We send our kids to school. I call it the “brain laundry.” They teach them everything you don’t want them to know. It’s done in the name of education and fairness and righteousness, and the things of common sense and how things are done, are never explored. You get a piece of paper with your name on it, if you follow the instructions. I got a Doctorate not because I wanted the piece of paper; I got the Doctorate because my professor said to me, “You know more about this than I do and I’m the professor.” I wanted to know why things occurred. I always say that creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

That indeed is art in so many ways…it is the act of playing with space…the space between the notes that Miles Davisr talked about or the willingness to master and then let go of technique that Thelonius Monk talk about or the.  In the moment, art is about knowing which mistakes to keep and how to surround them with silence and emptiness so that they can grow and come alive.  Everything we do, if we call ourselves artists comes from that source.

It is a hugely audacious reach that we are trying for with this gathering.  A tipping of time and talent and ways of seeing that is intended to create a series of “start lines” towards new directions.  If we are successful in doing anything, the results will be quietly influential over a period of years.  We need a long view of time and a humble view of reach and we need to also play the balance of love and power that exists in the world to find the openings that will carry the seed of this work.

It has been a long slog getting to this point and the dynamics and energies of raising funds, navigating difference and balancing aspirations have given us some deep insight into what it takes to talk about values shift let alone engage in it.

Tim Merry,Luana Busby-Neff and I will be holding space all week for this, and I’ll try to blog about our experiences as we go, but I suspect my energy won’t be focused in a harvesting direction all the time.  Lots of space to hold at many levels, and in many ways, this is one of the most significant facilitation challenges I have ever undertaken.  Glad to be working it with good friends who can collectively hold all that may come up.

I feel Kiluea in my bones now, 30 minutes from departing from Vancouver to fly there.  Reverance is kicking up in my soul and I am humbled beyond belief to be in the work.

Bless us and wish us luck.

1. Be in a learning journey with others.  While you are working with people, see your work as a learning journey and share questions and inquiries with your team.

2. Take time to reflect on successes and failures together. We are having a lovely conversation on the OSLIST, the Open Space facilitator’s listserv about failures right now and it’s refreshing to hear stories about where things went sideways.  What we learn from those experiences is deep, both about ourselves and our work.

3. Be helpful. When a colleague takes a risk and fail, be prepared to setp up to help them sort it out.  My best boss ever gave us three rules to operate under: be loyal to your team, make mistakes and make sure he was the first to know when you made one.  There was almost nothing we could do that he couldn’t take care of, and we always had him at our backs, as long as he was the first to hear about it.  Providing that support to team members is fantastic.

4. Apologize together.  Show a united front, and help make amends when things go wrong.  This is a take on one of the improv principles of making your partner look good.  It is also about taking responsibility and having many minds and hearts to put to work to correct what needs correcting.  This one matters when your mistake costs lives.  Would be nice to see this more in the corporate world.

5. Build on the offer. Another improv principle, this one invites us to see what we just went through as an offer to move on to the next thing.

6. Don’t be hard on yourself.  You can’t get out of a pickle if you are berating yourself up for being there.  I find The Work of Byron Katie to be very very helpful in helping become clear about what to do next and to loosen up on the story that just because I failed, therefore I am a failure.

Now these little lessons work in complex environments, like human organizations, not mechanical systems so before you jump on me for having unrealistic expectation for airplanes and oil rigs, just know that.  Having said that, dealing with the human costs of airplane crashes and oil rig explosions requires clarity, and being wrapped in blame and self-loathing is not the same as being empathetic and clear.

1. People support what they create. Where are you NOT co-creating?  Even the most participatory process always have an edge of focused control or design.  Sometimes that is wise, but more often than not we design, host and harvest without consciousness.  Are we engaging with everyone who has a stake in this issue?

2. People act most responsibly when they care. Passion and responsibility is how work gets done.  We know this from Open Space – as Peggy Holman is fond of saying, invite people to take responsibility for what they love.  What is it you can’t NOT do?  Sometime during this week I have heard someone describe an exercise where you strip away everything you are doing and you discover what it is you would ALWAYS do under any circumstances.  Are we working on the issues that people really care about?

