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Hosting language revival

March 16, 2010 By First Nations 3 Comments

My friend Dustin Rivers is an inspiration.  He’s an autodidact, an artist, a catalyst in his community.  I’ve known him for about six years, since he was a young teenager.  He has always had a remarkable presence and a strong voice and a deep commitment to the thriving resiliance of Skwxwu7mesh culture and language.  Over the years he has been developing a number of his skills, including hosting skills so that he could lead community development efforts.

He recently hooked up with Evan and Willem from Where Are Your Keys? a language fluency game that builds skills using sign language and simple phrases.  It’s a powerful learning game, and Dustin saw immediate applications for the Skwxwu7mesh language and he decided to host Evan and Willem and begin the process of waking up the native and ancient language of the territory in which I live.

Here are some links to posts and videos of Dustin at work with friends and family in his community:

The gift of wisdom offered freely

March 14, 2010 By Being 4 Comments

For International Women’s Day this year, Lianne Raymond published a labour of love.  What is Dying to be Born is a collection of short pieces of writing and small pieces of art from 30 women.  Each little piece is a reflection on a theme, like goodness and compassion and renewal. My favourite piece I think is the one from Danielle LaPorte on the theme of “Genius Heart.”  In it she offers a little prose poem that includes these lines:

Thee beauty of our DNA is dying to be born: an acceptance of the order of chaos; the reverence of High Priestesses in the grocery store; the force of incredibly tender men; the critical necessity of senses that transcend technology.

We can speed the dying (it can hurt.) Karate-chop greed. Puncture silicon. Carve up pretense and principles too small for how big we really are. Let the heart make the way — she will anyhow, by plow or by whisper, by angst or by grace.

That is just a very touching piece of writing, and it gives me some thought for a lyric.  In fact this collection is a whole trove of inspirations for songs I haven’t yet written, and in the spirit of Lianne’s offering, who was in turn inspired by Toni Morrison’s call to write the book you want to read, I may well take some of these lines for songs that say what I have been trying to say for a while in my music.

The book is free, and it is lovely.  It looks great on the page and the writing is a diverse collection.  Each of the contributors is linked through to their site or to other places you can find out more about them.  But importantly, Lianne and her co-conspirators have made this a gift to all, as so much of women’s wisdom is offered to those that pause long enough to ask for it.

So go download the book and post the quote or image on your blog that most grabs you from the collection.  I’m officially starting an internet meme here :-).

Thanks again Lianne.

Learning from the metaphors of living systems

March 12, 2010 By BC, Organization 2 Comments

Phil Cubeta poses a set of very good questions about the language we use to think about organizational worlds.  He challenges us to see the living systems view with these questions:

Questions

  • When we adopt the language of social enterprise, or social investing, or a social capital markets do we embrace  metaphors more sterile than those of the fox, loam, carrion, the crop, and the harvest?
  • What is lost when our master metaphors are commercial?
  • Can we engineer solutions to our ills, or can we only be cured?
  • Might the cure be organic, from within, from sources that lie deep in literary and philosophical traditions, rather than those, or along with those, from business? For, of course, farming too is a challenging business.
  • Is it the MBA, the prophet, the poet, or the farmer from whom you draw most hope?
  • The MBA, the prophet, poet, or farmer – who best feeds your moral imagination?

via Gift Hub: Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.

And for inspiration he uses Wendel Berry’s beautiful poem The Mad Farmer Liberation Front:

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

From the feed

March 12, 2010 By Uncategorized 2 Comments

Chewing on these:

Strategy, simplified

March 11, 2010 By BC, Conversation, Facilitation, Organization 3 Comments

Jack Ricchiuto on simplifying strategy:

Every organization, and community, I work with on strategy is very relieved when I liberate them from the inane practice of traditional academic language in the process. I refuse to allow them to waste valuable time debating over the distinctions of: goal, objective, strategy, tactic, and night  maneuvers. (I throw in the military reference to “night maneuvers” to inject humor into what is usually a very humorless and uninspired process – and it works.)

What do we do instead? We replace these never-agreed-upon jargon with complex words like: where, why, how, and what.

To be strategic, which is to in plain English is to say, proactive, is to talk about 4 things:

  • Where do we want to be in 20 years?
  • Why does that matter to us?
  • How do we want to get there in the next 2 years? and
  • What would be wise for us to do in the next 2 quarters (and weeks) to get there?

These simple and powerful questions give people a remarkable kind of alignment, velocity, and traction they are not used to in the process. What can I say? It works.

via jack/zen ” zenext » Blog Archive » Strategy, simplified.