Lots of travel this week. During the time I was away in Ontario working with labour educators from a number of Canadian unions I heard a great line from a Canadian Auto Workers educator that sustains him when he is challenged while doing good work: “You don’t always have to like th emembers, but you have to love them.”
I was reflecting on that line this week after I hosted an Open Space on Bowen Island, in my home community to provide a space for my neighbours to discuss a proposal to turn some of Bowen’s Crown Lands into a National Park. The proposal has received a mixed reception among islanders, but there has been some outright hostility as well. This week, a guy I consider a “howyadoin’?” friend, lambasted me for running a meeting that appeared to be “a ruse to appease the public.” I informed him that I was hosting the meeting all on my own, without anyone paying me to do so that a variety of views could be heard. His response was still negative, but in the end, like my friend in the Auto Workers, I had to conclude you don’t have to like your fellow islanders, but you have to love them.
And God love them.
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A lovely little passage from a book I am reading at the moment, that describes the allure of living with shadow. We are captivated by fog.
I fell to dwelling upon the romance of the fog. And romantic it certainly was–the fog, like the grey shadow of infinite mystery, brooding over the whirling speck of earth; and men, mere motes of light and sparkle, cursed with an insane relish for work, riding their steeds of wood and steel through the heart of the mystery, groping their way blindly through the Unseen, and clamouring and clanging in confident speech the while their hearts are heavy with incertitude and fear.
— Jack London, The Sea-Wolf
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What it’s like to fly with Peregrine Falcons & Gos Hawks:
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From my friend Jerry Nagel, a quote from guitar maker Phil Patrillo:
We send our kids to school. I call it the “brain laundry.” They teach them everything you don’t want them to know. It’s done in the name of education and fairness and righteousness, and the things of common sense and how things are done, are never explored. You get a piece of paper with your name on it, if you follow the instructions. I got a Doctorate not because I wanted the piece of paper; I got the Doctorate because my professor said to me, “You know more about this than I do and I’m the professor.” I wanted to know why things occurred. I always say that creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
That indeed is art in so many ways…it is the act of playing with space…the space between the notes that Miles Davisr talked about or the willingness to master and then let go of technique that Thelonius Monk talk about or the. In the moment, art is about knowing which mistakes to keep and how to surround them with silence and emptiness so that they can grow and come alive. Everything we do, if we call ourselves artists comes from that source.
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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.