Robert Paterson is doing some interesting work these days: KETC, a client of mine, the Public TV Channel in St Louis, has been chosen by CPB to test how well a public TV station can be in Convening the wide community of its city to come together and help each other cope with a giant crisis. Here is a link to the background.I am writing today to offer up an early report. This week we held the first on air/web town hall meeting. For the first time St Louisans could see that they were not alone. The room was full …
Jack Ricchiuto on the “point” of stories: It’s a good day when we’re open spaces for the stories of others. We close this space by hoping people get to conclusions in their stories. Stories are not about conclusions, they’re about the weaving of reality from the fibers and colors and textures of our experience. I was in a workshop yesterday, doing a little teaching about organizational forms and at one point I was going to tell a story about working in networks. Something came over me and I stopped and said “someone tell me a story about the …
Photo by Santa Rosa “The wise ones of olden times say that the hearts of men and women are in the shape of a caracol, and that those who have good in their hearts and thoughts walk from one place to the other, awakening gods and men for them to check that the world remains right. They say that they say that they said that the caracol represents entering into the heart, that this is what the very first ones called knowledge. They say that they say that they said that the caracol also represents exiting from the heart to …
My partner Caitlin is a master of compassionate inquiry. For years she has been working with Byron Katie’s work, using it with herself, in her coaching practice and with our family. She was recently interviewed for Byron Katie’s next book on how the work has changed her parenting, and that interview appeared today on Katie’s website. A bonus she has discovered in her new way of being is that her children involve her more in their processes. They trust her to be present and simply curious with them about whatever they’re dealing with. Together, they come up with ideas and …
“The bird does not sing because it has answers. It sings because it has a song.” — Chinese proverb quoted by Margaret Somerville in the first of her lectures on The Ethical Imagination. CBC Ideas is rebroadcasting the 2006 Massey Lectures given by ethicist Margaret Somerville entitle “The Ethical Imagination.” I lay in bed last night battling a fever and a six hour flu listening to her wonderful cadence as she delivered her argument that finding and conversing about a human ethics has much to do with imagination, story and poetry. It’s a wonderful listen, on all week …