The other day on the Art of Hosting facebook group, my friend Cedric Jamet asked folks for some materials about the four fold practice, which is the basic essence of the Art of Hosting. Toke Moeller weighed in with his latest posters from a session he was leading with graduate students in sustainability leadership.
Toke was, of course, one of the originals who put the four fold practice together and like all good generative frameworks, it has changed over time and it gets expressed in different ways depending on context. But the essence is that it balances self-awareness and focused practice on a life of participation in the world with the good leadership practices of hosting others and co-creating useful things. I’ve written about it alot. Upon this framework hangs a world of practices from meditation and reflection, to good dialogic practice, to facilitation and participatory leadership and decision making.
I have worked with Toke enough to know that what he probably did was to teach these four practices and then have people discuss where they show up in their own lives, and so I thought I would take his words, in bold, and reflect a little as if I was a student in the class. The prompt question Toke asked his class was “How may my personal practices enhance me and my leadership for a more peaceful and sustainable world?”
Host yourself to know yourself – be awake. These days I am finding myself on autopilot alot. Same rhythm, same kinds of activities, all done at the same desk, the same way. It has been a hard winter following on a hard year in terms of mental health, and a couple of holidays including one just ending now have served to create some breaks in my routine. I will see what i come back to, but one ritual I will be retaining is an early morning contemplative walk and 20 minute sit in a place near my house, next to the sea. To get out in the morning has been a godsend, and my physical and mental health needs this. All in service of jagging myself awake. I feel like I am in danger of a mental slumber. And so, break a pattern to awaken a pattern.
Be hosted to grow the listener and student in yourself – be a curious participant. The last two years have deprived me of one of my favourite activities, which is to sit and listen to others tell stories. I haven’t been travelling, I haven’t been sitting at the pub welcoming whoever walks in. There is no better way to develop your curiosity than to sit and listen to another person telling a story. Social media doesn’t cut it. I find myself too quick to respond, often unable to discern nuance. My curiosity gets pinched down to a small sliver and my judgement, fired by brain chemicals, gets all the fun. So practicing listening, to the forest and the sea, to the conversations of my neighbours in community, trying to figure out what to do as we come back together again, with a two year absence of joint history making. Listening to clients. I am looking forward to my first hands on facilitation gigs (not open space) where listening is a key part of what we will be doing. I’m all ears.
Step up to host others so they can grow their listener and the lifelong student in them. Years ago Toke and nI were sitting by my wood stove talking about teaching as we were preparing to deliver an Art of Hosting on Bowen Island. We were kind of humble-bragging – if I’m honest – about how we weren’t really teachers, but life long students. Caitlin, listening from the kitchen asked us a piercing question. She, who comes from a four generation line of teachers said “What is it about being teachers that makes you so afraid to be one?” I think we eventually answered that it was something to do with not wanting to lose our curiosity and learning in the role of the teacher-expert. She continued to point out that people were actually coming to the workshop to learn from us, and that we could also learn alongside them. She was being kind. There is a both-and about this. We decided to call ourselves teacher-learners and for me this practice captures that. Host other so that they become teacher-learners too.
Host together – co-create and co-lead: build capacity to build more capacity. It has been a long time since I saw Toke in person. It was, I think, many years ago during a gathering on harvesting practices in Halifax. We spent an hour together having lunch in a restaurant and talked about where our journeys were taking us. Toke was recovering from a small stroke and this was the first overseas trip he had taken. The stroke had imposed some constraints on what he could do and how his mind operated, and he and I talked about how, at a certain age, one moves into building capacity. You stop doing things for people and you build the capacity for them to do it too. And that way, you can continue being a part of the things you love doing while also being sure that those things could be sustained in a community of practitioners. That has been my life these days. “Support” is how I approach everything. I do it with money, time, opportunities, credibility, connections…whatever. I support causes and people that are important to me including lifting up Indigenous leaders and communities, younger dialogue and complexity practitioners, young and developing soccer players and many others. I have learned a lot from Toke and others and all of it was freely given, and for a gift to work it must be given away. So I give it away.
Now, if it interests you, have a go at answering Toke’s prompting question here in the comments or elsewhere on the open web, where we can share and compare.
