It’s a nice mild spring day here off the west coast of Canada. I’m at home with my kids, and we’re playing games, baking bread and making soup.
In fact, today my daughter cooked her first soup from scratch, an improvised Broccoli-Asiago cheese creation that tastes great. And so, here is our first ever Aine Corrigan-Frost soup podcast (with bonus dessert recipe).
My friend Toke Moeller and I are running an Art of Hosting training this week with 12 Aboriginal youth here in British Columbia. We are having a marvelous time so far with one day behind us and two ahead. There have been some good insights as we head deeper into the essences and practicesof hosting conversations that matter. Today we spent time in a natural circle of trees in Cathedral Grove near Port Alberni, which is a pokect of nearyl 1000 year old douglas-fir and cedar on the Cameron River. These old ones make good teachers, especially when we bring them questions about confronting our fears.
I had one or two insights myself today about the essence of effective conversation. Both arose in an appreciative conversation with Toke. For me, a powerful one was that effective conversation creates in the spaces in which true offerings of the heart can be made. The results of the best conversations include having the participants in that conversation able to give gifts of their time, attention and commitment to the result. All good action arises as a result of this kind of free, heart-based offering.
And we also noticed that good conversations contain the seeds of stories which are repeated for years afterwards. It is, in fact, nearly impossible to know these seeds untila later time, when we pull them out of a bag and tell them as stories. But for sure, an effective conversation is one that conceives these seeds that later brith in the momentof telling. Who is to know what any of these seeds will become?
What can you add to this list?
In meetings in the Aboriginal community, it’s not uncommon to have prayers end with “all my relations” an utterance that invites attention to everything we are related to, and everyone from whom we are descended.
As someone with a mixed ancestry, I sometimes like to think of an Open Space meeting that might have all 128 of my seventh generation genetic ancestors in the room. It would be crazy! Imagine them in a room looking at each other,perplexed, wondering what they could possibly have in common.
And then imagine inviting them to create something together. And imagine that at some point someone suggest that this incredibly eclectic group of people create a child in seven generations. A child that would carry all of their hopes for Ireland, for Scotland, for Nishnawbe-aki, for the Manx. And then I rememeber that I am the outcome of that Open Space meeting that never happened, matured exactly seven generations.
Once in a while I look around a room full of 120 or so people and I think to myself, imagine if what we created as a result of this meeting was a human being emerging in 250 years that would be the child of all of us. And suppose we decided that we would put our trust and faith in that child.
It’s amazing what a diverse group of 128 could create together.
I have recently come into a set of three nice 1/2lb juggling balls from Higgins Brothers (“The Physical Intelligence People”).
Teaching myself to juggle has been a great learning practice. I first learned how to juggle in 1984, with three tennis balls, in my parents basement. The flow kicked in while I was watching the CBC news magazine program “The Journal” as Barbara Frum was interviewing the Ethiopian foreign minister about the famine in his country. That is how sharp my awareness was that evening: I can remember exactly what was happening when I finally got three balls to cascade.
Fast forward about 20 years and here I live on this island with a whole bunch of homeschooled kids around me. One of them, my 15 year old friend Calder Stewart is an excellent juggler and a good juggling teacher. And his dad, Paul, is even better. Paul juggles all the time. On the ferry, waiting for the bus, in the line up at the store…and he always has a new trick or two that he is working on.
And then, my friend Ashley falls in love with Thomas Arthur who is the best space sculptor I have ever seen and he comes to visit with Ashley and shows me a few things. So I’m a lucky guy. Lots of teachers around, lots of people better than me and a nice set of good tools.
And all of that goes to facilitating flow, because for me that is what it is all about. Keeping three balls in the air, and making them do things like change direction or bounce off walls is a beautiful, accessible physical flow practice for me. When we reach flow, we are more likely to practice, and when practice more, we reach flow more.
Calder and I were talking today and he was saying that he drives his dad crazy because he never “practices.” I told him that I never “practice” either. I just play. All the time. Whether it is music or juggling. I never pick up my flute ormyt jugglign balls just to practice. I always pick up my tools to play to get to flow. Play as practice, practice as play.
Maybe one day I’ll get like this. The thing to notice about this video is not the technique (which is astounding) but the flow he is in. Imagine being in THAT spot? Wow.
Wait till Thomas posts a video of his work sometime and you’ll see someone who does even more amazing stuff with a much simpler approach.
My friend Viv McWaters sends this note from Australia:
“I’m just back from three days at the Port Fairy Folk Festival where I immersed myself in great music and bands and came away with lots of thoughts about how facilitators can learn a lot from musicians.
The stand out performer was Harry Manx – a Canadian Blues/folk performer who combines traditional blues, amazing slide guitar, mohan veena, mandolin and harmonica and vocals with traditional Indian music. He says on the CD notes “Mantras for Madmen”: ‘When the silence between the notes says as much as the notes themselves, like the gap between the breaths, it’s all good. The way I see it, Blues is like the earth and Indian music is like the heavens. What I do is find the balance between the two.”
I’d be happy if I could facilitate half as well as he performs – seamlessly collaborating with his harmonica player and percussionist; connecting with the audience; reading the mood; improvising when a guitar string breaks; changing the pace; being silent; and making everyone feel privileged to be alive and here, now. That’s what I aspire to be able to do when I facilitate.”
Yup, me too. Here’s Harry, a fellow Gulf Islander, hailing from Salt Spring Island to the south of us here.
