Beyond Sustainability

On my way to Hawai’i, the big island to co-host a gathering called Beyond Sustainability: Creating a Community of Leadership based on a Platform of Reverance. This gathering has been several years in the making, and over the last two years I have been deeply involved in the design of the work, finding myself stopping and starting as we find the best way to bring high powered people together to connect existing work, explore indigenous worldviews and creating some coherent results that may positively affect the values that underlie consumer society.

It is a hugely audacious reach that we are trying for with this gathering.  A tipping of time and talent and ways of seeing that is intended to create a series of “start lines” towards new directions.  If we are successful in doing anything, the results will be quietly influential over a period of years.  We need a long view of time and a humble view of reach and we need to also play the balance of love and power that exists in the world to find the openings that will carry the seed of this work.

It has been a long slog getting to this point and the dynamics and energies of raising funds, navigating difference and balancing aspirations have given us some deep insight into what it takes to talk about values shift let alone engage in it.

Tim Merry,Luana Busby-Neff and I will be holding space all week for this, and I’ll try to blog about our experiences as we go, but I suspect my energy won’t be focused in a harvesting direction all the time.  Lots of space to hold at many levels, and in many ways, this is one of the most significant facilitation challenges I have ever undertaken.  Glad to be working it with good friends who can collectively hold all that may come up.

I feel Kiluea in my bones now, 30 minutes from departing from Vancouver to fly there.  Reverance is kicking up in my soul and I am humbled beyond belief to be in the work.

Bless us and wish us luck.