Just got a phone call from my friend Mike Mearns, who is the Executive Director of the Aboriginal Financial Officers Association of BC, an organization that supports First Nations financial and management capacity through training and workshops. They are looking for an Executive Assistant, but don’t let the job title fool you. The main duties are developing training materials and organizing workshops for First Nations administrators working “at the coal face” as it were:
“The Aboriginal Financial Officers Association of B.C. (AFOA-BC) requires an Executive Assistant to provide support to the General Manager and Board of Directors. Our association is established to represent the interests of its membership in areas of First Nations financial management and administration. Duties of this position will include office administration, education and training event coordination, membership communication and coordination.
As a large percentage of job duties include support in adult financial/administration training and education we require you to have a degree or diploma in business administration or education. As well, we require 3-5 years experience in providing assistance to a manager and board of directors in areas of training conference/seminar management and adult learning. Suitable candidates must have excellent computers abilities including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and Access. Accounting knowledge and skills will also be an asset in providing support to the association. Knowledge of and previous work experience with a First Nations organization is preferred.”
There may be those of you out there who have an interest in facilitation. adult learning, management and administration training and First Nations issues that might want to consider this one. The competition is closing very soon, and they are still looking to fill out their candidate field.
Contact Mike through the AFOA website and let him know I sent you.
I was facilitating a very difficult process last week with a complex group. Over three days, my plan for the work changed constantly, responding to the internal and external pressures that were flowing all around us. At the end of the second day, I felt slain, as if anything I tried to do had the opposite of its intended effect. It was a tough day for all of us.
On the third day, during which some remarkable transformations came forward from the group, one group member told me a story in a break. He was a commercial fisherman, who has fished salmon his whole life out in the Georgia Strait and around the mouth of the Fraser River. He described a time once when he cast his net and it got taken by the current and hung up around the jetty at the mouth of the Fraser. Thinking he was going to lose his net (or worse, capsize his boat), he carefully began to bring it in and was relieved to find that the net was not only intact, but it was also full of ling cod.
He was thankful for his good fortune, and has always had half a mind to try and do it again, but worried that he would lose his net. In short, it’s not the kind of good luck that can be easily repeated without major risks.
It took me close to a week to fully understand the reason for this story (sometimes Elders teach so subtly, THEY aren’t even aware they are doing so! And sometimes, the students are so preoccupied that we’re plain THICK…not sure which was the case here!)). So sometimes we make mistakes and once we realize them, a little attention and care can save our basic tools, and perhaps, even gather in a completely unexpected catch. It’s all about being open to the situation you are in RIGHT NOW, and not getting cocky when you pull out of it with a hold full of cod. For it is not always US that controls these things…sometimnes it is just the flow of the currents and the group mind of the ling cod.
In case you’ve always wondered where all those performers at Cirque de Soleil come from, check out Cirkids. Located in Vancouver, I have known about this group for quite awhile, due in no small part to the fact that they have a whole day of training for homeschooled kids every Wednesday.
Today our family went to see their annual show, this year based around a theme of mermaids, pirates, and love lost and found. The show is a full on professional circus performance in the spirit of Cirque de Soleil or Cirque Eos, except done with kids, some of them pre-teens. It is heartstopping watching young teenagers dangle from a trapeze 30 feet above the floor, or tumbling end over end in an elaborate undoing of an aerial tissu.
But what was amazing was the absolute purity of spirit and discipline inherent in these kids. They are strong, confident, fearless young men and women, and powerful reminders to all of us about what we can all be.
Silence by Valentin Bazarov
John Cage’s piece 4’33” – the infamous four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence – is commonly thought of as a joke. Even serious music criticism has a hard time treating it as little more than a novelty:
“At the first performance in 1952 it was played (if that’s the right word) by a pianist who indicated the movements by raising and lowering the piano lid; and it made an arresting point about the nature of silence – as something other than an absence of sound and a way to make the human ear aware of the persistent universe of sonic activity that surrounds us – the universe that Cage called Music.
However, 4’33’ demonstrates both the strength and the weakness of Cageian method. It was a great idea that still packs a certain punch as theory – but does it live as a piece? Hardly. Like a comedian’s joke, you can only use it once per audience and that’s it. Done.”
Chuckle chuckle.
In a concert setting, one is naturally inclined to focus on auditory sensations. In most Western cultures this is actually work for many people, and so listening is a good way to focus one’s attention. What Cage has done is to use this setting to introduce this kind of attention, not as a one off joke, but as an introduction to a practice.
Here is what I think is implicit in 4’33”: it is an invitation. It invites us to notice what fills the spaces we leave in the world when our awareness frees itself from a predictable fixation and travels around our environment. In this sense of course, 4’33” will be different every time it is “performed.” Four and a half minutes of silence is never the same. In fact, take that time right now and sense what you hear.
Beyond the noises, beyond what is “out there”, is the noises “in here:” thoughts, self-talk, reflections, insight. The next level of awareness can be about our reaction to the silence. Are we uncomfortable? Do we squirm? Or can we rest into what is around us right now and pay attention to the questions and the thoughts that arise in our mind as we navigate the relationship between our minds and our environment.
In fact, experiencing 4’33” over and over will develop in us a capacity to reflect with pointed and deep awareness. As a performance, perhaps 4’33” is a bit of an unrepeatable joke, but as an invitation, it might actually be a quick way to introduce the practice of introspection, whether in a concert hall, or sitting in front of a computer. Repeated over and over, our appreciation of the silences between events grows, and perhaps our need to fill space lessens.
Dave Pollard got the idea a few weeks ago to run a “Great Canadian Song Contest” and I agreed to be one of the judges. The results are in and posted at his blog, and although this is just about as unscientific a poll as you could imagine, the final list would still be a wonderful introduction to non-Canadians to ourselves and our land.
Canadian Railroad Trilogy tied with A Case of You for fist place, by the way.