Today Ontario goes back into lockdown, complete with curfews and the enforcement of the situation by police officers with the discretion to charge people with a violation of the public health orders. This is all being done without any significant new programs to support those who otherwise have to travel or move to non-essential jobs – including night shifts – because while the work may be non-essential, living without income is not. It is a situation that is going to impact marginalized people of all kinds.
This is an unprecedented public health crisis. We are battling an easily spread, lethal virus which causes incurable effects in many who catch it. It requires our health care systems to be overly careful when handling COVID-19 patients. The purpose of lockdowns has always been to manage the spread of the virus. Complexity geeks will know that connections are an important enabling constraint in self-organizing systems. Break connections, and you slow the ability of an overwhelming crisis to take shape. In theory, breaking connections should be the easiest thing to do but the combination of mixed messages and the unwillingness of governments to incentivize isolation over interaction has meant that places like Ontario need to take harsher measures: the imposition of boundaries on behaviour.
When the pandemic began I was impressed at the speed with which our government mobilized resources to ensure that people were able to choose isolation over interaction. In Canada, the Canada Emergency Response Benefit program was a stunning, accessible, guaranteed income program that provided $2000 a month of taxable income to anyone who wanted it. There was no means test, the application website was straight forward, and payments came fairly quickly. In addition, the federal and provincial governments launched a series of programs to protect tenants and businesses from being evicted, to extend credits and grants to businesses, to subsidize wages, to defer mortgages, and to relieve student debt payments.
These programs had the effect of initially “flattening the curve” the term used to describe the collective social effort to prevent spikes in hospitalizations which would allow for emergency services to properly treat COVID patients and not reach a situation like they did early on in Italy, where death rates spiked because doctors were forced to choose between who would live and who would die. For a couple of months, we all pulled together and with Herculean effort of citizens, businesses and government, we flattened the curve for the first wave
The implementation of these social programs had the effect of eliminating a whle lot of personal debt among many other positive effects. For people whose income is dependent on minimum wage jobs, the support of $2000 a month was, in many cases, all they needed to pay off bills that had been dogging them for years, make a rent payment that was overdue, get back on their feet. It hasn’t been perfect, and certainly folks on social assistance, folks with disabilities and students fell through the cracks. And the money that flowed to everyone who applied for the CERB went directly into the economy. It didn’t get tied up in equity, investments, or real estate. It went to the purchase of goods and services in unprecedented ways. This had the effect of enriching many billionaires and banks, but also of supporting local businesses and economies, and despite the potential for it, our economy has not entered a depression. Hard times for sure, but still afloat.
The CERB payment – and universal basic incomes in general – are the ideal form of stimulus for an economy. First, it is a policy of care, providing resources directly to people in need without strings attached, which allows people to quickly organize their own lives and allows the cash to immediately enter the economy. For conservatives who praise a market economy, trickle down economics is actually a terrible idea, because giving billions directly to the top of the economic food chain through subsides and tax breaks does not encourage a market at all. It encourages an oligarchy were very few people get unimaginably rich without any actual purchasing power being introduced into a market.
Markets self-organize around innovation and creativity, but only if there is spending money in the economy, for those who organize well will capture it. During the spring and summer, in my own community I witnessed the conversation and the call to action on local economy blossom like it never had before, during all the years I was on our Community Economic Development Community. There was money in our community, a need to stay home, and local businesses continually made their case for support. We had very few local businesses here shut down, despite these challenging times. That isn’t to say that things haven’t been challenging for my friends who own businesses, but a combination of government supports, mutual aid, and spending money circulating locally created the conditions for a healthy, local economy.
The CERB was designed for people to spend, and that is what happened. Many of the people who received the money had very little savings to begin with, and so when the money came in it went right back out the door into the economy, Banks got richer, Amazon got richer and the people that own these companies got richer too. Substantially richer at a rate that was faster than they had ever experienced.
Last month the federal government announced that it was now investigating something like 400,000 CERB applications that were apparently irregular. In its haste to set the program up, apparently the government failed to communicate a key aspect of the program criteria: that you needed to have made a net income of $5000 in the previous tax year as a self-emplyed person in order to be eligible for the benefit. Here is the crux of the problem:
In the first few weeks of the CERB rollout, CRA call-centre agents were given wrong instructions for how self-employed Canadians would be assessed for their eligibility. To be eligible, self-employed Canadians had to have received more than $5,000 in income in 2019 or in the previous 12 months before applying.
