A key part of supporting community resilience lies in accentuating what is working in communities, giving it attention and putting to use. Today my friend Jerry Nagel wrote from Minnesota to ask for advice about what to do with some of the communities who have been devastated by tornadoes in the last week. My reply:
Might be useful to go through an appreciative process of studying what happened to get people back on their feet. What aspect about our community made it possible to look after those who lost their homes? What stories of response do we need to harvest and celebrate and what do those tell us about our community? Where did those values come from and how as a community can we support the continued development and practice of those values as we rebuild? I would keep the questions quite grounded on people’s personal experiences and not do too much abstract reflection while the need and hurt is still very close to the surface. The point of appreciative inquiry at this point is to surface the stories of life in the community and harvesting them so that the community knows its intangible assets better.I have done similar inquiries in communities that have been hit by tragedies like suicides and chronic drug use or violence. It helps a lot with the healing and it harvests what’s working to put all of that to use.Communities do this anyway. With the perspective of time, everyone will tell the stories of how we came together and what worked and how we survived it. For those that arrive in the community from this time on, they will always be “outsiders” to some extent for not having gone through the experience with others.
You’ll forgive my lack of posting from Kiluea this past week. I certainly had intended a detailed account of our gathering, but things went to such a deep level that words and time kept failing me. THis was one of the most tranformational experiences of my life, and one of the most difficult, challenging and exuberant facilitation experiences I have ever had. It will take me a while to get the story straight, so forgive me if it trickles out. I met fear in a new place, above my heart. A fearless heart was born, but it was birthed in much fire and truth grief and elation, found in a windy misty and cold morning on the edge of Halema’uma’u when so much in myself and in our group was laid bare before Pele, the goddess of fire, of creation of life itself.
I’m home but in a new way. All is good!
Last night we arrived in Kona, on the dry side of the big island of Hawai’i. We overnighted there and woke early in the morning for a swim in crystal clear waters at Hapuna Beach. About 9am we hit the road, taking the Saddle Road over the island between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, the twin 13,000+ volcanoes on this island. As you crest the top of the pass between them, the clouds coming up from Hilo-side start flying overhead, and rain showers start. We drove down to Hilo and then back up the south flank of Mauna Loa to Kilauea and Halema’uma’u, the active crater in Volcanoes National Park. Kilauea is the home place of Pele, the goddess of creation and tonight Tim and Andrea – one of our colleagues – and I drove to the rim where, in the dark and drizzle, the plume of steam was clearly seen, illuminated from above by a bright quarter moon and below by the lava glowing in the crater.
Surrounded by earth, fire, air and water, all of the elements appeared. A very powerful synthesis of the earth being born below our feet, beneath an ancient sky that in these parts of the world is the map for navigating. We are wrapped in time, treated to a window on the liquid centre of our planet, standing on ground that is emergent and compelling. The crater began to hold the archetype of the centre of our gathering – a purpose that burns regardless, that steams and smokes and is visible in its production but not in its source. A purpose that defines the form that holds it. It became clear to us tonight the way in which this gathering, this purpose and intention is to be hosted: in a deep container that can hold the fire of creation and let itself be moulded by whatever flows out.
This is not easy work and there are few roadmaps for doing it. But to prepare by sitting with Halema’uma’u is a great teaching, and we haven’t even begun hearing the Hawaiian perspective on all of this.
Work is afoot. Tomorrow participants arrive and we begin to welcome them in, prepare our space and ready ourselves for ceremony and practice. We are ambitiously pursuing the small openings that invite the transcendence of world views that have been at conflict for centuries. To see what the next level of human consciousness could be if we married indigenous wisdom and wester wisdom. If we understood each other and invited all to join in the space in the middle. What would we learn about values? What would our relationship to the earth be? What IS a community of leadership based on a platform of reverence and what could such a community do?
Like the stea, plume
On my way to Hawai’i, the big island to co-host a gathering called Beyond Sustainability: Creating a Community of Leadership based on a Platform of Reverance. This gathering has been several years in the making, and over the last two years I have been deeply involved in the design of the work, finding myself stopping and starting as we find the best way to bring high powered people together to connect existing work, explore indigenous worldviews and creating some coherent results that may positively affect the values that underlie consumer society.
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.
I’ve been trolling through Geoff’s harvest of our Open Space conference last month in Melbourne and just enjoying the memory of working with friends. Our friend and conference cartoonist Simon Kneebone drew our hosting team. We call ourselves The Slips. The term is from the cricket world and has two purposes. First it signals that this is an all-Commonwealth team, which is lovely, and second, it’s a large cordon and nothing gets past us. From right to left, our members are Anne Pattillo from New Zealand who is our wicket keeper, Aussie Viv McWaters at first slip, Johnnie Moore from the UK at second slip, Geoff Brown also from Australia at third and me on the end, occasionally moving out to gully or silly point when needed.
At any rate I love this drawing. It bring back some lovely memories and has me salivating when we join together again in Amsertdam in September for the Applied Improv Network Conference where we will play together mostly and probably end up opening space again.