Yesterday was wonderful. We spent the whole day around a fire on MacKenzie Beach listening to three stories and reflecting back what we learned. Pawa’s father Moy and uncle Tim both told stories of growing up in a traditional family and village. For me Tim’s story of getting stranded with his brother in a rowboat was powerful and contained all kinds of teachings about leadership, knowledge and practice. In the afternoon we did the same with Admire’s story from Zimbabwe, the story of what is happening at Kufunda Village. A full day of deeply listening to stories, harvesting lessons and teachings. And then this morning, Tim’s story was reenacted. Myself and Kelly, one of the participants here, re-enacted the story of Tim and his brother in a canoe alternately rowing and baling and having to switch roles while the waves pitch and roll. Physically re-enacting the story, sitting in chairs and actually switching places as if we were in a canoe leant a depth to the story – teachings about balance and safety and working together. Feeling it is a whole different kind of listening.
One of the things that is happening here is that we are beginning to experience a really different sense of time. We are spending our days outside, blessed by constant sunshine that is a complete surprise at this time of year. We are gathering around a fire on the beach or sometimes outside one of the cabins where we are staying. Teachings are flowing in everything we do, from cooking to walking, to spending time alone. Time is so slow here and we are finding ourselves going to bed at 8:00 after the sunsets and waking up early in the morning. This is probably one of the most interesting teachings we are getting from the land itself, watching the tides come and go and the moon grow towards fullness, as we barbeque salmon on the fire and share the work of our little village.
Purpose is beginning to arise amongst us. And as that happens, offerings are beginning to appear as well, offerings of space for future gatherings, offerings of resources and friendship and deep commitment. We are still running the Indiegogo campaign so people from around the world are contributing there too, and you can join them. Tomorrow we continue our living in open space, heading out for a walk in the woods and perhaps playing some lahal later after the sun goes down.
The weather here on MacKenzie Beach near Tofino is unusually summery. THe families that were running around over the Thanksgiving weekend are gone now and only a few remain behind. We began our learning village with a circle gathered around a fire on the beach, maybe 20 of us, sharing Indian Candy (half smoked salmon) dried berries and tea, telling the stories of our names and why we responded to the invitation to join a week of learning together.
We don’t have young ones here, but the oldest is 82 and we have folks from Denmark, Zimbabwe, the United States and France in our midst. We are teaching and learning with love and kindness, eating and cleaning together, intrigued by the idea of Hahopa, singing songs and repecting protocols, making poems and songs together and starting to find the clarity of the new story we are here to create.
Tonight in the kitchen, where the truly great conversations take place, I was talking about how having the world here on this beach was a harbinger of the new story. the problems that people face in First Nations communities are directly related to the relations between the communities and the rest of the world. Hahopa, as it opens and begins today, was about the world coming to offer its own wisdom and to learn Nuu-Chah-Nulth wisdom. We are in learning together, leaning into a small whisper of a future world of reconciled humanity, beyond apologizing and forgiving – studying together, learning how to learn and live together, and doing it for the children.
All of these are the faintest whispers as we begin, but something is stirring. Here is the poem I harvested in our check in:
Admire’s desire is to ignite the fire of learning and knowledge
and knowing the college of the land, the culture that stands
for a thousands years
cattle farming and ocean rearing
living in open space to face
a way to govern ourselves
to stay true to our passion and the fashion that takes responsibility.Toke has spoken of the crazy token of blood
that moves through the veins and floods us with connection
between people and the land
and the waves that nudge us together in the foggy morning weather.My grandmother taught me with out ever seeing
the source of what was being shared with me
and what wasn’t clear to see.The loyalty and fidelity to peaceful refuge has formed me.
