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Presence

June 27, 2007 By Facilitation, Practice One Comment

There is something ineffable about being held in a space that is hosted.   One of the key things that simply can’t be taught in any facilitation training is “presence.”   It’s possible to talk about it, to model it and even to help others connect with it, but you can’t transmit it.   It is not a technical piece.   It is a practice.
I make a lot of connections between hosting practice and martial arts practice.   Today, looking through some of the handful of martial arts weblogs I read, I discovered this post:

Regardless of how many years you’ve spent in the dojo, the possibility always exists that you’ll encounter something you’ve never seen before in your training. So how do you avoid this ugly scene before it happens? Believe it or not, this starts by how you present yourself to the world. If you appear arrogant and look for trouble, there’s no doubt you’ll find it. However, if you perceive yourself as a victim or a loser, you’ll end up for sure as someone’s target practice. The key is to combine equal amounts of humility and confidence that you have developed from your training into your daily life. Humility and confidence are the yin and yang of the martial artist’s persona. The great swordsman/strategist Miyamoto Musashi once said, “The warrior must make his warrior’s walk his everyday walk”. This is a quality of living that can’t be faked, and its essence can be felt even by strangers. I’ve read accounts of how martial artists should carry themselves in public; exuding grace, good posture and so on, but I believe that there’s an ineffability to the martial artist that goes beyond the physical.

You can discover more advice from Musashi in The Book of Five Rings.   I’m always curious about how others describe this ineffable part of working with people.   What’s your practice?

Proposal by Andrea Baker

June 27, 2007 By Poetry

I’m really enjoying finding poetry that seems to relate, in an off-handed way, to hosting and the process arts.Here is Andrea Baker, from the new issue of TYPO 9:

PROPOSAL

Each
point was also a center

at the grief

which was
many-centered

and gatherings hungered

in the throat
and at the mouth

of each many-grief

which all foamed
to begin

a new burden

to lay fresh
on the world

so
I set out a bowl
for light to rest in

as long
as the long breath pushing

but what is random
never quiets

and the will was random
was pulling

the shadow into darkness

and spreading itself

or wrapping its own
wonder

content
and fresh
about the world

PROPOSAL

Small crumbs of darkness

swept about the field

as wind campaigned against
the breath

and in the heat of the breath

laid down its own burdens

which the wind insists
are small

Leadership in participatory culture

June 26, 2007 By Collaboration, Leadership One Comment

Ted Ernst pionts to an article on leadership in participatory culture.   The artile contains the following list of capacities:

  • trust others and trust in the collective ability of a group
  • draw attention to commonality between participants (rather than dividing them with differences)
  • demonstrate active conscious commitment to vision, values, and goals as example to others
  • act responsively to feedback and help grow feedback loops among participants
  • show their humanity, making them credible and proving their integrity regularly
  • listen actively and deeply with distributed credit so decisions seem to come from collective
  • instill a sense of togetherness, a sense of “we can do this if we each do our part”
  • defend the collective to outsiders and represents their needs
  • hold each participant to their greatness
  • open to seeing how the pieces fit together–open to emergence
  • willing and ready for new opportunities
  • able to respond with compassion in times of stress and difficulty

This is a very interesting and relevant list, especially in light of the exploring some of us are doing around the Art of Governance.

links for 2007-06-26

June 26, 2007 By Uncategorized

Knowing the dark fate of the world beyond

June 25, 2007 By Poetry, Practice

From a paper on Korean poetry comes this poem by Ko Un, “Ode to Shim-chong:”

Indangsu sea, shine dark blue,
come rising as a cloudlike drumbeat.
The waters, the sailors who know the waters, may know
the dark fate of the world beyond
that lies past the path that sometimes appears,
the weeping of children born into this world,
and the sailors may know my daughter’s path.
How can the waters exist without the world beyond?
Full-bodied fear
has now become the most yearned-for thing in the world,
and my daughter’s whimpering stillness in the lotus bud will be such;
might love be a bright world and my eyes be plunged in utter darkness?
Daughter, already now the waters’ own mother,
advance over the waters,
advance over the waters
like the mists that come dropping over the waters.
My daughter, advance and travel through every world.
Shine dark blue, Indangsu. Weep dark blue.

Are we not called to be in those waters, as sailors who know the dark fate of the world beyond, willing to stand in the full bodied fear that this world craves?