Movement With Life, Through Circle

I’ve long been a person that searches for essence. The clear center. The clear note. Simplicity that doesn’t need much around it. It stands on it’s own.

I got some of this last week through a friend and colleague, Jennifer Girard, who had been a participant in the Online Class for The Circle Way that Amanda Fenton and I offered earlier this year.

With permission, I share Jennifer’s words here. They speak to an essence of story, connection in circle, movement with life.

Often I  have experiences that feel like my own private experiences.  Uplifting, enriching or upsetting or whatever. I perceive them as “my story”.  I perceive them in isolation from the movement of Life itself.  When we get together in circle, I am often amazed to see where “my story” intersects with others. 

 

As I start to see the similar threads that weave from “my story” into the Great Story, my sense of isolation or uniqueness dissolves into a kind of wonder. 

 

It’s hard to plan out where those threads will be.  When will be the moment that I dissolve into the mystery? It seems like a breath-taking accident each time.  Gathering in this particular way seems to make me “accident-prone” – in the best way possible! 

Thanks Jennifer.

What she says capture so much of what I experience and observe in the container that is circle.

The Art of Hosting — Bowen Island

 

As Chris Corrigan shares, this is an annual event since 2004. Bowen Island is a home among homes for me. Because of the friends there, particularly Chris and Caitlin. Because of the experience. I learn there. I grow there. I laugh there. I breath a bit more deeply. I have memories planted there.

This video, 12 minutes in length, tells a bit of a story about what happens there. Scott Macklin, a participant at the 2017 version of this is the videographer — oh I love these skills to put story into film. It’s fun to see.

I also love the language and story that each of us as cohosts — Chris Corrigan, Caitlin Frost, Amanda Fenton, me, and Teresa Posakony (not featured in this film, but has been part of the Bowen story over the years) — were able to share, and these reflections from participants.

For those of you curious, please watch. Or come sign up for The Art of Hosting Bowen Island, November 2018.

What, How, Who

One of the most common reference points I hear in working with groups is the desire to give full and immediate attention to the “what.” This is the “doing” part. It’s the church that wants to create in two hours it’s next five year strategy. It’s the university that wants to grow its prominence. It’s the non-profit that wants to host a community awareness event. “What” is the implementation part. It’s so often perceived as the accomplishment part. It’s noble. It’s needed.

One of the most common interjections that I offer to the “what” conversation is the equally important focus of the “how.” It’s not just “what” we do, but “how” we do it that matters a bunch. People get the need to be smart. They even get, kind of, being smart together. But it’s less common to get the orientation that is “how” groups work together. This is process stuff, not just content. It’s leaning in to questions together. It’s seeking shared wisdom through listening and telling stories. It’s slowing down. It’s going deeper. It’s deliberate use of participative methodologies to create encounters of learning and connection. The “how” is for many, a revolutionary step.

With a few colleagues, lately we’ve been talking a bunch about not just the what and the how, but also the “who.” This is focus on the individuals in relation to the group. It’s a focus on the inner world, not just the outer. It’s maturing thought and emotions. This is the kind of language that tips into what some perceive as therapy and counseling. Fair enough. However, the “who” is mostly being honest enough to go another layer deeper into the sense-making that goes on within, that then shapes the what and the “how of how is going.” This has some neuroscience to it. It’s got a pile of self-awareness in it.

What. How. Who.

I recently enjoyed reading Larry Dressler’s book, Standing In The Fire. I think I met Larry once, briefly. He’s connected somewhat into the Art of Hosting body of work. His writing is thoughtful, invoking in this book, the metaphor of tending fires, as much on the inside as on the outside. It’s the clarity, calm, and courage part from his subtitle. Larry tells the story of the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire in Montana, a raging blaze that was overtaking fire-fighters. Vast forests were consumed in that fire. People died in that fire. However, some people didn’t by taking an unusual chance. Burning a patch to lay down in, so that the forest fire, moving as fast as 30 miles per hour, would “jump” over the firefighters. It worked.

Larry invites a narrative that many of us are invoking — being smarter together. And being transformed by fires of contemporary life and leadership. I liked what he shared about “what” so often being associated with knowledge. Yes, knowledge matters, but it isn’t enough on it’s own. The “how” is associated with skills. I’d suggest that the practices and methods of participative leadership and engagement are really important skills. It matters to know circle. It matters to be able to host an open space format. The third area of “who” connects to self-awareness, which of course, is on-going. Without self awareness, the “how” and the “what” are too devoid of context. It makes a difference. It’s the ability to know one’s own relationship with grief in order to host others in their processing of grief. It’s being able to encourage a group to dwell in its fear, to find the medicine, because you are in your own process of relating to fear.

I love the awareness that comes with attention to “who.” It’s so much in the work that Kinde Nebeker and I convene around The Inner and Outer of Evolutionary Leadership. It’s so much in the Humaning retreat space that Quanita Roberson and I offer, QT, to get to more of the foundation layers. It’s so much in the work of circle and other participative forms that helps us dance the space between the interior and the exterior.

What. How. Who.
Knowledge. Skills. Self-Awareness.

It’s so much the conversation, expanded, that groups are needing, and I believe, looking for.

 

 

Try To Love The Questions

(Photo from www.brainpickings.org)

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In the last two weeks I’ve been in two circumstances looking for the Rilke quote below. Time to catch it here.

Rilke was an Austrian poet living in the late 1800s and early 1900s. His work, “Letters to a Young Poet” are often referenced for their call to inquiry and deeper consciousness.

In both of the circumstances I was in, I was looking for this phrase about “being patient,” about “loving the questions themselves,” and about “living into the insights.” In both circumstances, I wanted to encourage people to be in the journey, to give themselves to the whole of it that changes us over time. I so trust the invisible found in the less immediate.

Rilke wrote in a letter to a young protege,

“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Here’s to the journey, and the courage to be patient in what is unsolved.