It’s a nice mild spring day here off the west coast of Canada. I’m at home with my kids, and we’re playing games, baking bread and making soup. In fact, today my daughter cooked her first soup from scratch, an improvised Broccoli-Asiago cheese creation that tastes great. And so, here is our first ever Aine Corrigan-Frost soup podcast (with bonus dessert recipe).
My friend Toke Moeller and I are running an Art of Hosting training this week with 12 Aboriginal youth here in British Columbia. We are having a marvelous time so far with one day behind us and two ahead. There have been some good insights as we head deeper into the essences and practicesof hosting conversations that matter. Today we spent time in a natural circle of trees in Cathedral Grove near Port Alberni, which is a pokect of nearyl 1000 year old douglas-fir and cedar on the Cameron River. These old ones make good teachers, especially when we bring …
In meetings in the Aboriginal community, it’s not uncommon to have prayers end with “all my relations” an utterance that invites attention to everything we are related to, and everyone from whom we are descended. As someone with a mixed ancestry, I sometimes like to think of an Open Space meeting that might have all 128 of my seventh generation genetic ancestors in the room. It would be crazy! Imagine them in a room looking at each other,perplexed, wondering what they could possibly have in common. And then imagine inviting them to create something together. And imagine that at some …
I have recently come into a set of three nice 1/2lb juggling balls from Higgins Brothers (“The Physical Intelligence People”). Teaching myself to juggle has been a great learning practice. I first learned how to juggle in 1984, with three tennis balls, in my parents basement. The flow kicked in while I was watching the CBC news magazine program “The Journal” as Barbara Frum was interviewing the Ethiopian foreign minister about the famine in his country. That is how sharp my awareness was that evening: I can remember exactly what was happening when I finally got three balls to cascade. …
My friend Viv McWaters sends this note from Australia: “I’m just back from three days at the Port Fairy Folk Festival where I immersed myself in great music and bands and came away with lots of thoughts about how facilitators can learn a lot from musicians. The stand out performer was Harry Manx – a Canadian Blues/folk performer who combines traditional blues, amazing slide guitar, mohan veena, mandolin and harmonica and vocals with traditional Indian music. He says on the CD notes “Mantras for Madmen”: ‘When the silence between the notes says as much as the notes themselves, like the …