While eligibility was meant to be based off net income after expenses, CRA agents were provided written instructions that incorrectly stated that gross income, not net, was how someone’s eligibility for CERB would be determined. That information was then passed along to callers seeking clarity.
At the same time, the word “net” didn’t appear on CERB applications or the CRA’s “Who is eligible” page. It wasn’t until sometime after April 21 — more than two weeks after applications opened — that the CRA quietly update a Q&A page to include specific language on net income.
The problem now is that the government is now enforcing repayment orders for the money that was received. And of course people don’t have that money. They don’t have it because they did what they were told they should do with it, and used it to stay afloat during the early days of the pandemic while staying at home to flatten the curve.
But the money HASN’t disappeared. Not at all. the 400,000 people who took four months of CERB money have injected $32 billion dollars into the economy, much of it local, but a significant amount of it going to banks, utility companies and large consumer and service outlets like Costco and Amazon, and Netflix and Zoom. This video explains why.
I am at a loss to understand why the government – who has admitted to screwing up the CERB criteria communications – is punishing the people who have supported the survival of the economy during a once in a century economic event. During the spring we were all told that we needed to do our part to get this virus under control. We all did our part, we stayed home AND stimulated the economy. And now 400,000 people are being saddled with $8000 or more in debt.
Nationalizing debt is perhaps one of the best things we can do as a society. The CERB did that, providing for people to cover their debts and pay their bills. The government used the near zero interest rates to borrow to make that possible – thereby assuming consumer and business debt at far better rates than consumers and businesses were getting, and despite mortgage deferrals and lost revenues, the six Canadian chartered banks STILL made about $13 billion in net income in the fourth quarter of 2020 alone. The money hasn’t disappeared: it has moved. If governments need it back, they need only tax the richest businesses in the country with a one time pandemic tax totalling $32 billion and all is well.
But I suspect that this isn’t the issue, and I don’t expect this tax to be implemented. There is a stench of the age-old stigma associated with poor folks, that they are not deserving of government support, that “free money” is a risky thing to just give away without a means test, without accountability and without any sense of “deserving it.”
So Ontario is going into lockdown. Citizens once again are being asked to do their part to flatten the curve, and it is a challenge many folks will take up with relish IF they also feel a reciprocity from their governments to support and enable them to do that. But that isn’t happening. Not only are there no new supports for people but the federal government is chasing down repayments, with no forgiveness, and banks are stopping the mortgage deferral program. This is terrible public policy for a start, it is poor economics, even by conservative, market-based standards and most important, it is immoral.
There is a massive gulf between the top and the bottom in our society, a direct result of 40 years of the biggest wealth transfer in human history. This gap has created two different realities. The folks with the resources who are able to run for public office, garner the approval of their parties, and be given the reins of power are screened into this class of the wealthy. Their lives are very different from the lives of the majority of citizens who are living paycheck-to-paycheck or who are on social assistance or who have no means of support at all. The fact that several political leaders from all parties have been recently caught travelling abroad over Christmas, when governments were locking down everyone else, is a stark and ostentatious indicator of this difference.
Along with the wealth and income gap comes a sense that “rules don’t apply to me” because, actually, that seems to be the case. Despite bungled messaging and unclear criteria, the federal government is enforcing repayment orders against 400,000 Canadians, almost none of whom committed fraud in fact or intention with this benefits program. And yet, there are no new taxes, no special one time claw back for those that actually now have the money. Instead of THEM having to do paperwork and liquidating a few assets to repay the federal government and get that money back into the economy, they make plans for heading out of the country to their second properties.
Public policy that is made in the interests of the wealthy few at the expense of the many is immoral. For public leaders to appeal that “we are all in this together” when we are clearly not is an abdication of integrity. The federal government needs to immediately suspend the actions of the CRA in pursuing these repayments, and furthermore, as a country, we really need to push for a universal basic income, because we now have evidence, during that pandemic, that it works.
