Smelhmelhélch (Passage Island) at the mouth of Átl’ka7tsem (Howe Sound) before the snows came earlier this week. Some notes on 2023 while I have a moment to review them. The year began with the death of my father and is ending with worries about the serious and lingering health issues of other senior family members and so in a lot of ways this year has been split between personal grief during the first part of the year, and the waiting, supporting and attending in the second part of the year. Several times during the year, I haven’t found myself at …
In the Art of Hosting world we have a few shared core teachings that show up in nearly all the learning workshops that happen. At some point we talk about complexity – we usually explore the Chaordic Path as a simple introduction into complexity – and we always touch on the Four Fold Practice of the Art of Hosting. Back in 2014 I was doing a project with the United Church of Canada looking at the different levels of their structure in British Columbia and imagining what they could also be. If there is one thing that Churches have consistently …
“Many others have written their books solely from their reading of other books, so that many books exude the stuffy odour of libraries. By what does one judge a book? By its smell (and even more, as we shall see, by its cadence). Its smell: far too many books have the fusty odour of reading rooms or desks. Lightless rooms, poorly ventilated. The air circulates badly between the shelves and becomes saturated with the scent of mildew, the slow decomposition of paper, ink undergoing chemical change. The air is loaded with miasmas there. Other books breathe a livelier air; the …
One of the quotes I keep rolling out all the time is this one from Christina Baldwin: No group can prove itself safe by the definition of one member; it can only prove itself healthy and responsive to the the needs of different people over time Christina Baldwin, Calling the Circle, p. 172 I sometimes reframe this quote as “No one person can be responsible for safety in a group, but a group can learn to take responsibility for its own safety.” For a group to work well, especially if it is confronting challenges, uncertainty, complexity, or conflict, it needs …
Euan Semple was the first person I ever linked to on my blog. Today he posts a little reflection on his blogging practice: …I’ve always said, my blog posts are mostly memos to self. They are for me to react to the world around me and to see those reactions placed before me for inspection. Yes inspection by others but mostly by me. Being concerned about whether or not people like what I have written affects how I write. I guess this process mirrors our struggles to identify our true selves in the rest of our lives. The draw of …