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 walk the world”. The caracoles will be like doors to enter into the communities and for the communities to come out; like windows to see us inside and also for us to see outside; like loudspeakers in order to send far and wide our word and also to hear the words from the one who is far away.”
A beautiful story of the Zapatista revolution in Mexico. In the 14 years since the Zapatistas pressed their claims in Chiapas, the architecture of the snail has become the way that the people talk about their revolution: it starts in the centre and spirals outward, and slowly and surely, it gets where it is going:
The United States and Mexico both have eagles as their emblems, predators which attack from above. The Zapatistas have chosen a snail in a spiral shell, a small creature, easy to overlook. It speaks of modesty, humility, closeness to the earth, and of the recognition that a revolution may start like lightning but is realized slowly, patiently, steadily. The old idea of revolution was that we would trade one government for another and somehow this new government would set us free and change everything. More and more of us now understand that change is a discipline lived every day, as those women standing before us testified; that revolution only secures the territory in which life can change. Launching a revolution is not easy, as the decade of planning before the 1994 Zapatista uprising demonstrated, and living one is hard too, a faith and discipline that must not falter until the threats and old habits are gone – if then. True revolution is slow.
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 create solutions to problems and conflicts. “They know I’m with them–present in the moment and not gone, lost in all those thoughts as I search for my Parenting Plan and Theory…In that clear place we can really hear each other and connect, and there are so many more options and possibilities.”
It’s what we try to do daily with our kids and also in working with clients.
[tags]Byron Katie, Caitlin Frost, parenting[/tags]
“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 on CBC Radio (which you can stream) and you can catch the first part on the Massey Lectures webpage.
As they do with all the lectures in the series, the CBC and House of Anasi Press has published Somerville’s five talks. If last night’s lecture was any indication, the book will make an excellent addition to my library.
[tags]CBC, Ideas, Margaret Somerville, ethics[/tags]
This is what happens when you travel the world with a question: you find teachings in all kinds of unexpected places. There’s a spoiler in here, if you haven’t seen the movie.
Last night my family all enjoyed a night in Vancouver, dinner and a movie. We went to see Bridge to Terabithia, which is a pretty good film about two pre-teen outcasts, Jess and Leslie, who find meaning in each other’s imagination. Together they ease each other into opening minds and hearts to create a fantasy world, and it’s neve clear whether or not the world is becoming real as the movie unfolds. Towards the end of the film Leslie dies – a strange enough occurrance in a children’s movie – and Jess is left alone with the fantasy world he created with his friend.
It’s a strong film with many themes, but as I’ve been carrying around the questions of what it means to harvest in the world, I found it interesting that the movie resonated for me on that level.
One way to think about harvesting is to see it as putting imaginations to use to create meaning in one world so that another world may come into being. In social change efforts, harvesting is most powerful not when it simply documents the shift from one state to another, but when the harvest itself becomes the catalyst for the coming into being of the new world.
In Bridge to Terabithia, Leslie is a storyteller whose words can invoke physical realities. Jess is a talented visual artist who draws the worlds he sees. Together they create their new world, tentatively at first, but later with so much energy that they inhabit it with wild abandon. In the end, after Leslie dies, Jess shares this world with his little sister, who is introduced to the world by crossing a bridge that Jess has built over the creek in which Leslie has died. When they reach the other side, Jess’s sister utters “Terabithia!” and her ability to see and live in the world begins immediately. Her own profound imaginary engagement with Terabithia is a testament to the power of what Jess and Leslie harvested from their creation and experience of the world. It ‘s fascinating to look at the film from this angle, at how the power of Leslie’s imagination, and Jess’s harvest of it literally creates a bridge for Jess’s sister to cross so that she may be fully invited into Terabithia.
I’m quite interested how a multimedia, multimodal harvest of meaning from an experience can facilitate and sustain new levels of consciousness and awareness. In this film, the continuation of the world requires a harvest that envelopes Jess’s sister so that she immediately opens to the power of her own imagination. It’s what every good meeting should be about.
At WorldChanging, news of a project intended to use web technology to work with indigensous oral cultures, tying traditional knowledge to biodiversity:
While there are those who argue that technology has led to the deterioration of traditional modes of communication and expression, the very same advancements are instrumental in allowing us to keep vanishing stories, cultural practices, and entire languages alive and thriving. By facilitating access to technology for people whose heritage is being challenged by the digital revolution, tech becomes a tool for nurturing traditional ways. Living Cultural Storybases is a new non-profit that works to do just that, using ICT to share knowledge amongst cultures and peoples with strong storytelling legacies.
More information at ths LCS website.