cultivating a future view in community can hospitality
sensing drala that is the real caller,
a deep holler from the land that wants us to stop and understand
what is born again in the sixtieth journey around the sun
What has begun
what it takes to cross places of struggle
confront that which wriggles within us
and begs to be bigger, a mind that can find
the compassionate line at the heart of her humanityI’m here for the long term, an uprooted farm hand
that has moved across lands
between worlds
where whatever shows up can be hosted by the whole
so the whole can know what none of us knows
what is encoded in the stories that lives in our bones.I am with family, my brother and my friend
and there is no end to the people I want to know
to extend my appreciation to this nation.My roots spread out and my re-beginnings are here
a clear reminder of seven dear racoons
begging for dinner under the light of the moon,This is truly my whale
and this journey has been us just getting to this canoe
bridging two worlds struggling
to renew an ancient way of being better together
weaving a generous
“ish” not the ish in “selfish”
but the ish in Hishukish tswalk
hahopa wealth, health and a stealthy
ceremony that restores harmony.This field now begins to grow
as we get to know the flow
that pulls us together
and respects my longing to be known by my name”What is the indigenous wisdom that needs to be shared with the world now?
I come from seal riders who plumb the depths of this sea
discover the passages that run beneath what we see
and I have sent my life with trees
and climbing the peaks – hawktooa.I was brought up to help, be proud of what we do and have fun doing it.
I am a woman of many names and none are remembered
but I carry them all contrarian call
that leads to the edges of the earthMy cedar and spruce roots
reach across this island
teach me to understand
how to conserve what has been given to usThe quality of people, quality of land, quality of time
to the watery hearth of the setting sun
this it, the learning village has begun.
Please drop in for a day if you are nearby. Also please donate to the Indiegogo campaign to help us meet the costs of this gathering and seed whatever comes next.
“Tell everyone you know: “My happiness depends on me, so you’re off the hook.” And then demonstrate it. Be happy, no matter what they’re doing. Practice feeling good, no matter what. And before you know it, you will not give anyone else responsibility for the way you feel – and then, you’ll love them all. Because the only reason you don’t love them, is because you’re using them as your excuse to not feel good.”
– Esther Abraham-Hicks
via whiskey river.
Heading to Hahopa today. Hahopa is an idea. It is a place of the heart and the imagination which is rooted in the Nuu-Chah-Nulth principle of “teaching and learning with love and kindness.” You might say that it is a place of grace, an ideal place where we can ground our happiness in an experimental way of being.
Hahopa is the dream of my friend Pawa Haiyupis. Pawa’s full name is Pawasquacheetl which means “she gives in the feast with the energy of bees coming out of a hive.” For years she has wanted to give the world a place where Nuu-Chah-Nulth teachings can be offered to anyone who feels that they are useful. Inspired by our friends at Kufunda village in Zimbabwe, Pawa and her family this week are embarking on an incredible dream. The work we do together this week will set in place a lifetime of contribution to the world.
So I am off to Tofino where we will initiate this endeavour being hosted by the land, the beach and the sea. We are open to seeing what will come of it and how it will flow.
If you would like to support this dream, please consider donating to the Indiegogo campaign and follow along here and on the facebook page where I will be helping to harvest what we learn.
Some of my friends and I with in the Art of Hosting community create poems from our work as a kind of harvest, a way of listening to the voices shared in a circle and reflecting back to the group, it’s wholeness using the words of those in the room. The poems are written on the spot and read into the room, slam style. Such poems evoke energy, and honour the whole. We call these “dialogue poems.” Here is the one from yesterday’s check in in Montreal with our core hosting team…
Hosting team Check in poem
Where did you practice?
Where did you act as if you could do this?
What does the silence have to show us?
What is inside this seed?A potential to feed what is needed everywhere
Hosting is caring so we’re daring to share
what is in our jardin communitaire:
101 ways in a single day
to face the case of urban space
fall into a call of enfolded breath
and die 101 little deaths, for co-creation to be the method
that we use to create and let go. Whoa. Peace flowsCaroline is on the scene
and clear love flows in between us
a clean passing of a piece to serve
the swerve and curve of jangly nerves
that the emergent life turns up.
