- Cold rain down low, cold snow up high, cold yellow sun in a cold grey sky. #
- Just returned from a lovely memorial for my colleague John McBride. Plenty of music and great stories enjoyed by 200 good folks. Sweet life. #
- Purple sunrise and a string Squamish this morning could mean snow later today. #
- Video of today's howling Squamish. http://www.flickr.com/photos/31354844@N00/5277832927 #
- The shortest day dawns. This long waning ends. An obscured fullness arises. Two weeks to reflect and then surge towards light. Celebrate!!! #
- The rush of wind in the trees
Is the fear I cannot reach
It flows above me
And all around me. # - And the rain
Brings it down. # - Our little house was lashed all night by easterly gales and buckets of rain. What a storm! #
- The crazy winds of Howe Sound and the Strait of Georgia. SE gales and N outflows. http://yfrog.com/h0axeqvj #
- Uplifting…in a couple of ways: http://bit.ly/hlNF93 #
- http://yfrog.com/h25idwrj Christmas morning dawns calm and full of mist. Heading to the continent for supper. #
On setting the physical container for good collaboration:
In the 1960s, Timothy Leary coined the term “set and setting” referring to a context that influenced the outcomes of psychoactive and psychedelic drug experiments on his subjects. “Set” refers to ones mindset, “setting” refers to the environment in which the user has the experience. Now Im not necessarily suggesting that you administer psychoactive drugs to your participants, though Im sure that would make your job a whole lot more interesting. What I am suggesting is that “set and setting” play a significant, and often overlooked role, in your work as a trainer, facilitator, or group leader.
via The Center for Graphic Facilitation: FacilitatorU: Set and Setting.
Back in November, I worked with my mate Teresa Posakony on a two day gathering the object of which was to work to apply brain science to policy questions on the prevention of adverse childhood experiences. On the first day I facilitated an Open Space event that brought together reserachers and brain scientists to discuss their findings and on the second day, we had panelists and Teresa ran a half day cafe to look at the implications of the research for policy making. I composed a poem at the end of the day.
As a part of the experience, we were shown a powerful video of the still face experiment, a test to see how infants respond when their care givers break the connection with them. It is very very powerful. Here it is:
Later in the day one of the panelists, Jennifer Rodriguez, referred to this video by saying that collectively, “society is the still face” when it comes to our children and youth.
That was the hook I needed for the poem, which was also informed by the words I saw and heard during the cafe. I read the poem and got a generous standing ovation.
Today I got an email from our clients which was sent by the researcher you see in the video, Dr. Ed. Tronick. Dr. Tronick was responding to our client, who sent him the poem and the recording of me reading it:
I really am quite moved by the poem and your comment about how much impact it has. When I began this work in my lab I had no idea that it might one day be so useful in getting children and families what they so desperately need. I love the poem – I will get it up in my office somewhere, especially what it brings together and the rhythm of it. Please tell Chris how much I appreciate it. It is just amazing. And more important than the SF or the poem is the work you and everyone at the conference are doing.
It is not enough to do work in the world without adding as much beauty as we can. The power resides in the songs, the poems, the images that we use to capture our collective experiences and to throw a light on how important they are to us as human beings.
Enjoy the harvest.
If you want to learn the way another culture thinks, listen to their stories. But don’t just listen to any stories; listen to the stories they have about how knowledge is gained. That gives you the key to understanding all of the other stories and teaches you everything you need to know about the experiences you need to have to gain knowledge.
Thinking about the Nuu-chah-nulth methodology of oosumich today which is the way of stilling oneself to listen to the world and enter a dialogue with the unseen. My friend Pawa says that prayer is the act of speaking to the immaterial and meditation is the act of listening. It takes at least that quality and depth of engagement with thoughts to reach beyond the material world to the source level.
Taupouri Tangaro says “access into the inner sanctums of hula knowledge is reliant on a vocal invitation.”. It begins with a murmer, a sound uttered into a void field. As you approach a moment or a place in which you are seeking knowledge, begin with a sound. Introduce yourself to the moment and to the place. Offer a song.
And the journey: I was re-reading Eddie Benton-Banai’s teachings about the little boy that brought the Midwewiwin to the people. Part of his journey was traveling through the dark part of the moon, the part the we know is there but that we can’t see. It is a call to go to the spiritual parts of ourselves that we know exist.
Easy. You can sit still in a beautiful place in the forest but can you sit in the beautiful stillness of a forest? That which you know is there bit which you cannot see. Anishnaabe epistemology relies on our ability to learn from both the seen and the unseen.
Tomorrow is the solstice. It is the longest night illuminated by a full moon that will be in eclipse. Layers of darkness and light. A time for exploring the complex interrelationship of light and dark, yin and yang, male and female, action and structure.
Listen to it. Sing to it. Celebrate!
I am just returning from a memorial service for my friend and colleague John McBride. John and I worked on a number of Aboriginal economic development projects over the years and he died in October from pancreatic cancer.
Today at his memorial his wife Val read some selections from his journals. One insight that really stuck with me was written in his final days as he was making sense of his death. He wrote that the end is about peeling back all the layers of who we have been to discover who we really are at our core. And he named his core as that of a man who lives with joy and revelled in having just enough.