Thinking today about the challenge of engaging community for real change, and I am playing around with two simple on the surface, but difficult to execute ideas. I think though that if these ideas are executed, it creates the best possible conditions for sustained action and transformative change. The ideas, expressed as patterns, are: operate from a clear centre, and embody your future now. I was riding the ferry with my friend Patti DeSante who is at the moment in deep Zen training with Roshi Joan Halifax and exploring many aspects of embodied practice in the world. We were discussing …
Friends who fed me this week: Ashley Cooper on a piece by Parker palmer on teaching with heart and soul. Rob Bailey writes the owner’s manual on the coconut. Tenneson Woolf uses Wordle to produce a harvest whiskey river on the emotional mechanics of inspiration Mark Woods celebrates Edward Abbey’s passing with some excerpts from his work and meditations on deserts Peter Rukavina‘s unorthodox diary of his day without digital technology. Peter Rawsthorne on the ways we are shaping citizen eGovernment on Bowen Island.
This is Peter Reinhart, a master baker, a theologian and a story teller who has written a great book on baking called The Baker’s Apprentice. In this talk he discusses the science of baking, but puts it in the context of the meaning of bread as an act of transformation from living components to new forms. Reinhart speaks from the four levels of the literal, metaphoric/poetic, political/ethical and mystical level. As a novice bread baker, I have to say that my exploration of the literal level is just beginning, and although I make some pretty good breads now, this dive …
Citizens and political representatives on my home island of Bowen Island, at a meeting this week in which a controversial decision was made to build an artifical turf playing field at our community school. I didn’t run this meeting…it was a regular council meeting, but the one in which the decision was made. The soundtrack is something of a political statement from the videographer, but the images are beautiful. They show my friends and neighbours as they sit pitted against one another in a tense meeting over a deep quality of life issue. Just studying and …
On my way to Regina to work with the Urban Aboriginal Strategy steering committee there. We’re running an Open Space for the community on Saturday preceded by a community development/hosting training on Friday. Still designing the training and using the basic structure of covering invitation, hosting and convergence/action/decision making. Can anyone suggest exercises that might be useful in the context of a day long training to explore skills around these three areas? I’m interested in trying new things to teach the importance of these areas of attention. I’m looking forward to our Open Space. I …