could it be that I actually like the flow of music on CBC Radio Two? …hmmmm….

Last year when Radio Two changed its format, it was met with stinging criticism as it cut back it’s classical music offerings and diversified the genres it plays.

But last week I was hanging out in Toronto at my brother’s house and he put on Radio Two in the morning and we left it on all day. I was struck by how well the mix of programming seemed to go with my mood. Most of the day is still classical music, the afternoon drive show is all kinds of songs by bands I have never heard from, and in the evening we get jazz, a concert recording (which lives online afterwards) and The Signal, which is the closest thing – though not close enough yet – to the BBC’s excellent Late Junction.

I’m going to give CBC Radio Two a chance and see where it takes me.

With the way the world is – connected and interdependant – from time to time disasters from afar touch me from half way around the world. In Australia, around Melbourne, bush fires have ravaged communities this weekend, leaving 83 people dead and untold millions of dollars in damage. Viv McWaters posted a call to action today and I pass it on. Wnatever you can do to help, especially if you know people there, would be good.

A couple of days ago I headed across the northern United States on a Boeing 757 on United airlines – the hungry skies. United is a quirky airline. They have three classes of seating on their domestic flights: executive, economy and then what I call the “hole in the bagel class:” Economy Plus. Economy Plus consists of a third of the rows of the economy cabin with four inches more legroom than the back two thirds of the economy cabin. In practice, Economy Plus seems to offer pretty much the same legroom as every other airline, but the economy cabin is cramped and uncomfortable, esp[ecially if you are penned in and the person in front of you decides to recline. At that point, your tray table becomes unusable and if there is anything under your seat, your legs start to cramp up. They should properly call Economy Plus, plain old economy and refer to the other section as Economy Minus.

To enjoy the stretchy legroom of Economy Plus will cost you $40 extra dollars – ten dollars an inch – and wil almost certainly guarantee you a row to yourself, because it seems on the Vancouver-Chicago and the Vancouver-Denver flights, almost no one is enough of a sucker to pony up for legroom they would get on any other airline.

And then the Starbucks at the G terminal in Chicago won’t take my travel espresso cup because, the barista was worried about “cross-contamination.” When she said that I walked away, for there was little I could to persuade myself that a shot of espresso was worth the risk that Starbucks would contaminate my travel cup. Interesting.

Anyway, I’m in Michigan now meeting with 24 very interesting people from across Native America and Hawai’i engaged in conversation about the nature of native leadership and looking now at places in which that leadership is having an impact in the world. The retreat is being sponsored by Native Americans in Philanthropy and the Fetzer Institute. The weather here is very mild, and a big thaw is on. Snow and ice have been plunging from the roof of the amazing retreat centre here called Seasons. One more half day and then it’s off to Toronto where I get to see my family and my new niece Rebecca.

Off to Kalamazoo, Michigan to attend a retreat with the Fetzer Institute on Indigenous leadership.   We’ll gather together 24 or so folks from around the US who are working with leadership in Indigenous communities, organizations and governments and ask some interesting questions about the kinds of worldviews that drive our current practice of leadership, moving us away from traditional collective leadership capacities and towards individual leadership and scientific management models.

The photo above is the scene I just watched, the sun rising over Mount Baker.   My friend Dustin Rivers says that the [e Sḵwxwú7mesh word for this time of day is kwakweya, the moment when the sun peeks up over the mountains.

New day dawning.

Thinking today about the challenge of engaging community for real change, and I am playing around with two simple on the surface, but difficult to execute ideas. I think though that if these ideas are executed, it creates the best possible conditions for sustained action and transformative change.

The ideas, expressed as patterns, are: operate from a clear centre, and embody your future now.

I was riding the ferry with my friend Patti DeSante who is at the moment in deep Zen training with Roshi Joan Halifax and exploring many aspects of embodied practice in the world. We were discussing what it takes to act fearlessly and enter into transformative work in the world. She shared a story with me that was simple but important. She told me about her days as an energy broker and how the sole reason her company existed was to make money. It was a simple and powerful centre around which the company organized itself. It provided an easy way to evaluate what kind of action was worth pursuing. It allowed the company, and the people in the company, to be out in the world fearlessly, knowing clearly why they are there.

In other words, the company had a centre. To me the idea of centre is more than a mission statement or a vision statement. It is instead an assailable reason for being. Something you can feel, that is core to who you are, out of which you act. As Brian Arthur has said, in martial arts, if you think, you are dead. So to with any fearless action: if you need to think about why you are doing it, you are not operating from your centre. When you drink water you are acting out of an unstated need, a powerful and compelling centre that makes drinking a natural act. In martial arts we train in acting from that place as well. Developing a centre means developing clarity. If you haven’t got it, you move in the world from a position of confusion, and that kind of moving creates lots of problems: unnecessary effort, poor choices, emotional stress.

Developing a shared centre is not something one does overnight, or in a weekend retreat. In involves much work and diligent attention to being in relationship with each other, discovering what is true and powerful for us and exploring the way that centre can unfold into the world. Otto Scharmer provides an excellent map for the work that is required to do this, and most of the facilitation and dialogue processes I use are designed explicitly to, with enough time, connect to that source and act from it.

The second pattern is the pattern of embodiment. This is also about operating with clarity and it requires a deep discernment process. Embodiment simply means to bring into practice the principles of the world you are seeking to create. For example in the work we did on Vancouver Island with the Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transition Team, we chose “Children at the Centre” as our primary centre from which we operated. In practice this meant all kinds of things, including meeting whenever possible with children present, or placing their pictures in the centre when we met. It meant making a practice of thinking first about how children would live with the decisions we were making. It meant taking inspiration from children for the work we were doing. When planning our engagement process, we asked ourselves “How do children inspire us to engage with them?”

Embodying these beliefs and centres in the world is a kind of deep practice. It makes daily work a spiritual practice, and results in tremendous emotional power and momentum. Taken to the broadest level. It finds it’s practical expression in Gandhi’s quest to transform Indian society by implementing his beliefs in peace, non-violence and equality at every turn, even being sure to clean toilets as a mark of solidarity with the lower castes..

Creating a centre, and finding its creative expression in the world. Sounds easy!