Last night we were treated to an incredible concert here on Bowen Island by Susie Ungerleider and Sarah Jane Scouten, two of Canada’s finest singer-songwriters, lyricists who simply and directly reach for the soul, remind you of things you have loved and lost, of times that have rolled on and of places that hold the heart no matter how they change. Sarah Jane is Bowen Island born and raised, brought up in a family and a community that soaked her in folk music, theatre and language. She lives in Scotland now and this is the first time she has been back to play in her own small town in about seven years. I warned her on Facebook that she would be facing a love bomb of appreciation when she took to the stage at the Tir na nOg Theatre, and she was.
Susie Ungerlieder is a long-time mainstay on the Canadian music scene, and she has come out from under the cover of “Oh Susanna” as if, after 35 years, her alter ego in the song “My Boyfriend” steps into bringing the soul.
These two are accomplished crafters of exquisite song. Simply chords, folk/country/Americana idiom, but distinctly west coast Last night in concert they traded songs back and forth, in a barely amplified setting, both offering only the sparsest of guitar accompaniment to their lyrics. The songs are simple but powerful and evocative. From Sarah Jane’s lament of a World War 1 mother’s labours to Susie’s conjuring of the landmarks and zeitgeist of 1980s Vancouver, back when it used to rain and Teenage Head played in dingy clubs in East Van and the Town Pump turned you away for not having ID. What delivers them are their voices, and for both, the intensity of being back on home soil, singing songs that resonate just that little bit deeper with an audience who knows their place and knows a little of what has formed these songs.
It was a really special evening, and I’m thankful that one of this Island’s prodigal daughters returned to us for a night with stories from her travels, and a curious and incisive eye for what makes us all tick.
Funeral urn by Charles LaFond.
My friend Charles LaFond is a potter. He is also a man who understands how to make space sacred, whether it is the space inside of which life unfolds or a space between two people deepening into friendship and ever-generative mutual blessing. He is also cheeky while being earnest, and his work plays constantly with the dance of the sacred and the profane. His funeral urns, for example, come with his own cookie recipe, and he encourages you to use them as cookie jars until you expire, after which your body, which by that time will be composed of the most amazing cookies, can be stored within.
Today I was in a local gallery here on Bowen Island talking to one our local artists, Kathleen Ainscough whose work explores liminality, and especially the space where the natural world encounters the built environment. We dove deep into the subject of containers. I brought up Charles because we discussed how containers impart meaning to the things they contain. This is true of both the physical world and the social world. Kathleen noted that we carry french fries in disposable containers, making our meal meaningless. It’s a different story if you were to eat those same french fries out of your own funeral urn!
The point here, of course, is that life is enriched by meaningful experiences, and those experiences can often be induced with the emergence of a powerful and thoughtful container and a set of practices that helps us move from one world to another. Even in the example of eating french fries, there is something different, if only marginally, in eating fish and chips from a container made from one’s own local newspaper, than it is eating one from a piece of waxed paper with a fake newspaper printed on it. The same meal becomes a little different, a little bit more meaningful.
Containers induce meaning. If we meet in disposable settings, the contents of those meetings are likely to be just as disposable. If we don’t have time to build a thoughtful social container at work, then we can’t expect thoughtful responses to important challenges. No, you cannot do the same quality of work in a one-hour meeting as you can in a four-hour meeting. The emergence of rich social containers does not happen in a short stand-up meeting. Similarly, if our conversations happen on meaning-depleted social media pages, they are likely to be thin on relationality and thoughtfulness. Many of us prefer the slower conversations that happen in places like this blog, or in physical life, than on the endlessly scrolling field of social media sites.
The container itself is intimately connected to the meaningfulness of what happens within. Even in the play of sacred and profane, it is about the attention we give to what surrounds things and experiences that builds the importance of what takes (its) place within.
Most mornings, when I’m at home, I stroll down to a local rocky beach, coffee in hand, to begin my day in meditation. The beach is a pleasant 15-minute walk from my house. When I reach the water, I step from the asphalt onto a gravel path that meanders through trees, past thickets of blackberry bushes, and ends in a secluded cove facing east, towards the rising sun that crests over the 1200 meter ridges of the Brittania Range, the mountains that make up the eastern edge of the inlet in which I live.