If you are in Canada, you can support this by lending your support to Leah Gazan who is sponsoring a House of Commons motion that reads:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should introduce legislation and work with provincial and territorial governments and Indigenous peoples to ensure that a guaranteed livable basic income (i) accounting for regional differences in living costs, (ii) for all Canadians over the age of 18, including single persons, students, families, seniors, persons with disabilities, temporary foreign workers, permanent residents, and refugee claimants, (iii) paid on a regular basis, (iv) not requiring participation in the labour market, education or training in order to be eligible, (v) in addition to current and future government public services and income supports meant to meet special, exceptional and other distinct needs and goals rather than basic needs, including accessible affordable social housing and expanded health services, replace the Canada Emergency Response Benefit on an ongoing and permanent basis in a concerted effort to eradicate poverty and ensure the respect, dignity and security of all persons in respect of Canada’s domestic and international legal obligations.
House of Commons Motion M-46 Guaranteed Liveable Basic Income
This is not the final answer, but it is an important step to establishing the will of the House of Commons to undertake this project. It will be interesting to see who votes against it, and I suspect I will not be surprised. I think Leah Gazan is one of those rare people in Parliament that is able to understand how to use the tools of government to govern from the perspective of common citizens, those whose voices are meant to be primary in the House of Commons. She is doing so from an opposition bench, and while a house motion is a weak tool, she is relentless in pursuing this course of action and I believe she needs the support of many citizens from across the country to elevate and amplify her voice.
This is my contribution to that. It is time.
Xwexwesélken is the Squamish name for the mountain goat, a creature that lives on the high rocky cliffs of the coast mountains, picking its way across perilous and sheer vertical surfaces in search of food and protection. Mountain goat wool is a prized material in Squamish culture, used to weave blankets with immense spiritual and social significance.
In the last session of the Mi Tel’nexw leadership course, Chepxímiya Siyám (Chief Janice George) used the mountain goat as her metaphor for teaching about Squamish ways of doing. As a master weaver who has brought the weaving practice back to life in many Coast Salish communities, she wove her personal story with the deeper cultural story of Squamish ways of life, as goat wool is woven through weft and warp into a beautiful, powerful blanket. I heard two critical teachings in her presentation: doing things well comes down to being anchored in story and treating all work as ceremony.
Chepxímiya started her teaching with her own personal history of how she grew in the cultural knowledge, raised by her grandmother after her family died in a car accident, and working as an archeology researcher. Several times she talked about how “the culture saved my life.”
Chepxímiya was raised in the Squamish tradition of women’s leadership, leadership that is characterized by gentleness and deep knowledge of the rhythms and seasons of land, family, medicines, and food, so that the people may be cared for. In a culture where men were often sent to war, the women are knowledge keepers. A man might be killed in battle and all his knowledge dies with him. Women hold the deep knowledge of ceremony while men lead the work.
“To lead,” she said, “we have to believe in our ancestors, their teachings, and ourselves.” Who I am and what I am doing is deeply connected to my family, to our stories, and to my aspirations for my children and their children. This is the bigger context for any action, but it is so easy to make things short-term and succumb to immediate needs that don’t take the bigger picture into account. If one is disconnected from family, community, land, and history, then one is lacking the perspective needed to lead well.
One of Chepxímiya’s profound early learnings about this came in her research work when she discovered that the National Museum in Ottawa had two skeletons in its possession that were taken from Xway Xway, the village site in Stanley Park in Vancouver that is located near to where the totem poles stand today. In the early part of the 20th century, it was cleared and the residents relocated across the water to Xwmeltch’stn. In 1879 and again in 1928, two skeletons were disinterred and taken to the museum. Chepxímiya was a key part of the effort to bring these ancestors home in 2006. When the skeletons arrived in Vancouver, they were driven to the Park and brought to Xway Xway for one more visit before being taken away and buried in the cemetery. It was a profound moment, connecting ancestors, land, history, and ceremony.