This is a romance and a dance of hosted circumstance.The space of the public dream seems
to be called to scream from the megaphone
deep in our bones in the intention for an intervention
ot suspension to the conventional ways of doing things.
We meet despair with care for beauty and do our duty.Economics in the commons needs us to anchor danger
as the social order rearranges strangers into the angels of
the commons”but”but”
Words were never spoken for the broken structures I have seen
for the painful way we remain unclean in the unconscious hosting
that leaves us unseen and suffering the wasted talents of human beings
so I offer a new chance to call us all into the hall and
share the commoning of Montreal.When there is no room at the inn we move outside and work from the rim.
And all we need to take
is one minute, innit?
Because a crack is a small thing to make.Small is beautiful, but tiny is fuller
What is the smallest container that can hold the future?
A negotiation with a child, a wild realization that we only flower
when the smallest things claim their power
and we take an hour to be in peace with other generations.The appearance of the aperitif
Helps us arrive and be hereThis work can be hard
when we haven’t got a clue
and the parameters make us do things we don’t want to do
we host grief and hate and create the state
for the gates to open and action to gain traction
for a fraction of the cost of the money we’ve already lost.And then, abundance appears because we stayed with the fears
and the tears and we finally see everyone as peers.It was a ride to get a guide that would help us get inside
the Art of Hosting and glide us to understanding, landing whatever we can
as a resource to help us plan for this.Two thousand thirteen seems like a series of scenes
of moments that mean my life has seen
the real application of peace between human beings.
In cote d’ivoire, ravaged by war, a mayor named need
to plant a seed for people to lead the conversations
that stop the bleeding and meet the need for
the chief of chiefs to hold the belief that these ways of talking
can bring relief.Two hundred thousand years of leadership
called into relationship, mateship and friendship
in a moment of reconciliation for a nation
where you do not have to be sorry
for the story, but you must offer a forum
for the experience of peace and a shift to dignified decorum.We are not here to be small.
We all just want peace.
That is all.I am touched to be here.
Daring to appear
à table citoyen”where the rabble fits in
to chatter and natter about things that matter and
do it in public where the interests clatter
and find a place to practice together
co-create a project that’s better and better”
and shift my life to something unfettered.
by the separation that I’m deluded with.
Tend to the people that are coming,
feel the field and yield to the real.Since January for me
It’s been a race from place to place
tracing a line from space to space
and stopping a moment to face the grace
That I have to receive for living as me authentically
I hope to inspire near and far
people to be just who they are.En formations nous avons les informations
pour le realization de collaboration
we carried the living spark
of what was lit in Lafontaine Parc
embodied a some light that shone in the dark
flowing from our humanity, a practice of embodied calamity!I feel that I am a dwarf among giants
and ready to offer my heart and defiance
of what my own ego wants us to do
so we can be free. How about you?
Over the past few years Jerry Nagel and a group of practitioners in Minnesota have been working deeply with the Art of Hosting in the state. The Bush Foundation, who has supported a lot of this work, helped create 10 fantastic videos on the Art of Hosting and some of the methods of the process. You could look through these and get a great foundation in what it’s all about. Enjoy!
1. Art of Hosting – introduction: https://vimeo.com/72614471
2. AOH Community Conversations for the common good: https://vimeo.com/40679035
3. AOH Four-fold Practice: https://vimeo.com/69785461
4. AOH Harvesting: https://vimeo.com/69785465
5. AOH Collective Story Harvest: https://vimeo.com/69798732
6. AOH Chaordic Path: https://vimeo.com/69785462
7. AOH Chaordic Stepping Stones: https://vimeo.com/69798731
8. AOH Circle Process: https://vimeo.com/69785464
9. AOH Open Space: https://vimeo.com/69798729
10. AOH ProAction Cafe: https://vimeo.com/69798730