Canada is about to be roundly shamed at the Copenhagen summit, and it can’t happen swiftly enough or with enough emphasis for me. Our government is showing itself to be a dinosaur when it comes to tackling climate change. Here is Stephen Harper touting a total myth:
“Without the wealth that comes from growth, the environmental threats, the developmental challenges and the peace and security issues facing the world will be exponentially more difficult to deal with,” Harper said in an address to South Korea’s National Assembly.
via Harper Says Global Recovery Must Precede Environment (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.
The truth is actually the other way around, but Harper is so willfully blind to the realities of system thinking, climate science and global consensus that he has chosen to act as a bully and a coward all at the same time.
George Monbiot recently wrote a slamming indictment of our potentially negative contribution to these climate talks coming up. It seems that, doing the bidding of big oil, Canada will try to scuttle the talks by dividing and conquering the conference. The Saudis will be hiding behind our skirts delighted that they don’t have to be the bad guys.
So, rest of the world, you need to know that Harper has never governed in Canada with a majority of Parliamentary votes, nor has his government ever had anything close to a mjority of the popular vote. It is a particular set of regional political anamolies that has resulted in him becoming Prime Minister. Canadians have never wanted him to govern in numbers that would give him a mandate to speak with such surety about what we want as Canadians, or what our role in the world should be. He has refused to govern cautiously as a minority leader, and has refused to even try to build consensus, choosing instead to be a brinkman of the highest order and calling the bluff of the Opposition parties who have ended up supporting his bullying through a fear of their own political hides being hung out to dry.
So knowing this, world, and speaking as a Canadian, I hope you will not hold back in exposing Harper for what he is, and challenging at every turn his right to speak for Canadians. He should be a marginal curiosity at this summit, and he will be if YOU ALL put him there. Please do not accord the Canadian government’s position at this conference with any of the respect that is usually accorded to us. We sometimes are allowed to punch far above our weight, but in this case, call the man’s bluff. He does not speak for most of us.
My friend Robert Oetjen was a key member of our hosting team at Altmoisa. He brings a lovely capacity to the work, being the head of an environmental learning centre in southern Estonia, he understands the deep connection between human and world, and is a practitioner of the most ancient arts of human kind: tracking and fire building. He is a man who is a beautiful learner from his environment. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, he moved here in the early 1990s as a Peace Corps worker, teaching English in the days in which Estonia was hungry to claim it’s relationship to the west. But like all good improvisers, he allowed the climate to change him, and he began deeply intimate with Estonian culture and language, married and Estonian woman and moved into becoming a steward of Estonian natural places. He speaks the language fluently and beautifully and Estonians, who are normally wary of outsiders, embrace him and respect him, and always forget that he wasn’t born of this land. I can imagine, after being here for only a week, how it must have happened that he became so quickly embraced here. The land and the people are reserved but when they open to you and you open to them, the embrace is deep and multi-layered.
Robert brought this consciousness to the beginning of our third day, leading us in a check in exercise on the land that taught so many things on so many levels. We simply stood for a while in the cold gloom of an early Estonian autumn morning. The air was very still, but an occasional light breeze reminded one that one still has bones. Robert invited us to first of all become aware of the extent of our vision, noticing how wide it extended on either side of us, and how high and low a soft gaze can perceive. From there we closed our eyes and let our ears open to the subtle soundscape around us. For me this was wonderful because this is my morning practice at home. here the soundscape is similar, but the sounds are totally different. Many birds were quietly moving in the trees and shrubs around us, among them bullfinches, bushtits, creepers and hooded crows. A raven called far away and a dog barked softly across the fields. Deepening into this sense of place, Robert invited us to smell the mud, and the leaves on the ground, the apples that had fallen from nearby trees and were slowly decaying, turning sweet and pungent on the ground. Our senses fully awakened, Robert then taught us how to walk again.
One foot softly in front of the other, gaze open, like a hunter becoming aware of every sound and movement around us. Each foot develops eyes of its own, feel its way on the land, so sensitive to what is underfoot that it’s is possible to walk without making a sound . You become a part of the landscape, joining it completely, becoming enmeshed within it, so that everything that happens happens WITH you rather than as a RESULT of you being there. This is a huge and important teaching about harvesting. As you learn to walk in this way – Robert called it “foxwalking” – you become a little quicker, a little more sure footed, you are able to move deliberately and yet not disturb anything around you. It was a powerful way to experience hosting and being hosted, joining the field and harvesting in the moment, becoming fully present.