This moment led Chepxímiya to learn more about her leadership and to accept her responsibility as a Siyám. She was invited to take a name and refused to do so until everyone in her family agreed that it was a good action, and there was no jealousy or conflict. The name she was given is from Senákw, the village on the south shore of False Creek that was the subject of nearly a century of litigation with the federal government and decades of discussions between Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh. Chepxím was one of the last people to live at Senákw before the villagers were moved against their will. In taking her name, Chepxímiya consulted Elders and leaders from Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh, and all were invited to witness in her naming ceremony. As Cheif Leonard George told her at the time “that’s a gutsy move you’re making” but when the final litigation was all settled and the Squamish regained the village site, the final court decision was released on her birthday.
As Chepxímiya says, when you walk softly and receive signs, you become susceptible to spirit. This is why ceremony as a model of “doing” is so profound.
Lessons from Squamish ceremony
The way in which Squamish ceremonies are conducted contains many lessons for leadership. Chepxímiya shared these lessons generously, and these are my reflections on her teachings.
Family, land, and teachings are all connected to action. Squamish ceremonies are conducted under strict protocols. These protocols include an intense period of preparation where one personally invites people to come, prepares to seat, feed, and gift every person who comes. There are people in the community who manage the feasts and conduct the ceremony with detailed knowledge of every person’s name, who their family is, which community they come from, how they are related to the family hosting the feast and where they are in their spiritual development. For a feast with hundreds of attendees, this is an immense amount of knowledge to carry, and making a mistake – such as pronouncing a name wrong, running out of food or seating a person in the wrong place – can be costly to the standing and status of the host family. Knowing the context is critical, to the finest detail, and finding the people who can lead in a respectful and generous way is essential to keeping the work relational.
(It is one of my great failings that I have a hard time remembering people’s names and faces, and I personally understand how hurtful it is to get this wrong. I spend a lot of time trying to remember and also humbly apologizing for my inability to connect faces and names.)
“The more you give away the richer you are.” Squamish culture is a reciprocal gift giving culture, and in giving away possessions, names, and power, one humbles oneself and open oneself to be able to receive from others. Those who hold on to their possessions and hoard them are unable to receive gifts from others. In my own spiritual practice, emptying is a key practice, to become open to receiving. To receive, first, you must give and that is a powerful leadership lesson.
Prepare seriously for important work. When leaders are appointed to lead in ceremony, they are blanketed with a mountain goat wool blanket to protect their heart and given a headband made of cedar to focus their mind so they can act purely, kindly, and with the purpose of the work in mind. Witnesses are appointed for any kind of important work and are given the job of reporting the story of what happened in as much detail as possible. In my own facilitation practice, these are the practices of hosting and harvesting. Preparation for hard work is essential, and perhaps this is an obvious teaching, but in a rushed world, when we can zoom from one meeting to another, it is critical to create time to prepare ourselves well to host and harvest important moments.
“The weaver’s job is to create a pure space for your people to stand on.” I have left the most profound teaching for last, as this speaks so powerfully to the work I have done for years trying to understand the role of space and containers in my facilitation and strategic leadership practice. The blankets that Chepxímiya weaves are both for the protection of the heart, but also to lay down on the floor of the longhouse so that people may stand on them as they are appointed to their witnessing roles or given their new names. The blanket creates a pure space, a container that is open to potential and clear of anything that holds back the person in fulfilling their duties, It is both a physical purity and a spiritual purity that is represented. The image of the leader as a facilitator and as a weaver is powerful; creating a lifegiving context for action; providing the conditions of material and relational capacity for a person to live out their purpose for their family and community and territory; to trust a person to act while keeping them connected to all that is important. This is really the gift of these teachings.
Mi tel’nexw is a powerful leadership journey. As a person who lives within Skwxwu7mesh Temix, this journey has given me some deep insight into what is HERE, into the traditions that are soaked into the land in which I live. It helps me better understand Squamish practice and tradition and gives me lenses for reflection on my own leadership the concepts that I teach others. You too can go on this journey, and the next course starts on November 3.
I lift my hands up to Skwetsímeltxw, Lloyd, Ta7táliya, Chepxímiya and Ta7táliya-men for this offering, for their generosity and their beautiful work. Chen kw’enmantumi!
Sts’úkwi7 is the generic name for salmon in Skwxwú7mesh, and in our second module in the Mi tel’nexw leadership program, Lloyd Attig offered practical grounding in his teachings on the medicine wheel as a way of exploring balance.
