In June I wrote about the work of living in the territory of the open heart. This is a strong personal claling for me. Today I stumbled upon this video of the mayor of San Diego doing just that – approving a resolution to endorse same sex marriage in his city, in part because his daughter and some of his staff members are gay and lesbian. It’s a hard, tearful and emotional place to be, but it is worth it for the change that will come from decisions made in this place.
Carman Pirie with a nice bit of noticing: The good folks at Facebook are facing a bit of a backlash after closing the account of at least one Canadian mother whose snaps of her nursing her child were deemed obscene.The Facebook group “Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!” is gaining members as fast as Angelina Jolie’s fan club…. all of them rather put off by all of this. The way I see it, the rules have changed. Just because you’ve built (and could sell for an incredible amount of cash) a social network like Facebook, doesn’t mean you own it. …
One session in Camden last week that really grabbed my interest was hosted by my dear friend and colleague Father Brian Bainbridge from Australia. Brian is another remarkable man, generous, dry in his humour and open hearted. He has been working on a little book for a while about brining Open Space to parish life, which documents his stories of working with the parishoners of St. Scholastica’s in Melbourne. In a little over two years, Brian has been exploring the transformation that comes about from shifting from the managerial worldview to the open space worldview. What …
Here is a selection of interesting papers for your summer reading: Is it time to unplug our schools? – Almost everything published in Orion is interesting. This article looks at what schools are doing to teach a deep relationship to nature. Altar calls for true believers – on the challenge of practicing what we preach with respect to sustainability. This is a good piece on why systemic change in general doesn’t necessarily correlate with necessity. Horse Power – Old technology for a new world. No coffee – A great piece on Jurgen Habermas, coffeehouses and the power of conversation. Modern …
The Elders are with us. Could we do this locally? We are building Elders into the work of the Vancouver Island Aboriginal Authority for child and family services. What if the Elders sat in Council for all of us here?