And it was just the first of two morning acts. Following a walk on the land in this way, Robert invited us inside and proceeded to make a fire, using his tools of a fireboard, a firestick, a bow, a handhold and some dry moss tinder. He gave a beautiful teaching about the archetypal elements of this practice, the fundamental unity of male and female with the firestick and fireboard, the notch that allows dust to come into the space that is created by the friction to birth the spark, the notch is the womb and the spark emerges from the union, the bow that turns the stick through the four directions, gathering the energy of the circle to create powerful life. Such a rich practice, such a beautiful fundamental teaching about application. It continued to resonate through our final day. As I left Estonia this morning, Robert gifted me a set of these tools for my own, a deep invitation into practice and learning this ancient art, the first act of survival to build a fire out of nothing, and the primal act of community building. the spark begins the possibility of coming together.
The rest of the day flowed. Toke and I gave very simple teachings on application. I talked a little about the improv principle of “notice more and change less” speaking about the fact that what we had experienced is a more profound way to open to possibility than feeling that we need to change all the time. the world changes enough as it is. If we can simply stay still long enough in one place, everything we need will flow past, timing will present itself and pass away, the possibilities for action become expansive.
The group went into Open Space to work through their design questions for projects that they are deep within. We rolled and flowed and talked and drew and at the end of the day, ran a little intention grounding exercise that involved milling around and collecting questions on our next steps, and then we checked out with voices of appreciation and gratitude and an eager commitment to meet again in February when this cohort of learners will assemble for their final co-learning journey.
It has been a great pleasure to spend time with this group, to make many new friends who are cracking good work in Estonia, exploring the leading edges of participatory leadership in a country that is slowly coming back to life, and to remembering its deepest gifts and resources. Many stories, practices and inspiring thoughts are coming home with me, right into work with First Nations on the west coast of Vancouver who are reclaiming their own resources of cultural strength and the renewed use and management of the marine ecosystems on which they depend. My big learning is that the skills and practices of participatory leadership are all around us, deep in the ground of the cultural legacies we have inherited as humans on this planet. And when we can talk and learn and share between traditional indigenous peoples, we discover so many modalities that are from the same root.
Sad to be leaving, but happy to be coming home from four days of teaching, fuller than when I left.
Toke and I along with our Estonian colleagues, Piret, Robert and Ivika, began our three day participatory leadershipworkshop today. We were join at Altmoisa by 20 young-ish leaders who have been training together since the summer in the Art of Hosting and who have been using participatory meeting methodologies in the places of work. Tis workshop is intended to take the exploration of those practices deeper, and extend the learning that comes from hosting into the realms of leadership.
This is the first Art of Hosting workshop I have done in a language different from mine. Although most participants speak English (and I speak no Eesti) a few need whisper translation to follow along and Toke and I have someone whispering in our ears when others are speaking. It’s going well, and I’m getting used to connecting with the speaker rather than the translater when folks are sharing thoughts and insights.
In the opening circle, which was around the questions of Who am I today and What has been a recent example of participatory leadership, I made a long poem harvest from the stories that were shared. It’s clear here that people are both pressed for time, and feeling the need to feed a hunder in their organizations and communities for more participation. Like everywhere, when folks get a taste of participation, they want more of it, and most folks are here to continue their learning and sharpen their skills in offering.
One thing Toke and I are doing is trying to reduce all of these concepts and practices to basics. What are the basics that you need to host participation, whether in a meeting, and organization or a community? We riffed today on the four fold practice of the art of hosting, and explored the basic practices of being present, cultivating participation, being purposeful and practicing co-creation. We taught for a while, combining a little aikido in with our work and then the group met in triads to crack questions for their learning agenda together. We taught a little more and then went into a cafe to ground our learning, discovering where these basics show up in our lives and work and what the next level is regarding cultivating a deeper practice of these ways of working.
I like this idea of going back to basics, teaching the essence of practice and then having people find out how those things can take root and grow in different ways in their own lives. It is a lovely way to take what ones learns as a host and extend it to other parts of one’s life, whether its parenting, living in community or be a participatory leader.
