Category: Edited

The list is building. Images. Experiences. Conversations. Insights. Questions that get me excited. Teresa and I have been in Japan now for six days. In the Kyoto and Otsu areas. Hosted well by friends Yuya and Aya, Bob and Susan. Inspired by the places I’ve been. Sooo enjoying the feeling of fresh eyes and curiosity to begin to understand the newness of this place for me. And surprised by the gift of jet lag — I’m wide awake and alert at 4:30 a.m.

Beauty — This photo is from a center of the meeting room for a Miratuku dialogue that took place on the first two days that I was here. I shared a teaching and invitation to beauty with the participants. I asked them to each name ten things that were beautiful in our meeting space. I then invited them to share that with a partner, and then some of it with the full group. Why? To invoke the energy of beauty that is already present. To honor beauty and what it does for the human spirit individually and collectively. To remember the experience of surprise when we give our attention to particular qualities. It is also my experience that Japanese culture has an attention to beauty and simplicity that is different from other cultures. This photo was taken near the end of the dialogue. I asked participants to each do one thing to help make the room beautiful. One person, Fumisan, gave particular attention to our center. Removed cluttered papers. Arranged the scarves. Added flowers and grasses from outside the meeting room. What a great thing to invite humans to be beautiful together.
Emergence — This is a model inspired by a conversation that Yuya and I had the first morning. It was one of the conversations that I feel I came to Japan for. Yuya was sharing how the deeper work he is exploring is about flow and emergence. About finding and seeing the invisible. I added a few thoughts about wholeness. This image to the right came to me as I was looking for ways to graphically bridge my ability to speak in Japanese. The inside figures are people that each have questions and insights. The arrows in the middle indicate some of the process of turning to each other. The outside green lines then show a symbol of the whole of that group with insights and questions. They may be similar to what individuals have. But the come from the interact of the group together. I loved our mutual sharing. That energy of the group is already there. It already exists. Through turning to one another, we come to see it.
Biwako — Biwa lake has been a home base for me. Aya and Yuya have welcomed us to their apartment home, four blocks from the lake. That apartment has been a home for friendship, sleeping, food, and internet. The lake has been a home early morning quiet, people watching, walking, and jogging. I’ve always appreciated, and needed, spaces outside to help feel grounded. Ah, Biwako, the largest fresh water lake in Japan, has been perfect.
Keninji — This is the oldest Zen temple in Kyoto. The people in this photo are board members from Miratuku. Yukasan, on the right, is one of Bob Stilger’s old soul friends. A fantastic translator also. On the left is Eisukesan. He is a designer, among other things. His energy is alive and fresh. He is the one that invited us to got to Keninji — because it was beautiful and inspiring. It was also somehow connected to the teachings of Kukai, a Japanese monk from around 1,200 years ago. He apparently was a person who encouraged and taught of wholeness. Eisukesan was sharing his inspiration from Kukai. The accessibility, the approachability of this place was palpable to me. There was a kind of simplicity that felt…familiar. To feel it in the Miratuku wonderings and planning was fantastic!

More to come.

From the opening circle on the second of two days working together in El Paso, Texas. Our overarching purpose was retaining medical talent. Using 8×11 photos, we asked participants to speak to what they feel we are really up too. These are a few of the words I caught.

Oh, that’s what we are up to.
Me, you.
What we do.

This rat race of asphalt jungle —
we’re talking people out of it,
down from it,
to a new quality of life.
To an invitation to remember quality of life.

In our different efforts, fragmented,
we are remembering that we can do much together,
even with the constraints of time.
We are asking each other what is possible when
we extend our relationship in continuity.

In these mountains, when poppies bloom,
we are inviting the beauty of landscape and people.
And like we do in greenhouses,
we are starting seedlings.
We love to care.

In hospital settings, providing comfort.
In the commonality of human need,
urgent in our commitment together
and our commitment to the diverse gods that inspire us
to compassion and kindness.

Oh, that’s what we are up to.
Me, you.
What we do.

Supporting those that we love,
reaching out like a mom on the phone,
to advance what we do —
and I’m on the phone
with the president’s office.

These pyramids,
these structures
big and small, short and tall
engage more people
in seeing the whole picture.

This relay team reminds me
that medals are in sight.
Working as teams, it seams,
can free us
to the next places of the future.

Make time to nurture, to be together.
Like skydiving, when we do it together
we can do a lot. It’s hot
to hold hands, legs and other things
that help us feel a wholeness.

Oh, that’s what we are up to.
Me, you.
What we do.

This picture is dialectic.
We are starting to see the whole body,
excavating memories of what we can be.
To construct, yes.
To maintain, yes, that too.

In two sides of a mirror
El Paso can see itself with clarity
that leads to attraction,
love, and a bit of tingling.
Date-a-Doc!

