Me and some friends “villaging” back in 1996 or so at a session at The Irish Heather in Vancouver. That’s me blissed out on the bottom right of this photo. We are playing traditional Irish tunes together. Barbara Holmes today in a post at the Centre for Action and Contemplation: It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a village to survive. For many of us, villages are a thing of the past. We no longer draw our water from the village well or share the chores of barn raising, sowing, and harvesting. We can get … almost …
It’s Advent right now. Although everyone talks about this being the “Christmas season,” liturgically speaking, the Christmas season begins on Christmas Day and lasts 12 days until Epiphany. In the Christian year, Christmas represents the incarnation of God into the world, and Epiphany represents the physical manifestation of Christ to humans. These are times of joy and release that correspond with the return of light to the northern hemisphere and which come after a period of deepening darkness, which is Advent. When you live on a small dark island in the North Pacific, this season, Advent, becomes meaningful. It is …
Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learningmy flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement:“If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, pleasecome to the gate immediately.” Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there. — From “Gate A-4” by Naomi Shihab Nye This is the start of a beautiful prose poem worth two minutes of your time to read, and just the kind of thing that I am happy to read today. Read the full thing at Nye’s page at poets.org
A systems change initiative I witnessed on the weekend. I think my nomination for LinkedIn post of the year goes to Cameron Tokinwise for this one: Good reminder for those extolling Systems Thinking from Pelle Ehn at the beginning of his still remarkable 1988 book, _Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts_ – that systems are only ever ensembles considered as systems. Systems are not things in the world, but ways of understanding how things in the world relate to each other. Systems Thinking is a choice to interpret the world as sets of systems. To be concerned about trying to effect …
Folks in Mitchell County, North Carolina, working with stories of substance use to discover patterns and generate ideas for supporting folks in active addiction and recovery and prevention. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reflecting on what participatory leadership really looks like. I use the word a lot in my work – teaching participatory leadership and participatory decision-making – and of course, “participation” is one of the four practices of the Art of Hosting. Hosting meetings and contexts for large-scale work means creating the conditions for participation. And it means learning how to be a good participant. Words like …