My home island is a rock rising out of the fjord that makes up the southern half of Skwxwú7mesh Temíxw. We have a few lakes here and creeks that swell in the fall when the rains return and fill the sea with fresh water infused with the taste of our island. Salmon, who have been living their lives in the Pacific ocean for 2, 3, or 4 years since they hatched in these creeks are able to discern the taste of their home stream in the great mix of waters that fills the Salish Sea. They use all of their senses to find their way home at all costs where they spawn and then die, for their life cycle begins and ends in the same stream, and a powerful drive returns them to their source.
Because of this symmetry in their life cycles, the faithfulness of their return to their places of origin, and their crucial role in the ecology of the Pacific coast, salmon are deeply important animals in both traditional and settler cultures here. They are powerful symbols of active balance and they are essential to the health of coastal forests. Up to 30% of the nitrogen used by the giant trees of our temperate rainforests originates in the ocean and is carried to every part of the land through the capillary network of salmon coming home to spawn and die. In this sense they literally connect land and sea, trees and ocean, erasing the boundaries, mixing nutrients and diversifying the health and wellbeing of the entire ecosystem.
Lloyd Attig, used the salmon as his inspiration to lead us through a series of exercises based on the medicine wheel, to examine interconnection and balance in our own lives. Leadership of all kinds demands that we place ourselves in challenging positions where we are likely to be knocked around, knocked off balance and create damaging dynamics for ourselves and others. I know Lloyd is an accomplished boxer, and so his sense of balance and grounding is born of years of experience in the ring. Tip off balance and the moment you are pushed, you collapse and fall.
For Plains Cree people, and many other indigenous cultures the medicine wheel is a powerful symbol of balance and renewal, just as the salmon is here. Breaking the wholeness of the world into four quadrants, it gives meaning and coherence to the stages of life, the seasons of the year, and the interdependence of the human faculties of spiritual, mental, emotional and physical well being. In our course last week Lloyd led us through an exercise to look at how balanced our every day lives are. Working with the mundane – fine granularity and plenty of examples – helps to reveal patterns of behaviour that indicate where to place our attention to address a current imbalance. This kind of inventory is helpful not as a one time thing, but in an ongoing way, reflection within a framework to see where the attention needs to be.
But the medicine wheel is not simply a tool for personal self-development. Individuals are not solo practitioners in a world without influence. We are embedded in high and higher levels of organization, teams, families, circles of friends, organizations, communities, nations. And we are also embedded in time too, as products of everything we have inherited and living ancestors to the thousands of generations yet to come. For me, practicing the balance and interconnection of salmon is to place oneself in relation to everything upon which I am dependant and which, even in some small way, is dependant on me.
Pacific salmon really are amazing creatures because they embody this teaching so perfectly. All five species that make our coast home exhibit the same circular life cycle of hatching in freshwater, growing and travelling over thousands of kilometres during their short span and then fiercely making their way back to the very gravel bed where they were hatched. Their entire life cycle is in service of the next generation, and becasue they die right after spawning, they never meet their young and never pass on knowledge or guidance. As we say, salmon are born orphans and die childless and yet the cycle of life continues over generations.
As individuals, salmon do everything in their power to grow strong and healthy while they are at sea. Some species, like sockeye, stop eating once they return to freshwater, meaning that they face an upstream journey of sometimes hundreds of kilometres against an autumn freshet with only the fat and muscle in their bodies to power them. Their singular drive and commitment to return assures the survival of their line. When they die, their bodies decay in the river and become food for the tiny creatures upon which their offspring will feast, or are carried away by animals into the forest to feed to soil and provide fresh sources of nitrogen and minerals to the hungry trees of the temperate rainforest.
In terms of a model for living balance and interconnection, there is no better standard than the pacific salmon. Tools like Lloyd’s medicine wheel give us gateways through which we can explore this deep relationship our own self has to all the systems in which we are embedded. Leadership which is in the service of life, at a minimum, requires this perspective and practice.
I live in Squamish traditional territory, Skwxwú7mesh Temíxw, and I have spent the last 19 years of my residency here as an uninvited guest trying to learn a little about the land and sea, and the traditional teachings that have found a home here for tens of thousands of years.