Like the Golden Gate Bridge,
what we are building here
has big potential
and risk.
Yet, we walk together in the scary places.

In this chaos
there is extreme order.
Like at the market
the fruits and vegetables
are where they need to be.

Oh, that’s what we are up to.
Me, you.
What we do.

From pal, Chris Corrigan, shared on the Open Space List Serve. I love this for the ooze that Chris references. And for the relationship he names between that fundamental aspect of life and the methodology we use to be part of it.

The new forms appear all around us all the time.  They bubble in and out of existence, and once in a while something takes hold and gets more and more concrete.  There is nothing particularly destined about something like democracy – it just became the experiment that got a significant boost from power and mass at the right times.  And of course it is practiced in many forms, none of which should ever be thought of as permanent.

Open Space (by which I mean the unbounded field of self organizing potential that is always around us) is the primordial ooze that provides the conditions for the birth of new structures.  The methodology we all love so much is a formal expression of this ooze, deployed for useful strategic purposes.  But it is only in the Open Space of everyday living that the real organizational forms arise and take shape.  And for every single one that becomes standard practice, there are millions that die as unrealized ideas.  Sometimes these ideas return as the time becomes right, sometimes they are lost to human memory.  

All governance is and will continue to be emergent.  We can be fooled by the planning that goes into what it takes to concretize a over nance system, but we should never forget – with great hope – the kind of dynamics that allows such systems o emerge in the first place.

From the Open Space part of the Rural Futures Conference: Connecting Innovation that Teresa Posakony and I hosted. In a morning there were 33 meetings called over two sessions. There were about 200 people participating with the umbrella question below. I caught a few words from each of the group leaders sharing. You can read below. And / or listen here on you tube.

What could we contribute to a Rural Futures Institute
that rocks you, Nebraska, the Great Plains, and beyond?

A Wildly Successful Rural Futures Institute

A wildly successful rural futures institute
plural ideas or rural success
not mildly but wildly.

When it rocks it knocks off your socks
removes the blocks
and makes you talk.

Is it massively ambitious?
These are not times for the passively curious,
but rather for the first next steps.

Bold. Not old.
Out of the mold.
Simple, but bold.

Recommendations in these
stations of germination
of the RFI.

Friends, colleagues, an invitation.
Thirty-three groups, troops
of contributing thinkers.

Going first from Table 1,
Empowering Our Future Stakeholders
the young, the ones from K-college
to expand the vistas of knowledge.

We need houses for our youth,
and partnering with architects, to detect
interest in these populations of Nebraska,
self-promoting, opening to strangers,
interns, and in-learns.

It’s our turn in rural Lancaster.
How could we measure desired outcomes?
Challenge assumptions and presumptions.
Self-determination is our recommendation.

How do we insure diverse voices at the table?
For sure.
Invite, invite, invite.
Include, include, include.

Technology and it’s role —
broadband throughout the land.
Encouraging all of us as leaders
beyond blow ins and blow outs
regional connecting, including in the CAVES.

Focus on natural resources,
our course is, of course is,
core regional groups
collaborating, not just duplicating.

We want solid partners where
rural means rural and
rural includes rural.
It’s different because we talked about it.

Entertaining with youth,
community coaching, and approaching
others who sustain and incentivize
health and health care.

In the gaps
we explored education for every child —
high tech to high touch.

And across three generations of leaders,
we call for unstoppable civic engagement.
Unstoppable building relations.
Unstoppable listening.
Unstoppable learning in next ideas.

Attracting entrepreneurs,
quirky harvesting of ideas
for the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

What happens after the conversation?
We want to start with simple steps.
Rural futures begin
with vibrant rural communities.

What about youth?
We can’t have a future
without building one.
Impact can be fun!

What about the role of scholars?
a web of exchange for learning, advocacy, and policy.
Helping to reach to others in the country.

We are reframing the game of leaders.
From the status quo to status go.
Embrace the leader in each of us,
the all of us, here to contribute.

What about Extention and the institute?
Tie it to other campus locations,
linked in our success,
as a must, a trust.

How much repopulating?
Wait, what IS rural?
Let the stakeholders decide on this ride.
Poll it to role with it.

Support climate change impact.
Add to what is happening
to feed global leaders.

I’m Haley. I’m Melissa.
Engage us by inviting our responsibility.
We want to connect.
We know how!

What is the role of agriculture?
It’s a role, an outcome.
Not to be undone.
Essential to credential.

Multi-modal transportation?
We don’t have a department,
but we need part of that pie.

High in corn growing,
in this association, we lack the red tape.
We can involve more.
We can evolve mere.

Empower through your own stories,
motivating communities to do from vision,
action from vision, that’s our mission;
good to add what’s missing.

Innovating — connecting the edges.
Integrating imagination and the offerings of possibility.
Big dreams start with people in relationship.