On the Art of Hosting list today there has been a very interesting conversation about some of the Japanese words that are used to describe space and container. As I will be working this spring in Japan with these very concepts, I thought it would be interesting to hear from my colleagues Yurie Makihara and Kazuhiko Nakamura about these ideas of “wa,” “ma,” “ba,” and “tokoro.” Yurie shared her thoughts, on some of these words, including noting that the word “ba” is often cited by foreigners as an example of a word describing the quality of dialogic container that exists in Japanese and not English. I learned today that all of these words are similar, and include not just ideas about the quality of space but time as well. Anyone who engages in dialogue will know that there is a time and a place for everything.
Over my career I’ve had the gift of working extensively in indigenous communities in North America and one of the features of many (but not all) indigenous languages is the fact that they are verb-based as opposed to English which is very noun-based. Indigenous languages here contain many words and ideas that are similar to the ones Yurie described, and I have experienced language speaking Elders and others cautioning me that “this time isn’t right” or “the space is wrong” in a way that is hard to put into English. When they say those things, the English ear hears the word “time” or “space” (the nouns in the sentence), but the words the Elders use are pointing to the qualities of the relationships between things in the container of time or space.
In English we lack relational language. We have to use metaphors like “safe space” or “brave space” or “juicy” or “a ripe time” that point a bit at the feel, but use words as metaphors and not direct. Over the years, teaching about containers to people who speak these languages I have begun to learn a few concepts. In Diné there is a word – “k’e” – which describes the quality of connection between an individual and their clan and family that is critical for survival and sustainability. In Nuu-Chah-Nulth, the word “tsawalk” meaning “oneness” really is a word that points to the presence of a texture in a container that helps us see the connection between things (people, animals, land…) and the relationship between the spiritual and physical world. Without tsawalk we are not doing good work, because we are not doing work that attends to the many relational fields that are necessary to create space that is fully alive. More of my reflections here.
Ove the years I’ve learned of similar words and ideas in other languages an cultures: in fact this seems to be a feature of human language in a way that isn’t quite available to unilingual English speakers like myself. Its the reason we find these other languages and concepts attractive. They fill a need we have.
In some ways it’s too bad that we use English in the Art of Hosting community as our global language! The most important thing for us as a community – the quality of a container – is the one thing that is difficult to explain properly in English. The word itself is actually a metaphor and used in indigenous-settler contexts, as my friend Jerry Nagel pointed out in an email this morning, it can be taken to mean the very core act of colonization: to contain a group of people. So be careful!
Perhaps this is why for the most part, people I work with in English are interested in tools and processes, and why we have a hard time explaining the “art” of the Art of Hosting. It’s easier to talk about the nouns we use because we have language for them. It’s hard to talk about what happens when we approach space and container as artists, with an eye to hosting the quality of relationships and interactions that create generative action. In English there is no satisfying way to talk about this, at least not that I’ve found. We have to default to poetry, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Or, we default to using words from other languages, but we use these too as metaphors: “we don’t have a word in English, but the Nuu-Cha-Nulth word is…” as if these give the ideas some weight. My learning over the years is to be very careful when using words and concepts from other languages, because as an English speaker I can only use them as metaphors and not with the realness with which a fluent speaker of a language uses their own words. Helpful, but never the whole story…
The four fold practice meets the Diné healthy communities framework
Harvest from a three hour check in circle this morning, building a social field among 40 health promotion practitioners from across the Navajo Nation. The circle was at times tender and wickedly funny. It built a beautiful field to begin our three day training. Here’s the poem:
Yá’a tééh! It’s a good day.I am here for the wellness of our nations;we have stationed ourselves inside our familieswhere we teach and learnreach each parent and turn aroundtheir minds to a kind of spacethat is safe to facewhat flies over our headsas we sit on our sheepskinsand keep the teachings in the home.It’s a warm feeling, healing evento be basking in being hostedwith a ticker that ticks and keeps on givingand my Converse laced up and I’m ready for livingI love growing the food my family is eatingpreventing cancer and diabeteswhispering the secret of healthy peopleteaching through recreation and schoolsreaching youth so they don’t act like foolsand see peace and respect as cool.I work in recovery which is a kind of discoveryfor the men coming back to us from the penbringing them back to the traditional lifeto be in harmony, connected to familyreceiving the gifts of community and ceremonyto counter the drama of trauma“Lying in the road hurt” means that my work is about healinggetting up and feeling the bodyfeeling the advocacy that I speakfixed by the gaze of a grazing sheepthat reminds me of my grandmother’s teaching:this is the way that it has to beto spread my wings and seehow I can develop me and then how we can move forwardto see possibility and leave our conversations happy.I start with myself, and build out from therecircles of care that come from the sheepskin,the ancient