spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; …..and for everything which is natural, which is …..infinite, which is yes. — e.e. cummings …continuing the theme of opening as an affirmation and connection to reality…
Dave Pollard on recovering our sensuousness: So here we are, unable to remember the way home, unable to escape the prison, the solitary confinement into which our minds have been so seductively and systematically lured by the culture and language of civilization that now forms and informs the very neural structures of our brain. Only in art, in poetry, in wilderness, in music, and in the rare book that attempts to liberate us with those very abstract words and text-images that carried us away in the first place, those clumsy tools that are simply not up to the task, can …
In working with groups, especially doing planning, I am constantly struck by how hard it is for people to move from ideas to action. A lot of the time people are happy to brainstorm, and then consider action planning to be little more than a list of things starting with “we need to do this” or “we should do that.” Sometimes (!) groups will even get as far as making tables or lists with responsibilities assigned to specific names. But that is still not action. I often wonder if the size and magnitude of some tasks dissuade people from taking …
Ten pieces of interesting linkage for you collected over the last couple of weeks: An Interview with Martin Prechtel on indigenous soul indirectly via Jeff Aitken Very interesting work on measuring social capital in Northern Ireland Collaborative policy making resources from the Centre for Collaborative Policy via Happenings Youth as e-Citizens, a groundbreaking study on engaging youth activism online via Happenings Bruce Elkin’s resources to support coaching and personal, organizational and community success, including his book Simplicity and Success Nurturing a Faint Call in the Blood: A Linguist Encounters Languages of Ancient America via Jeff Aitken I’ve just spent the …