3. Conversation is the way that humans have always thought together.  In conversation we discover shared meaning. It is the primal human organizing tool.  Even in the corridors of power, very little real action happens in debate, but rather in the side rooms, the hallways, the lunches, the times away from the ritual spaces of authority and in the the relaxed spaces of being human. In all of our design of meetings, engagement, planning or whatever, if you aren’t building conversation into the process, you will not benefit from the collective power and wisdom of humans thinking together.  These are not “soft” processes.  This is how wars get started and how wars end.  It’s how money is made, lives started, freedom realized. It is the core human organizing competency.

4. To change the conversation, change who is in the conversation. It is a really hard to see our own blind spots.  Even with a good intention to shift the conversation, without bringing in new perspectives, new lived experiences and new voices, our shift can become abstract.  If you are talking ABOUT youth with youth in the process, you are in the wrong conversation.  If you are talking about ending a war and you can’t contemplate sitting down with the enemy, you will not end the war, no matter how much your policy has shifted.  Once you shift the composition of the group, you can shift the status and power as well.  What if your became the mentors to adults?  What if clients directed our services?

5. Expect leadership to come from anywhere. If you expect leadership to come from the same places that it has always come from, you will likely get the same results you have always been getting.  That is fine to stabilize what is working, but in communities, leadership can come from anywhere.  Who is surprising you with their leadership?

6. Focus on what’s working, ask what’s possible, not what’s wrong. Energy for change in communities comes from working with what is working. When we accelerate and amplify what is working, we can apply those things to the issues in community that drain life and energy.  Not everything we have in immediately useful for every issue in a community, but hardly anything truly has to be invented.  Instead, find people who are doing things that are close to what you want to do and work with them and others to refine it and bring it to places that are needed.  Who is already changing the way services are provided?  Which youth organize naturally in community and how can we invite them to organize what is needed?  What gives us energy in our work?

7. Wisdom resides within us. I often start Open Space meetings by saying that “no angels will parachute in here to save us.  Rather, the angel is all of us together.”  Experts can’t do it, folks.  They can be helpful but the wisdom for implementation and acting is within us.  It has to be.

8. Everything is a failure in the middle, change occurs in cycles. We’re doing new things, and as we try them, many things will “fail.”  How do we act when that happens?  Are we tyrannized by the belief that everything we do has to move us forward?

9. Learning is the only way we become smarter about what we do. Duh.  But how many of us work in environments where we have to guard against failure?  Are you allowed to have a project or a meeting go sideways, or is the demand for accountability and effectiveness so overwhelming that we have to scale back expectations or lie about what we are doing.

10.  Meaningful work is a powerful human motivator. What is the deepest purpose that calls us to our work and how often do we remember this?

11. Humans can handle anything as long as we’re together. That doesn’t mean we can stop tsunamis, but it means that when we have tended to relationships, we can make it through what comes next.  Without relationships our communities die, individuals give up, and possibility evaporates.  The time for apologizing for relationship building is over.  We need each other, and we need to be with each other well.

12. Generosity, forgiveness and love.  These are the most important elements in a community. We need all of our energy to be devoted to our work.  If we use our energy to blame, resent or hate, then we deplete our capacity, we give away our power and our effectiveness.  This is NOT soft and cuddly work.  Adam Kahane has recently written about the complimentarity of love and power, and this principle, more than any other is the one that should draw our attention to that fact.  Love and power are connected.  One is not possible without the other.  Paying attention to this quality of being together is hard, and for many people it is frightening.  Many people won’t even have this conversation because the work of the heart makes us vulnerable.  But what do we really get for being guarded with one another, for hoarding, blaming and despising?

We could probably do a full three workshop on these principles (and in the circle just now we agreed to!).  But as key organizing principles, these are brilliant points of reflection for communities to engage in conversations about what is really going on.

We cannot bear connection. That is our malady. We must break away, and be isolate. We call that being free, being individual. Beyond a certain point, which we have reached, it is suicide. Perhaps we have chosen suicide. Well and good. The Apocalypse too chose suicide, with subsequent self-glorification… my individualism is really an illusion. I am a part of the great whole, and I can never escape. But I can deny my connections, break them, and become a fragment. Then I am wretched.

via What the Lost Finale is Really About | Religion Dispatches.

The Days of Now

On the night before Now

we all clambored over

and greeted each other by the gateway.

Now came the first morning.

We opened for each other many conversations

and passed cups around the shining circle.

On the second of Now,

I could see a long way in people’s eyes

which cleared to let in the light.