wisdom, and tools that help us weavethe stories that leave us tightly bound.Tighten up your buns, there’s work to be done,Doesn’t matter if it’s your hair or your derriere.And take a look and make sure your corn beef is cooked.I am a believer in hope and changefor a positive exchange of the art of the heartgrounding in respect so we can expectto find out why place matters.I help to bring wholeness with a focus on fooda wholesome and fullsome way to colludewith kids and youth who pick up the positive attitudethat comes from our cultureharmonize our bodies and our eyes.I’m a traveller, an unraveller ofunhealthy ways, weaving teachings about how to raisecommunities, raise gardens and harvest our bestbring our heart to everything we dodeal with our fears so we can be herepresent to what wants to appearwith minds clear.I’m a first generation relocation babythinking maybe I have a giftedness that will lift the peoplebring them to fitnessand give back what I have learned on this rideto see pride inside everyone in our tribes.It all comes down to helping otherscoaching kids, approaching mothers and grandmotherswho share their respect with usI’m from the beach boysand a blond haired grandma and traditional speakerswho infused in me a possibilityto change the dysfunction I see, conversationally,for the benefit of the community, to support the wellness that starts from me.We know our own patterns and carry them in our bloodtransport them everywhere flood of memoriesleaving this world better than how we found itbetter harmony, better family.I might be out of words.Overwhelmed at everything I’ve heardand here to hear with my ears and heartto get a head start on addressing the fearsHere, I can see where my prayers are going,and what has come to my knowing,my leadership is calling me backand I can see that I stack up.The talking happens at the rug,drawing people into the snug corner of the homewhere we share the honest lessons we have learnedpray the prayers that burn in our hearts.All over the world, we understand weaving(even though our sweater doesn’t meet five days from leaving)each one of us is teaching in this roomeach one bringing our strands to the loom.I work in the strugglecreating the space where families can face their challengeswith something as simple as readingor as powerful as seeking out the strengthsor going to great lengthsto build leaders who feed their own learningturning back to the language and values.I am related to the world my relations unfurledlike a ball of yarn that leads us to our toolsa school of weaving leaving us loved and movedcoming back to what was lostas we chased a living across the southnow I’m getting the language in my mouthand find myself at a junctionwhere I support functional communityand do the work of spirit.Yá’a tééh! It’s a good day.and good to start in a beautiful way.
Halfway through our five day residency with leaders from the community sector and the Ministry for Children and Families here in BC. Times like this, at middle of a five day retreat, we turn our thoughts to what comes next and we forget to be present. This is our day of practicing presence however, and later today we will be going out on the land and allow ourselves to be hosted by the forest, the rain and our island. This is the time for a fierce recommitment to the here and now.
My colleague and friend Annemarie Travers, who is on our hosting team and who leads learning in the Ministry shared a beautiful framing for our day together. She and her husband Geoff recently completed the Camino pilgrimage and she wrote dozens of poems during her journey. This morning she shared one that speaks powerfully to what it is like to be distracted by the near end:
Staying “Here”
The closer we get to the end of our walk, the harder it is to stay present
We think ahead to achieving our goal, beginning to be proud of our accomplishmentWe have also started to think about home, and all that waits for us there
But we need to focus on enjoying these last few days as much as we dareWhile we feel the Camino has given us both what we need
We know it’s not done with us yet, their is still more to come, indeed!These last few days are characterized by more traffic on the paths
And as we weave our way through, some draw our wrathThen we remind ourselves of the Camino spirit, and breathe deeply, just let it go
(Hopefully not while passing a farm – we are regularly assaulted by manure smells you know)We forget to be grateful for the simple pleasures of the day
It was supposed to rain today, but the rain stayed away!This all has the effect of limiting our opportunities for meditative walking
Our minds go to the usual worries, and we begin talkingAbout the end of the trip, and what we will do when we return
So we made a pact with ourselves with the intent to turnThe train of our thoughts, to focus on the here and now
Enjoy what this day brings, not the manure, but the beauty of the cow…
Such a beautiful reminder to remain present, to enjoy the source of everything that continues to work with us!
Some of my friends and I with in the Art of Hosting community create poems from our work as a kind of harvest, a way of listening to the voices shared in a circle and reflecting back to the group, it’s wholeness using the words of those in the room. The poems are written on the spot and read into the room, slam style. Such poems evoke energy, and honour the whole. We call these “dialogue poems.” Here is the one from yesterday’s check in in Montreal with our core hosting team…
Hosting team Check in poem
Where did you practice?
Where did you act as if you could do this?
What does the silence have to show us?
What is inside this seed?A potential to feed what is needed everywhere
Hosting is caring so we’re daring to share
what is in our jardin communitaire:
101 ways in a single day
to face the case of urban space
fall into a call of enfolded breath
and die 101 little deaths, for co-creation to be the method
that we use to create and let go. Whoa. Peace flowsCaroline is on the scene
and clear love flows in between us
a clean passing of a piece to serve
the swerve and curve of jangly nerves
that the emergent life turns up.
