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How to get smart – the long answer

March 29, 2012 By Conversation, Leadership, Learning

My friend Ginny Belden-Charles told me a great story today.  She was working in Detroit on some community development issues with a number of activists and others.  Their focus was on empowering community development and social action and creating the kinds of citizen based responses that Detroit needs, and she was invited to come and host a circle.

When Ginny arrived in her circle of folks, she was amazed at the presence of  the famous revolutionary activist Grace Lee Boggs.  Grace Lee Boggs is an institution in social activist circles and at 96 years old, with 70 years of practice under her bel,  she is an elder in the world of social activism, and is dedicated to the long waves of social change.

Ginny reported on how in awe she was of being able to sit in a circle with this important persona and how she was looking forward to learning some of her wisdom.  So when she asked Grace to begin the circle, she was eager to hear what this Elder might say.

To Ginny’s surprise, Grace turned to Ginny and said: “So why don’t you tell us tell us your story…what have you learned?”

I think you must get awfully smart by engaging in that strategy for 96 years.

The silence of the big things

March 28, 2012 By Being, Practice 2 Comments

Sitting by the Mississippi

Yesterday I spent an hour sitting on the banks of the Mississippi River near Albertville, Minnesota.  We were deep in a design day, and I’m feeling a little run down and tired.  I needed to go and sit, and rest and fill my lungs with air and my mouth with silence.

One of the tried and true things I know about sitting in nature is that it takes about 20 minutes in stillness and quiet before the system you have entered has absorbed you.  Humans are clumsy at being in the natural world and we stumble and make noise.  All the little birds around us stop singing, the mammels stand stock still and everything waits for us to move away or become still.

After 20 minutes of sitting in the same spot, bird song starts to return, little animals start moving around, and my own inner chatter has quieted enough that I can experience being a part of something bigger.  It’s always at those moment that the possibility to learn something, however small, becomes real.

It was really windy yesterday as I sat on a little staircase that leads down to the river.  The cottonwoods were clacking their big branches in the wind and last years bullrushes and milkweed, dried stalks, whistled as the wind passed over them.  Little birds were flitting about – juncos, chickadees and song sparrows.  the little things were chattery and noisy.

And in front of me, the river was flowing fast and deep. And as huge as it is, with all that water going through it, it was silent.  It slid by, a massive quiet anchor in the scene.  Several times bald eagles took off from the trees across the water and soared in the wind, stillness in motion, also completely silent.

And it just struck me then about how the biggest things are so quiet, and how our attention is drawn to the small and the flittery and the chirpy.  Something about coming home to a large omnipresence.  Something about the way the land hosts, the way the river hosts the scene, hosts the valley, and in this case, hosts half a continent.

Silent, large, present and in quiet collusion with the flow of water and wind.

What a 118 person Art of Hosting looks like

March 27, 2012 By Art of Hosting

A harvest of the second day of our 118 person Art of Hosting last week in Minneapolis.  Incredibly energy, terrific diversity and powerful learning for all of us.

Ready

March 27, 2012 By Uncategorized One Comment


Sitting in a Caribou coffee shop in a nondescript sprawl of outlet malls and suburban detritus somewhere northwest of the Twin Cities.

We begin two days of work tomorrow with a cohort of community health coalitions working to improve child health around the state. It is the second residential retreat in a centre in the banks if the Mississippi and it will be great. But noticing in this moment a tired longing for spring at home.

Location:Outlets at Albertville,Albertville,United States

What is the Art of Hosting

March 25, 2012 By Art of Hosting, Practice 4 Comments

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There were many leanings for me this week here in St. Paul, Minnesota. Foremost among these I think is a deep recommitment to the essential nature of the Art of Hosting: what we call the Four Fold Practice.

I admit that I haven’t always given this particular model the attention it deserves, so if you have been in an Art of Hosting learning event with me at some point and you are scratching your head about it, let me explain.

In brief the four fold practice is this:

  • Be Present and cultivate a strong practice of hosting yourself.
  • Participate in conversations with deep listening and contributing from the heart
  • Host others with good process
  • Co-create a way forward together

it is simple, and it is meant to be simple. But like any real practice, it opens up a life time of learning.

When the Art of Hosting was named it was out of a sense that a new world of participatory methodologies needed a new set of deep practices for facilitators if we were to use them well. The four fold practice (or as I have been thinking of it, the four folded practice) gives us a practice ground to improve our abilities to host powerful conversations and move to wise action. I have noticed in my own life that when I act in this work without having attention to all four folds of this practice, I fall short of the abilities I know I have to host well. This practice explains how hosting is a leadership style as well, one suited for the complex questions and complex situations that we deal with as humans.

So I invite a re-engagement in the four fold practice, for all of us who are in this work.