I began visiting this spot regularly the day after my father died. This beach, in all its varying weather and seasons, became my sanctuary for healing and introspection. Whether on a sunny summer morning or during a dark, rainy winter day, it offers a place to simply be. It’s a space where I am held in the vastness of the east wall of Atl’kat7tsem/Howe Sound, where I sit still, observing the ever-changing dance of the waves, wind, sky, and sea. This spot is undeniably a container, but it is one that’s vast and overwhelming, akin to entering a cathedral. It’s a space so grand that my presence doesn’t alter it, inviting me instead to enter and surrender.
There are containers in our lives that we create with intent and control. There are emergent containers, birthed from many small collaborative actions. Then, there are containers like this one, pre-existing, ancient even, that hold us and are accessed by deliberately crossing a threshold that ushers us into a different state of being, thinking, and feeling.
Having a space like this in one’s life is beneficial, as many of the containers in which we work, live, shape, and co-create are embedded within much larger ones, over which we have little control or influence. The practice of surrendering to a larger context helps us fully immerse ourselves in a place and moment, to quiet our minds, rest, observe, and experience. In doing so, we also discover our inner reactions to our surroundings.
Maybe you have a place like this, or you can find a place like this. It might not be the mountains of a fijord, but it could be a forest, a park, a lake, a field, or the heart of a bustling city. Go there, observe, listen, and notice how little your presence in that space changes it, but how much you are influenced by it. Consider the audacity of imagining how you could affect or change it. Familiarize yourself with your humility and insignificance.
Our work in the world requires us to dance between the spaces we make and the spaces we inhabit. We can dance between these spaces and we can witness the dance of these spaces with each other. And all the while, we inhabit our own little containers of thoughts and feelings and intentions and motivations, every so subtly shaping and being shaped by dancing space.
One of the hallmarks of a complex problem is the fact that we are confronted by paradox and polarity everywhere we turn. When a situation has a both/and in it, it is dynamic and unresolvable to one choice or the other. It needs to be managed, lived with, coaxed into a place where the positive aspects of both can coexist.
These polarities exist everywhere in human systems. On my home island right now we are going through one of our periodic confrontations of the polarities that define our place. Fundamentally this polarity comes down to an age old struggle between change and stability.
It is well captured by my friend Ron Woodall, our local cartoonist who never fails to hit issues like this square on the nose.
In island communities, there is a palpable sense of identity liked to the boundaries that encompass us, the history and culture that unfolds in a small, tightly connected community, and the state of the place when we first arrived and formed our earliest, most idealistic, and most lasting impressions. From that moment on, change continues, and longing for what was intensifies. It may grow so strong that one no longer recognizes the place and disappointment, sadness and despair takes over. “This is not the Bowen I knew.” That realization makes some changes feel existential in nature, and they are. They are a kind of evaporation of the identity that we construct and cling to. Over time, one needs to seek meaning in the changes, helping to shape them or surrendering to them so that one’s connection to the place remains meaningful. Or one leaves, either physically or emotionally.
We have many polarities active on Bowen Island. Some of the ones we live with include:
- Affordable housing and high property values
- Attracting visitors and managing the crowds
- Isloation from Vancouver and proximity to Vancouver
- Public access and private property.
- Individual and community
- Accessibility and privacy.
Polarization in communities happens when people get locked in to one side or another of a polarity and try to influence policy in their favour. Populism can easily play on this sentiment. “Vote for me and I will protect you from those people who want everything to change. Stability. Tradition. Security.” versus “It’s time to do away with the old guard. Vote for me and I will drain the swamp, get rid of the deadwood and bring us into a shiny new world.”
The reality of governance is something like “Vote for me and I will aim to preserve what’s working for us while considering changes to the way our community works that may be hard to swallow, but might take us in a positive direction, while still preserving everything we’ve been that makes us unique.” Good luck running on that platform in this age. And yet the reality of governance, and especially local governance, is that this is actually the job.
Managing polarities is a critical aspect of leadership in a community. Local government folks and the other stewards of our community have to manage these polarities constantly. The change versus stability polarity is an important case in point..Change happens and we need to respond to it so that it is beneficial as a whole, to the land, to the local economy, to the citizens and residents. But preserving traditions and identity is important too, especially in small communities where social connections are important, and where a shared sense of who we are is helpful for doing shared things, like building infrastructure, helping those in need, and fostering good relationships that can be relied upon in a crisis such as a fire or an earthquake.
