Finally settling into Peter Block’s book, Community: The Structure of Belonging. My partner has been hoarding it since it arrived a couple of months ago. In the opening chapters, Block takes inspiration from the likes of John McKnight, Robert Putnam, Christopher Alexander and others to crate some basic patterns for collective transformation. These are beautiful and quite in line with the work I do and the things we teach through the Art of Hosting. In fact, I’ll probably add this list to our workshop workbook. Here is the list, with my thoughts attached. From John McKnight: Focus on gifts. …
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On the OSLIST, Marc Steinlin posed a few questions that I took a stab at answering: What means “holding space”? What is the function, if demonstrably one can do without? The $100,000 question! Several of us over the years have written things on it (I wrote a whole book trying to understand it) but it is an elusive process. And I think it changes with the scale and size of the group AND most importantly with the pre-existing depth of their own relationship. If I was to generalize I would say that holding space means helping the group …
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The blog posts dried up because my evenings were taken in celebration, but here’s day four. There is a deliberate pattern that unfolds over the week of the Shambhala Institute. Monday is a day of arrival and orientation to one’s personal intention and the building of a collective field of learning. Tuesday and Wednesday, we enter the learning journey that brings us all to challenge and to the very edges of the internal questions we are living with. Thursday and Friday are about celebration and re-entry into the world. Thursday saw a plenary session that was startling for its content …
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From a conversation with Tenneson this morning, we were playing with a pattern of shifting systems that flows from skilfully hosted conversations. A simple pattern emerged, which is about bringing people together, shifting power and developing and hosting emerging beauty. In a linear form it goes like this: Gather people together from wholeness, including inviting the deeply personal into the work. Understand and work with a willingness to shift power. Cultivate curiosity: what could we really do together? Harvest what our Navajo friends call “the beauty way” a way forward that serves life and keeps people engaged in …
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Robert Paterson is musing about The Power of One. Seems his website will record 1,000,000 hits this summer. When he started blogging he had no idea that within five years, a million people would have hit the site. So I posted a question in his comments, and I extend it to you. If you knew that in five years 1 million people would read what you have written, what would you do with that opportunity? It might come as a surprise to some, but greatness is not predetermined. Great ideas do not emerge fully hatched, marketable and readily consumed by …