When I was 10 years old, my family moved to Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, just on the north edge of London and eight miles away from White Hart Lane, the home of Tottenham Hotspur. I lived in the area for three years which were glorious years to be a Spurs fan, as we won two FA Cups and had a great team with the likes of Glen Hoddle, Ozzie Ardilles and Ricardo Villa. I grew to like football alot, and although I lost touch for a number of years, the rise of internet video has made it easy to follow my team once again, and so I have been, especially this year, when we are having a great season.
English football runs on a very different system than North American sports. As a lifelong Toronto Maple Leafs fan, I have recently abandoned a 40 year addiction to NHL hockey because the league is screwed. In North America, the league owns the teams. there are no real home teams, and with the exception of a few that will never leave, the NHL can whimsically move franchises hither and yon, even to the desert of Arizona if they wish, which on the face of it doesn’t seem like a very good place to move a team from Winnipeg. And it wasn’t.
In short, the League controls the teams and top down control mechanisms are a little disingenuous when it comes to fan support. Fans give the impression that the team is theirs but it really isn’t.
In contrast, British sports are very much a bottom up model. Although the Football Association is well established, it is a chaordic structure that is based on an agreement. The FA looks after the national teams and runs a tournament called the FA Cup. Teams choose to play in the Football League, or not, which structures home and away fixtures through several divisions. Teams play in one division and can move up and down depending on how well they do year to year. At the highest level, teams play in the Barclay Premier League, the elite league, and yet another chaordic structure. The Leagues do not determine which franchises will play where, nor whether or not a club can exist. Each one simply sets rules of engagement for it’s own tournaments, and everyone signs on. The result is that in the FA, you have teams who are owned by multi billionaires and you have teams that are owned by supporters. Certainly to compete at the highest levels you need the talent that money can buy and so the teams at the top usually have a big backer or two. But the nature of promotion and relegation within the League system means that little fish can enter the big leagues, and so you get these family owned clubs like Wigan (who were the butt of jokes as a fourth division team when I was a boy) entering and staying on at the top flight with the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea and my beloved Spurs.
And that structure and sense of family, and reliance on the supporters for their ongoing existence means that gestures such as this one are possible: Last week Spurs racked a record win against Wigan, beating them 9-1 at White Hart Lane. The Wigan players were so ashamed of their performance that they got together and offered to refund Wigan fans who attended the match OUT OF THEIR OWN SALARIES: (See Wigan refund fans who witnessed Spurs massacre.) That kind of bottom-up accountability comes with a longstanding relationship between players, owners and fans. That would never happen in North America, where players and owners are immune from performance, where all that maters is money and if you lose, you move. Wigan can’t move. They either survive or fold. And their survival depends entirely on their supporters.
So I’m doubly impressed this week, with the Wigan players for displaying great integrity and for Spurs for kicking their asses!
I’m off to Estonia on Saturday to run an Art of Hosting workshop with Toke Moeller and Piret Jeedas. To say I’m excited is an understatement.
First, this is only the second trip to Europe I have made since I left the UK in 1981 after living there for three years. It’s interesting to see how things have changed in Europe over 30 years. On this trip I am intending to connect in London, during a brief stopover at Heathrow, with one of my school buddies from those days, who I last saw when I was just 13 years old.
But the real highlight of the trip will be the time spent in Estonia, a nation that has one of the largest traditional repertoires of folk songs. Only a million people live there but there are tens of thousands of songs that are shared and sung by everyone. So important are these songs that it was through music that a cultural movement was born in the 1980s that led to Estonian independence from the Soviet Union without a single drop of blood being shed. There is a terrific new eponymous movie about The Singing Revolution which we watched last night as a family. The essence of the film was that Estonian culture, language and tradition formed the basis for a slow and patient awakening of cultural sovereignty and pride that led to mass meetings and gatherings, and the singing of traditional songs of affection for the nation. From that current flowed the courage and will to establish political sovereignty that resulted in the self-liberation of Estonia from more that 50 years of occupation by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
To offer a workshop on the Art of Hosting powerful conversations in a nation that has done that seems a trifle hubristic. But the Estonian story is one that lauds the power of vision, courageous commitment and self-government and it provides both a tremendous ground for our work and inspiring lessons for those of us whose nations are still labouring under colonial administrations. With so many First Nations in Canada clinging to language, culture and music, what I am about to learn in Estonia can provide me with some important lessons about how cultural expression, skillful dialogue and courageous participatory leadership can result in profound social and community transformation.