Bruce Cockburn is probably my favourite songwriter. This is Pacing the Cage, a hymn for our times:
Sometimes the best maps will not guide you
You can’t see what’s round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Last month I was in Chicago working with a great group of Art of Hosting practitioners in the Illinois community of practice. We ran a three day Art of Hosting and then did a one day Art of Harvesting workshop with about 40 members of the community of practice in Chicago. The focus of the day was on the art and practice of harvesting.
Our design was simple…we began in circle with a check in around questions and thoughts about harvesting. Those of us on the stewarding team – myself, Teresa Posakony and Kathy Jourdain – spoke a little on our experience and recent thinking in response to what we heard and then we entered a Cafe. In the afternoon we ran a one round Open Space for people to bring harvesting questions to the fore, and to work together on actual projects.
I cracked a good insight about the practice of harvesting and some of that is captured in this terrific newsletter from the group. I’ll write more about this later, but perhaps you’ll be inspired by what Kevin Johnson, Andrea Johnson and Janice Thomson captured from our time together.
My friend Peggy Holman is about to write a short series of posts on how to manage the tension between hearing from luminaries and hosting participation in gatherings that aim to:
Peggy notes that:
A common design challenge with such gatherings is to work the tension between hearing from luminaries and engaging participants. When the mix is off, it shows up in missed expectations and at its worst, a revolt by participants. (It didn’t go that far at this gathering, though I’ve been on the receiving end of a revolt. But that’s another story”)
I left this conference contemplating four design choices to support the four goals I mentioned above. They are:
- Invite thought leaders with different world views so that participants benefit from a tapestry of ideas.
- Mix theory and practice so that they inform and amplify each other.
- Do activities that make the experience in the room visible so that we meet kindred spirits, discover each other’s gifts, and learn as much as possible about what works.
- Take a co-creative stand, so that the unexpected becomes a source of engagement and learning.
As a participant from time to time, I find that I can be cynical about how I am hosted (as if I am a perfect facilitator every time!). But what I like about being hosted is the opportunity to practice participation. Let go of the “perfect container” and show up as curious and committed to learning as possible. IN this way I can honour the host (and sometimes help a process succeed by moving the conversation towards substance and away from process). It will be good to read Peggy’s thinking, as always.
via Designing for Community: Luminaries and Engagement | Peggy Holman.
It had to be an Irish politician that finally suggested this! Ireland has been leading the European Union the past six months, including chairing and hosting the EU’s meetings. Micheal Ring tried a different approach to having all 27 ministers show up and read a speech.
Sports Minister Michael Ring might actually have made a difference. At the Council of Sports Ministers in Brussels, the Ringer pioneered a new approach to these meetings. The usual drill sees each of the 27 ministers reading a prepared script outlining their country’s viewpoint. It’s tedious stuff.
Minister of State Ring decided to change this. He announced to his fellow sports ministers: “No scripts today! If you cannot speak without a script for thee minutes ye shouldn’t be in the job you’re in.”
The politicians looked a little uncertain. Their civil servants looked horrified.
”Let me tell you this,” he continued, “I came through Westport town council and the county council, I’m in the Dáil and now I’m a Minister and we had more debates in the town council than we’ve ever had here.” The ministers were discussing drug misuse in sport. They had brought their scripts, but after initial misgivings and a bit of cajoling from Michael, they decided to throw caution to the wind and have a proper discussion. Ring banished officials to the margins and let the ministers do the talking.
“It was mighty. Mighty altogether,” he tells us. “I was told this was the most successful meeting in Brussels for 20 years. We had a lively exchange of views and a frank and open debate. The place was packed and the meeting went on for nearly four hours.”
For something like 100 years, generation after generation of indigenous children in Canada were rounded up at age five and taken away from their families and communities and placed in residential schools, where they were taught English, taught western values and Christianized. This was commonly a brutal experience, full of physical abuse, exploitation, sexual abuse and the express purpose of eliminating the Indian in the child.
Some of the abuse took the forms of rape, sexual molestation, physical beatings, deprivation of food or warmth, children being forced to work in kitchens or laundries or on farms or in stores for no pay (slavery), being forced to speak English (when you had never heard it before, and being beaten when you didn’t), forced separation from your family and siblings…
Many adults, even those who had a relatively benign experience at residential school suffered in the decades afterwards as they struggled to love other humans, to raise their children and to love partners and siblings. When you have been deprived of good parenting models in your formative years, where do you learn to parent?
Many took to alcohol and drugs to bury the shame of what had happened nto them, because nobody told them that it wasn’t their fault. Many never recovered from those painful addictions, or if they did they cleaned up and sobered up later in life when the prospects of getting a job or holding a life together were small.
For years there was no support or counselling for people who lived their lives with the post-traumatic stress disorders. In fact when people went to court to ask for compensation, they were dismissed. People’s stories were not believed, Churches and governments denied claims and at worst covered up these offenses. And mainstream society was somehow fed the story that First Nations people were uneducated, incompetent, addicted and violent.
Today, I am in Prince Rupert working with the Native Ministries Council or the United Church of Canada. THis is a group made up of First Nations congregations in the small communities on the coast where the United Church has long had a presence. The United Church was the first Canadian institution to issue an apology for it’s role in colonizing North America, back in 1986 (a moment which was defining in my life) and since 1986, the Church has had a focus in it’s work of supporting reconciliation, working with survivors and facilitating healing.
Today we heard stories about residential school experiences, as we do anytime Elders gather. The process of telling stories is powerful healing, even for people in their 80s who may have told the stories over and over. To be listened to is a high form of respect and a powerful act of human relationship. Today also we heard how retraumatizing it is when non-First Nations people respond to these stories with the commonly heard statement “just get over it.”
The residential school experience created a huge and multigenerational darkness in the lives of individuals, communities and families. The responsibility for living with this darkness has fallen to First Nations communities, and especially the men and women and children who have been victimized by the multigenerational trauma. It has not been a priority for mainstream society to choose to address this issue. Instead we simply ignore the issue or invite people “to get over” the legacy rape, abuse, shame and addiction.
On September 22 in Vancouver, there will be a walk in support of reconciliation, and I am encouraging every Canadian, whether you have lived here all your life or just arrived to show up there, learn about these stories and how you as a Canadian have benefitted from this historical legacy of policies that spawned the residential school system.
