In the last couple of weeks I have been in deep and important conversations about the work of facilitating change in the world. I am just back from another Art of Hosting gathering, this time in Boulder, Colorado and, among the many many things that were on my mind there, the subject of talk and action came up. This was especially a good time to have this conversation as this particular Art of Hosting brought together many deep practitioners of both the Art of Hosting approach to facilitating change and the U-process approach to action and systemic change. …
I was in a conversation this morning with people who work in a big systemic field: early childhood education. It is one of those fields that is rife with research telling us what all the problems are. We have more information than we could ever use about childhood obesity, drug addiction, abuse, longitudinal studies on literacy and employment, links between diet and capacity, intergenerational issues of dependence and parenting…this list goes on. We know everything about every problem but one. The one problem we don’t know about is how to solve all of these problems. My suspicion – and this …
For the past two years, I have been active in the Art of Hosting fellowship. This is a global community of practitioners dedicated to uncovering the new and emerging forms of meaningful conversation and organizational shape. Together we have been conducting trainings, working together on projects and deeply learning our patterns. Several of our mates in this fellowship have been working hard to bring about an online presence for our work, and today it went live. So I introduce to you the brand new Art of Hosting site, a place that describes what we are doing, how we are doing …
From whiskey river Only to a magician is the world forever fluid, infinitely mutable and eternally new. Only he knows the secret of change. Only he knows truly that all things are crouched in eagerness to become something else and it is from this universal tension that he draws his power. — Peter Beagle
David, a friend of mine, and I were having a conversation the other day about religion, We were both trying to understand our present day connection to Christianity. For him, he was trying to reconcile faith with his humanist upbringing and I related how I was very interested for a time in becoming a Minister when I was a teenager, and since then drifted away from mainstream Christianity although I have had an enduring, although somewhat academic, interest in Christian spirituality. It only creeps into practice through music: I sing in a Christian Evensong chorale and that experience has brought …