Quinault Indian Nation, Washington
On the first fall storm night, with the wind rain and surf pouring in off the Pacific Ocean, I come across this:
“I do not know if I have found answers. When I first became a monk, yes, I was more sure of “answers.” But as I grow old in the monastic life and advance further into solitude, I become aware that I have only begun to seek the questions. And what are the questions? Can man make sense out of his existence? Can man honestly give his life meaning merely by adopting a certain set of explanations which pretend to tell him why the world began and where it will end, why there is evil and what is necessary for a good life? My brother, perhaps in my solitude I have become as it were an explorer for you, a searcher in realms which you are not able to visit . . . I have been summoned to explore a desert area of man’s heart in which explanations no longer suffice, and in which one learns that only experience counts. An arid, rocky, dark land of the soul, sometimes illuminated by strange fires which men fear and peopled by specters which men studiously avoid except in their nightmares. And in this area I have learned that one cannot truly know hope unless he has found out how like despair hope is.”
[tags]Thomas Merton, hope, questions[/tags]
Nick Smith has a nice post on common vision and team building in which he offers a few useful approaches for building common bonds, prefaced by this:
I’ve never been comfortable with the word ’empowerment’. It’s speak to me of something manipulative and I’ve never found that motivation works that way. I tend to agree with what Henry Miller said, “The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.”
I like that.
Some notes and stuff from my trips around the web:
- Passion bounded by responsibility is one of the tenets of Open Space. To see how powerful this is in action, you should go and visit WikiClock. Very simply, it’s a clock that shows the current time if you update it to do so. It’s a ridiculous notion, until you realize that it actually works. And if you still don’t know what a wiki is, Viv McWaters has come across a video that might help you understand it a lot better.
- Jack Ricchiuto has discovered something about appreciative leadership in Aboriginal communities that has long formed the basis of my practice: “he understanding is that childhood traumas cause our souls to fragment. The work of healing is to enable the reclaiming of these parts of our souls – like wisdom, love, and courage – that are ours to reclaim.”
- It still amazes me how intimate people can be in person after engaging with each other over time on weblogs. Since my lunch with new friends in London last weekend, Richard and Kevin have both posted interesting thoughts about this particular lunch on their blogs. If you still haven’t had the experience of meeting someone physically whom you have known only through a blog, I recommend it. It will blow your mind.
- One of the processes we used in Belgium for looking at ourselves was a systemic constellation. I’m quite interested in this methodology (here is a website for the community of practice) and would welcome anythoughts from those who have used it in organizations and communities about resources that are useful for understanding it in those contexts.
- Finally this week, a note on a great looking training offered by my friend Christine Whitney Sanchez in Colorado this summer combining Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry, World Cafe and Polarity Management. It’s just one more offering on the kinds of things we teach at an art of hosting. You can also explore these ideas through a workshop with Myriam Laberge and Brenda Chaddock, which they call “Wise Action that Lasts.” (July 9-11 near Vancouver, BC) and of course you could also come to an Art of Hosting training, several of which are going on in Europe and North America this summer and fall.
Yesterday, in preparing for two days of teaching and training I spent the morning over breakfast reading some of th stories of Clayton Mack, the grandfather of my friend and client Liz Hall. I was reading about the way in which Nuxalk people gathered food from the land, whether it was the fish, game or plants and berries. He talked about the way the amlh – the spring salmon – were harvested using fishtraps. At one time there were 22 traps on the river. These traps would form barriers that the salmon would need to jump. When they jumped they were caught in a trap on the other side. There they would wait and the fishers would just gather them up. Whatever was surplus was let go upriver to other traps and villages.
This is a beautiful way to harvest fish, because it preserves life and delivers fresh animals to all who need them. It is the essence of a Nuxalk way of doing things.
Later that morning in the opening circle I asked why people had chosen to be in this training rather than anywhere else. From that conversation came a powerful statement. One woman, who works at the transition house in the community said quite simply and powerfully that leadership is simple revealing our own beauty to each other. We talked about the profound nature of that statement with respect to individual leadership but also in terms of the way communities lead as well. What would it mean if an organization within a community revealed it’s beauty in it’s work? What if communities exhibited leadership that way too?
From there we dove into a deep exploration of the power of appreciative inquiry. We went through the 4D process and then played with the Discovery phase by pairing up to look at another theme that emerged in the opening circle: the idea that Nuxalk culture should be at the centre of everything. A community reveals its beauty through its culture, and so we asked the question of each other: tell a story about a time when Nuxalk culture inspired you?
In encouraging people to interview on another, I invited people to practice the role of the Elder and the student. All of us will be Elders one day and the mark of an Elder is when you are called upon to tell your story as a teaching. And so, especially with some of the younger adults in our group, being invited to tell a story as if it is a teaching is a powerful invitation. And be invited to listen to a story as a student is a gift. When appreciative interviews are structured this way it creates a mutual relationship of gifting and support, and invites us to practice being both teacher and student.
The response to this set of interviews were very powerful, including stories of people who first saw their culture in all it’s glory after they were liberated from residential school. From those conversations we harvested a small set of principles around the teachings that we jokingly called “How the Nuxalk Nation saved the world.” The wisdom contained in these teachings is ancient, powerful, reality based and available. It provides a concrete set of principles around which people could design Nuxalk programs or organizations that are in line with a cultural perspective on the world.
On the second day, we spent time looking at leadership as an act of courage. We are playing with etymology in these days, looking at heart based leadership that proceeds from seeing. Heart-based leadership has courage at its root, derived from the French word coeur, meaning heart. We talked about the chaordic path as a path of finding the courage to encourage others and keep moving in the face of discouragement. Strengthening heart is a powerful leadership capacity and one which is in short supply in indigenous communities that have lived through decades of discouragement.
Leadership also comes from seeing. Spectare is the Latin worked that gives rise to the words speculate, inspect, respect and perspective. These are leadership capacities, the ability to see something that touches your heart and convene a conversation around it is a leadership moment available to all in which any member of a community can step up and start something. In fact it is truly the only way anything does happen.
This afternoon, we concluded our day with a world cafe on the question of “If you could do one thing to improve the lives of children and families in this community what would that be?” The idea was to demonstrate how The World Cafe can be a powerful process for getting a group through the groan zone by building shared perspective. What I didn’t expect was the harvest we took from this cafe. In an hour the group hatched an idea for a community house, in which people would be able to come and shine – radiating their beauty and their leadership, to cook and eat together, hang out together and learn the Nuxalk language and culture. Such a building could be built by the community and an enthusiastic team of people may well step forward in our Open Space tomorrow to lead the way on this project.
It has been a good two days of teaching and learning here, and tomorrow we run an Open Space with the community on what it will take reclaim control over child and family services for th Nuxalk Nation. With the capacity that is building here and the enthusiastic leadership, I’m looking forward to the day.
For my friends Toke and Silas and their learning mates in Kufunda who train in the arts of peaceful warriorship in the dojo there, using swords and inquiry to acheive clarity and peace.:
One day Soshi was walking on the bank of a river with a friend. “How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves in the water,” exclaimed Soshi. Hi friend spoke to him thus: “You are not a fish, how do you know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?” “You are not myself,” returned Soshi. “How do you know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?” – Kakuzo Okakura
“How can we know if we do not ask? Why should we ask if we are certain we know? All answers come out of the question. If we pay attention to our questions, we increase the power of mindful learning.”
— Ellen J. Langer The Power of Mindful Learning.
[tags]toke moeller, mindful learning[/tags]