Here are a number of bits and pieces that have been waiting around for ages to get posted:
- Donella Meadows on being a global citizen and dancing with systems. From Bill Harris at Making Sense with Facilitated Systems.
- Getting Started with Action Learning, also from Bill.
- Dave Pollard on indigenous capacities for learning and discovery:
The word indigenous* means ‘born into and part of’, and by inference ‘inseparably connected to’. We are all, I think, indigenous at birth, born into the Earth-organism and connected in a profound and primal way to all life on the planet, even if we are born in the sterile confines of an ‘antiseptic’ hospital. But we are quickly indoctrinated into the civilized conceit of human separateness, and that conceptual separateness is reinforced by a physical separateness until, soon enough, we forget that we are a part of a constituency greater and deeper than family or state. Conception thus becomes our reality.
My most important moments of learning and discovery have occurred in those rare moments when I’ve been able to briefly shake that illusion of separateness, and re-become indigenous, liberated, part of the real world.
- More Dave, on what we can learn from aphids:
If I’m correct, then the aphid I’m looking at right now does think and feel. She wonders. She is curious. She experiences the profound joy of living, and the commensurate desire to go on living. She enjoys the company of and communication with others. She is driven to learn and gets satisfaction from doing so. She experiences emotional grief and/or physical pain at being lost, separated, witnessing the death of a fellow creature, or being stepped on. She cares about all the life she can fathom, and as long as she lives she fathoms more, and passes along more knowledge, and more reason to care, in her DNA. That is why she is here.
- Na’Cha’uaht on Indians and oil:
One of the most basic and fundamental Nuu-chah-nulth principles is embodied in the phrase, “Hish’ukish Tsa’walk” (Everything is one/connected). A full comprehension of this principle teaches us that we cannot support unsustainable development. We cannot support an industry that would threaten our watersheds with complete devastation. We cannont gladly shake the hands of corporations who use proxy governments (US, UK etc.) to wage wars all over the world, killing other Indigenous people. We cannot make the best of an inevitable corporate imposition by selling ourselves for a few jobs and money. We cannot accept this inevitability.
- Squashed Philosophers, a redux of the major thinkers that underpin Western thought.
- Getting out of confusion through conversation by Nadine Tanner:
Conversation can help move us out of the discomfort of confusion. Inquiry opens a space for meaningful conversation. It makes your intangible confusion visible to others so you can begin to build a more complete understanding.
So, next time you’re confused try staying with it for a while. Share it with others. Start conversations. Connect the otherwise unconnected dots
- Patti on following desire lines:
When faced with a bird’s eye view of my own desire lines, measuring in quick paces the decisions I’ve made or not made, do I allow them to become the real path, or do I put up a concrete barrier to redirect myself back to the “official” road? And what is that process of creating our own path? What feelings does it entail, engender, cause?
As Finch said,
“Sometimes, following unknown paths, we find ourselves in a maze of growth, in failing light, unsure where we are, flailing through jungles of stiff, impenetrable shrubs and sharp briars in deceptively benign-looking woods. All at once we realize we are lost, unable to retrace our steps. Then, suddenly, we come out onto a paved highway, far from where we thought we were, feeling a gratefulness and a relief we are ashamed to acknowledge.
But sometimes, just sometimes, we come upon a new and unexpected clearing, a magical place unanticipated in our daily thoughts or even our dreams; and when we do, we are so amazed that we cease even to wonder whether we will be able to find our way back home, or, perchance, whether this might in fact be our new home.”
- Lisa Heft’s collection of papers on Open Space Technology
- Kevin Harris’s musings on community leadership, with links to an interesting paper.
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In meetings in the Aboriginal community, it’s not uncommon to have prayers end with “all my relations” an utterance that invites attention to everything we are related to, and everyone from whom we are descended.
As someone with a mixed ancestry, I sometimes like to think of an Open Space meeting that might have all 128 of my seventh generation genetic ancestors in the room. It would be crazy! Imagine them in a room looking at each other,perplexed, wondering what they could possibly have in common.
And then imagine inviting them to create something together. And imagine that at some point someone suggest that this incredibly eclectic group of people create a child in seven generations. A child that would carry all of their hopes for Ireland, for Scotland, for Nishnawbe-aki, for the Manx. And then I rememeber that I am the outcome of that Open Space meeting that never happened, matured exactly seven generations.
Once in a while I look around a room full of 120 or so people and I think to myself, imagine if what we created as a result of this meeting was a human being emerging in 250 years that would be the child of all of us. And suppose we decided that we would put our trust and faith in that child.
It’s amazing what a diverse group of 128 could create together.
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On Monday I was up in Kamloops taking part in an annual gathering called the “Stop Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth” Conference. That’s a mouthful but it’s a truly wonderful annual gathering hosted by The Justice Institute of British Columbia (itself a great thing we have here in BC).
I was asked to come and deliever a workshop on dialogue and deliberation methods with youth, and so I showed up to do that. In my design I though it would be cool to see if I could give people a tast of what it feels like to be engaged so deeply that we experience emergence. I wanted people to experience what it feels like to work from their strengths and have something appear about youth engagement that no one person brought into the room with them. And I had 2.5 hours.
I began where I always begin, telling the story of the quadrants, and mapping the four open space practices in some detail (link opens a .pdf). Instead of filling in my own practices, I asked people what their practices were and we filled in the map together. This is important, because people truly do know how to do opening, inviting, holding and grounding. It’s just a matter of turning their attention to how they do it.
After that, we moved into an opening practice, with a bit of an Appreciative Inquiry experience. I invited people to pair up and interview one another on the question of “Tell me a story or two of a time when you felt deeply engaged by others. What might we learn from that about engagement in general?” People spent a very short time interviewing – 10 minutes each – and then they returned to the circle.
Next I gave them a taste of The World Cafe and we moved into fours to process some of this learning. The question for the first 20 minute round was “What can we learn from these reflections about deeply engaging youth.” After the first round was over, the groups mixed up and continued exploring the question. At the end of the second 20 minutes, I asked them to remain in their spots and turn their collective minds to discerning “What ideas want to hatch now?” The third round was quieter and more deliberate.
Finally we reconvened in a circle and I invited reflections about where we were at after spending this time thinking through this work. We got a number of ideas, including thoughts about deep listening, about approaching youth where they are, both physically and emotionally and about showing up completely authentically in engagement and with curiosity about where the process might lead. There were also a number of “aha’s” about detaching from outcomes.
In just over an hour and a half, using nothing but the resources and stories of the people in the room we did experience a little bit of emergence and a I think everyone got some good ideas out of the session. If we had had more time, I would have then worked with the most interesting ideas (as determined by the group) and perhaps split people up into little design teams to figure out how these principles might work in a grounded engagement process. Then we could have melded these conversations together into some tools and approaches that might be useful.
I think the biggest learning for people was just how fast learning can take place when you are engaged in deep conversation about stuff that matters. And how the most important person in that kind of process is not the facilitator or the teacher, but the experts you are surrounded by, and the stories and experiences of your own life, seen in a new light.