This month I have joined dozens of others in taking a course from my friend Ta7táliya and her family and friends called Mi tel’nexw which in Squamish means “figure it out.” It’s a leadership course that is rooted in Squamish ways of knowing and being (you can join anytime at that link.)
Our first class was last week, listening to the teachings of Skwetsimeltxw, who spoke about Squamish history and teaching from the perspective of sp’ákw’us, the eagle. As part of the course, we are invited to articulate takeaways and giveaways, naming the gifts received and how we will offer gifts as a result. This cycle of reciprocity is essential.
So here are a couple of takeaways and giveaways that are sitting with me.
Everything starts with the land. As obvious as this one seems, it’s important to remember. I take away from this insight the idea that when doesn’t know what to do, stop and see where you are, what is the land or sea saying about this. It is the ultimate source of everything. The other day I was up at Rivendell Retreat Centre, where I am a Board member, and we were talking about the gardens and outdoor space there. People come to Rivendell from all over the world to experience contemplative practice through silence, hospitality, simplicity and prayer. The practice of simplicity invites us into a powerful, open and basic relationship with the natural world, and my friend and I were discussing how we could make the gardens of Rivendell embody the hosting that the land does so that visitors to our centre could practice outside of our beautiful rooms and sanctuary, attuned to the blessing of the natural world. This territory begs to be loved through every expression of the land and the sea and so my giveaway is to put that lens back on the land at Rivendell and to work with folks to help us help spiritual seekers find the simplicity in that teaching.
Ceremony strengthens you so you can stay positive. My takeaway here is how important practice is. Ceremony that ties me to the land and to the community, brings me into a relationship with the natural world, the supernatural world and community in a way that makes me accountable for the way I spend my time in this life. Skwetsimeltxw shared a teaching of revered Squamish Elder Louis Miranda: “Don’t be afraid of death – we are only here camping for a short time. Don’t waste a day while you are here.” Ceremony gives us names, helps us over the transition of life’s markers, through grieving and loss, through celebration and abundance. Daily practices helps us to live well so that we can take care of what we have. My giveaway is to a practice that shares the beauty and goodness of my life and to this end I have deleted my social media apps from my phone to manage my energy and attention.
Take care of the things in your temporary possession. Squamish culture, like most west coast traditional cultures, is heavily based on property and ownership. The myth that indigenous people don’t have concepts of land ownership is patently false everywhere. Here on the west coast where potlatching is the governance system, all of the property of the nation – including land and places, stories, names, responsibilities, and resources – are placed in the care of someone. The laws and the rules are very strict because care for these fundamental things is essential to the survival of a people. (and yes removing these systems is a form of genocide, set on destroying a people through banning potlatching and ceremony, and stealing these possessions). Skwetsimeltxw said that when a person is given a name, it is not theirs to own but theirs to carry for a while and “polish during your life.” The takeaway for me is a teaching about stewardship and how we are to care for the things that come into our possession. For me this means that names I have like “Art of Hosting steward” confer responsibility to ensure that when I no longer carry that title, it has been made better for those who pick it up. My giveaway is to examine the various names and identities I carry – Board member, Bowen Islander (Nexwlélexwm uxwimíuxw), settler, Canadian, father, husband, facilitator, – and to live them in a way that people encountering these identities in others – especially in those I teach, train and raise – will recognize them as honourable. It is my work to transform an identity like “Canadian” conferred by my birth into this colonial land, or to try to live up to the high standards of a word like “father” that has been given to me by my dad and children.
“Prayers and love, once they are put down, stay where they are put.” This is a direct quote from Skwetsimeltxw and it refers to how Squamish people, living in this territory for tens of thousands of years, have prayed and loved every inch of it from time immemorial. The love and prayers of every ancestor lie upon the rocks and mountains and waterways here and my takeaway is that this land is soaked in blessings. Everywhere you walk or sit is a place that has been stewarded since the beginning of time with care and affection and deep spiritual connection. My giveaway is gratitude and an attuned sense of this sacredness. When Skwetsimeltxw uttered this sentence, I felt a complete and overwhelming sense of gratitude for the fact that I live in a place that is literally covered in love and prayer. Open to the sacred appreciatiation of the stewards and owners of this territory, inspired to attune myself ever deeper to what is really here.