On the third of Now,

everyone started dialing up tomorrows,

released laughter and embraced

every future Now with braided voices

and sweat-slicked arms.

Each night Now the sky

came down to join us,

like an animal testing the scents.

On the fourth of Now

we saw magic inside ourselves

and blew gently the embers in each other.

On the fifth day Now transformed

into pieces of hours and sounds.

There was baying and mirth

and sweet fresh rubbing of skin on skin.

The sixth of Now saw us

plain and fearful, thrilled and drawn

to each other in new forever dreams.

On the seventh of Now

we redrew all our lines,

filled all the hollows, as Now expected.

At last the night Now

draped velvet and quiet

as hushed we prepared our ascent.

This night is that night Now.

It has unquenchable questions

and the same different beginning.

On top of morning Now

and all through evening Now

we waxed and shined the circle again

sipped each other’s songs

and touched old and new alike.

Thee beauty of our DNA is dying to be born: an acceptance of the order of chaos; the reverence of High Priestesses in the grocery store; the force of incredibly tender men; the critical necessity of senses that transcend technology.

We can speed the dying (it can hurt.) Karate-chop greed. Puncture silicon. Carve up pretense and principles too small for how big we really are. Let the heart make the way — she will anyhow, by plow or by whisper, by angst or by grace.

That is just a very touching piece of writing, and it gives me some thought for a lyric.  In fact this collection is a whole trove of inspirations for songs I haven’t yet written, and in the spirit of Lianne’s offering, who was in turn inspired by Toni Morrison’s call to write the book you want to read, I may well take some of these lines for songs that say what I have been trying to say for a while in my music.

The book is free, and it is lovely.  It looks great on the page and the writing is a diverse collection.  Each of the contributors is linked through to their site or to other places you can find out more about them.  But importantly, Lianne and her co-conspirators have made this a gift to all, as so much of women’s wisdom is offered to those that pause long enough to ask for it.

So go download the book and post the quote or image on your blog that most grabs you from the collection.  I’m officially starting an internet meme here .

Thanks again Lianne.

He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.

Hat tip to my friend Janie Leask in Alaska, who posted this on her facebook wall.

I have traveled far and climbed many mountains in my life’s journey. I have seen the darkness of my own abyss. From the depths of my utter despair and hopelessness I saw a miraculous vision. Through this vision I have seen the universe, one whole, one connectedness, one balance!

As I stood in awe of the wonder in my own supernatural moment, I came to know my place and part in this timeless symphony of life and creation. Before that, I was forced to relinquish my own reality for a while. I was taught to dismiss all that was prior to the coming of the first settlers. It was too high a price to exact for my education, for anyone’s education.

I say to all you graduates beware that the price of your education does not become too high. Be true to yourselves. Maintain that balance between heart and soul and do not give away to intelligence only. Do not ever lose sight of who you are, for it is a gift from the creator that will lead you to your higher purpose. Do not give way to racism and intolerance. Do not give way to ignorance and apathy. Hold true to the creed that all persons are born equal and deserve dignity and respect. The quality of life for many may depend on you. Go and make a difference. The whole world waits for you.

via Chief Robert Joseph Indian Residential Schools Survivors Society.

In BC we are blessed to have Elders whose message, teachings and ability to hold compassion and promote peace rivals the Dalai Lama.  So few British Columbians know about these Elders but they are national treasures.  Bobby Joseph is one of these people.

The view from the Rockefeller Foundation meeting room, looking south towards the Empire State Building.  Today I worked in this location with friends Willie Toliver and Kelly McGowan supporting the work of a group of executive leaders in the New York City municapl administration.  I was struck by how, despite the responsibility and magnitude of influence these people have, that they are nonetheless human beings – vulnerable, falliable and authentic as the rest of us.

Here is the poem that was created from the checkout.

We are just poor weak human beings,

Resisting the call

Because we cease and desist

our belief in all we can offer

Somehow we have created

single places upon which everything hinges

and when we are put in those spaces

we confront our smallness, see it in

perspective because none of us are

big enough to be the change others expect

and we have long stopped fooling ourselves.

To confront our own smallness is terrifying

especially when people project bigness on us -

the scale of challenge, the scope of our capability.

The I we are through other people’s eyes

is never the me we see through our own.

Know this – you have been chosen only to live.

It is never over until you leave.

the only line you ever cross

is the one you choose to draw..