Those of you interested in exploring the Art of Hosting, our pattern language for working with conversational leadership in living systems, might consider joining Teresa Posakony, Tenneson Woolf, Christina Baldwin, Ann Linnea and I at teh Whidbey Institute near Seattle in the New Year. Invitation and information is here. You presence is desired!
A combination of quotes from two different emails today on certainty. First from Ashley Cooper, quoting Daniel Sielgel: “When we are certain we don’t feel the need to pay attention. Given that the world around us is always in flux, our certainty is an illusion.” And then this, from Tenneson Woolf, who currently has my copy of Tsawalk: A Nuu-Chah-Nulth Worldview. From that books is this is a story of Keetsa, an Ahousaht whaling chief who runs into trouble when the space is no longer held for him: Every protocol had been observed between the whaling chief and the spirit …
A stump in a forest hosts life in a living system Photo by alastairb * NOTE: I changed the title of this post to better reflect the both/and nature of this conversation, rather than the unhelpful either/or way I originally wrote it. At the Art of Hosting last weekend, it finally came to me – the simple description of the different between facilitation and hosting as I understand it. So here are a few simple metaphors and a more detailed meditation. At the simplest level, you can think of a party. A facilitator is like a party planner, or …
One of the patterns emerging from our work in the Art of Hosting, is the practice of developing and supporting a core team that can collectively hold the bigger work that is being done. At the moment I am working consciously with the core team pattern at VIATT, with the WK Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Conference, with the Quinault Indian Nation on a tribal strategic plan and with smaller conferences and gatherings, including one next week – a conference exploring collaboration in the child welfare and family services practice field. On that one we have been working with …
Just back from an amazing Art of Hosting in rural Pennsylvania. Found this in my email box upon my return, send to me by my friend Toke: Not just any talk is conversation Not any talk raises consciousness good conversation has an edge It opens your eyes to something It quickens your ears And good conversation reverberates It keeps on talking in your mind later in the day; The next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said The reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness Your mind and heart have been moved Your are at …