There are ways of working with polarities that help folks become nuanced and strategic and adaptable to the changing nature of the environment in which the polarity exists. Barry Johnson’s Polarity Management tool is one of those tried and true frameworks that I use to help folks think through the polarities that they face. It’s a very accessible tool too, and using it allows you to see a fuller picture of what is happening. Here are some steps to follow:
- Begin by identifying a polarity. Often if there is a conflict with two sides in a community, there is a polarity at its heart. Sometimes several positions can be concentrated into an overall polarity. If you have a Ron Woodall in your community, get them to capture it in a diabolical cartoon. Lay these out on a map like the one I depict below.
- Start with identifying the highest ideal or state that both sides of the pole are trying to reach. Then identify the biggest fear or the pit of despair that both are trying to avoid. These should be broad and abstract states, captured only in a few words.
- Identify the upsides of both pole. What’s GOOD and positive about making changes? What is the benefit of stability? You are looking to identify a positive direction of travel. If you are working with a group of people who carry different opinions but are willing to consider other positions, you can even have them identify the positive aspects of the OTHER side.
- Next, identify the downsides that will happen if we tip to one side or another. It can be valuable here if people championing one side are able to identify the downsides to their position. But if they can’t, have no fear. Those who disagree with them will have lots to offer!
- Once you’ve filled out the map, the next step is to find indicators for the down sides that you can use as early warning signs of a situation that is falling too far to one side or the other. These indicators should be fairly obvious and they can be used to monitor the situation. An important skill to managing in complexity is rigorously looking for the early signs of failure. A bias towards positive outcomes will almost always create a situation of inattentional blindness, whereby the early signs of failure are ignored because mostly things are going well. With a co-created polarity map, you can put everyone’s attention to use looking for these early signs.
- Finally, identify strategies to maximize the UPSIDES of each pole. What are things we could do today that would take us in THAT direction. Deliberately focus on each upside separately. You will find that these simple strategies help right the ship when the early signs point to you tipping too far to one side or the other.
Here is the polarity map I completed around the change versus stability polarity. Click here to see a higher res version on miro.
It’s easy for local governments, committees and even citizens to complete polarity maps on their own. A completed polarity map gives you a broad strategic canvas on which to operate. For volatile situations, it’s worth reviewing the map frequently and making sure that indicators and strategies remain relevant to the context. The process of making a map can also be a very valuable exercise to build your team and enlist everyone in helping to manage the polarity. It can also be used as a process to put conflict to work for a community. For those whose job it is to actually govern, polarity maps can make visible the challenge they face as they try to meet everyone’s needs well. They can provide a degree of transparency and complexity that helps keep populism at bay and enlists more people in the very real, very thorny and very political realities of policy and governance.
I’m curious if you have used this tool in local governance and what you have learned.
This coast is wet in the fall and winter. We get pummelled by atmospheric rivers that bring strong warm winds and days of rain from the south west. We get drizzled on by orographic rain. We get soaked by passing fronts. And the land drinks it up, the rivers swell and call the salmon back. If you don’t love rain, this is a very hard place to live from October through to March., when the light is dim and the air moist. Me, I’ve grown to love it. I love to be out in the rain, walking about, listening to it on the hood of my jacket, sitting by the sea and watching is dapple the surface.
This is a video of some Nuu Chah Nulth language speakers from Hesquiaht on the west coast of Vancouver Island on the north end of Clayoquot Sound. And not just any language speakers but Julia Lucas, Simon Lucas and Maggie Ignace. I first met Julia and Simon in 1989 on my first trip to the west coast when I visited their village for a week and got to spend time with them. They are revered Elders. Simon, who passed away in 2017, was a a lifelong champion for Nuu Chah Nulth fishing and political rights and Julia has been a knowledge keeper, educator and language teacher for decades. Maggie is one of the many Nuu Chah Nulth language learners who are building up their fluency thanks to videos like this and programs.
Largely inspired by a slow reading through this paper (“Over reliance on English hinders cognitive science“) I’ve been thinking a bit today about the Indigenous languages of this region and how they point at such different ways of looking at the world, while I sip team and watch the rain. While surfing and I stumbled upon this video today, noting that OF COURSE Nuu Chah Nulth has a word for “a person who walks around in any weather” and I was really touched to see Julia and Simon here.