This is a romance and a dance of hosted circumstance.The space of the public dream seems
to be called to scream from the megaphone
deep in our bones in the intention for an intervention
ot suspension to the conventional ways of doing things.
We meet despair with care for beauty and do our duty.Economics in the commons needs us to anchor danger
as the social order rearranges strangers into the angels of
the commons”but”but”
Words were never spoken for the broken structures I have seen
for the painful way we remain unclean in the unconscious hosting
that leaves us unseen and suffering the wasted talents of human beings
so I offer a new chance to call us all into the hall and
share the commoning of Montreal.When there is no room at the inn we move outside and work from the rim.
And all we need to take
is one minute, innit?
Because a crack is a small thing to make.Small is beautiful, but tiny is fuller
What is the smallest container that can hold the future?
A negotiation with a child, a wild realization that we only flower
when the smallest things claim their power
and we take an hour to be in peace with other generations.The appearance of the aperitif
Helps us arrive and be hereThis work can be hard
when we haven’t got a clue
and the parameters make us do things we don’t want to do
we host grief and hate and create the state
for the gates to open and action to gain traction
for a fraction of the cost of the money we’ve already lost.And then, abundance appears because we stayed with the fears
and the tears and we finally see everyone as peers.It was a ride to get a guide that would help us get inside
the Art of Hosting and glide us to understanding, landing whatever we can
as a resource to help us plan for this.Two thousand thirteen seems like a series of scenes
of moments that mean my life has seen
the real application of peace between human beings.
In cote d’ivoire, ravaged by war, a mayor named need
to plant a seed for people to lead the conversations
that stop the bleeding and meet the need for
the chief of chiefs to hold the belief that these ways of talking
can bring relief.Two hundred thousand years of leadership
called into relationship, mateship and friendship
in a moment of reconciliation for a nation
where you do not have to be sorry
for the story, but you must offer a forum
for the experience of peace and a shift to dignified decorum.We are not here to be small.
We all just want peace.
That is all.I am touched to be here.
Daring to appear
à table citoyen”where the rabble fits in
to chatter and natter about things that matter and
do it in public where the interests clatter
and find a place to practice together
co-create a project that’s better and better”
and shift my life to something unfettered.
by the separation that I’m deluded with.
Tend to the people that are coming,
feel the field and yield to the real.Since January for me
It’s been a race from place to place
tracing a line from space to space
and stopping a moment to face the grace
That I have to receive for living as me authentically
I hope to inspire near and far
people to be just who they are.En formations nous avons les informations
pour le realization de collaboration
we carried the living spark
of what was lit in Lafontaine Parc
embodied a some light that shone in the dark
flowing from our humanity, a practice of embodied calamity!I feel that I am a dwarf among giants
and ready to offer my heart and defiance
of what my own ego wants us to do
so we can be free. How about you?
Over the past 15 years First Nations artists in Canada have taken to hip hop as a powerful storytelling method. First Nations hip hop is an incredible blend of traditional art forms, evocative imagery and raw and real exerpience relayed with a beat. It’s as if hip hop was built for indigenous expression – being story based, status informed, poetic and underscored with a heartbeat. I have a bunch of friends in this field including Skeena Reece, Jerrilynn Webster, Manik1derful, Rachel Oki, Wasaskwun Wuttunee and others.
Beat Nation was an exhibition of indigenous hip hop artists that closed in March 2010, but the site is still up and there is a great essay there from Tania Willard about the then current state of indigenous hip hop culture and one by Skeena Reece on hip hop in the indigenous context:
I think that a larger conversation needs to take place to really get to the root of what I am talking about here. We are now seeing on a grand scale, also due to the growing number of young Indigenous people coming of age, a massive documentation process and participation in mainstream culture. They are talking about their standards of living, their communities, their hopes and fears, and we need to listen. We need to open our eyes and really see what they are presenting and not just as a last resort to avoid any great catastrophes: we need to use it as a first resort for guidance in our roles as adults and guardians. Just as in any massive form of communication, there are going to be sentimental statements made, broad sweeping fears expressed and lots of ‘documentation’ to examine, but we should really consider ourselves lucky. Native youth, Native people, Indigenous people, hip hop people are presenting ideas, making connections, drawing conclusions and asking important questions. If we use this is as a basis of discussion, we can see that they’ve taken a lot of guesswork out of the equation and what we are left with is the essence of where they are at, exactly. As adults, educators, helpers, historians and just plain human beings we need to honour this subculture as much as we honour our own families. In doing this, we honour ourselves, our people and our humanity.
Just cool stuff.