Category: Edited

I appreciate this phrase from Jeff Thies, “we maintain a commitment to the tension,” from a phone call I was in yesterday. Jeff is a senior leader with St. Joseph Health System. He was describing some of the realities of their efforts, everything from the inspiring spiritual grounding of dignity, care, connection, and compassion to the juxtaposed current runaway-cost of healthcare, confrontative political context in the US, and culture of disease management. I love Jeff’s honesty in it. “We try to stay present to what wants to evolve,” he said.

Good to hear this with Jeff. And, beyond the words of it, nice as they are, to feel the realness of his voice. Hmmm…. To stay present requires a realness. And an ability to lean in to the tensions. Become curious about them with each other. That’s pretty good learning and practice at all levels of scale, isn’t it.

I appreciated this topic for our monthly local Participative Leadership Practitioners Circle (PLPC), co-hosted last week by Ben Mates and myself. Complimentary Currencies is a body of work Ben has been supporting and exploring in the Salt Lake Valley.

As always with this group, we have a simple, deliberate format. The topic invitation is sent in advance so that people can choose to participate. We sit in a circle. The group has been 6-16 people. I usually offer a bit of context for the process and specifically for the evening. We check-in with a bit of voice from everyone. We give our attention and curiosity to the topic for the evening. We harvest some of the learning. We close with deliberateness. Good simple process for tapping intelligence in the group.

Ben’s description for the invitation was this:

The way we use currency to exchange and circulate wealth is often unconscious. We rarely consider that there might be alternative means of facilitating this exchange/circulation. I’m interested in convening conversations where we examine the often-unconscious assumptions around money and begin to explore alternative currencies that could offer healthier ways to be in relationship with each other and the world that gives us life. How can I best engage people and invite them to explore?

This was a great night of learning for me. Ben offered some framing about how money is energy and his focus is on creating alternative ways for energy to move and flow in a society. We played a couple of games to get this point. And then we played an additional game to help see some of our own patterns and beliefs in relation to money, things, exchange. The conversation that followed was very stimulating to me. Deep. Reflective. Thoughtful. Not surprising — this is what I know in how Ben is in the world. He is one of the good challengers and paradigm shifters that I know.

One part of the game had us naming for ourselves something that has three qualities (and energy). 1) what you like to do, 2) what you are good at, and 3) what people value. I found this particularly valuable to notice these things and notice that these becomes currencies that we can offer to each other. Nice. There is a spirit to it. That helped me to see more of that.

For those interested there are many further resources to stir the thinking.

-Ben has an article pending publication in Catalyst Magazine (benjmates@att.com)

–An article by Michel Bauwens on post-capitalism (thanks to my friend Ria in Belgium)

-Several books by Bernard Lietaer: The Future of Money; The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, New Money for a New World (search for these on Google or Amazon)

-Several Books also by Charles Eisenstein: The Ascent of Humanity is particularly good I found.

Thanks Ben, all.

Earlier this week I was on a first phone call with Debra Kreisberg, Joseph Nsabimbona, and Angeline Habonimana Nsabimbona. Debra was a a participant at an Art of Participative Leadership training a month ago in Utah. I appreciate her invitation to explore some community engagement work that she is involved in. Joseph and Angeline, whom I was meeting for the first time, are a married couple whose work is to support refugee populations in the Denver, Colorado area. Joseph and Angeline left Burundi in 1994. They are founders of A La Source Refugee Ministry.

The point of this call was to explore ways to help Joseph and Angeline with their work. I listened to them. Their work is inspiring, particularly oriented to serving refugees from the Great Lakes area of East Africa. They focus on youth, asylum seekers, and organizations that deal with refugee populations. Their format is what you would expect — training classes, forums, and seminars. Joseph and Angeline, like many others, are trying to imagine next ways for helping people get to the heart of the work. What they do is great. What they want to do is reach more people, scale their work. Yet, in scaling it, not lose the heartfulness of it. This is where Debra wanted to make the connection. She had felt and seen this at the Art of Participative Leadership training she participated in.

I appreciated in particular the clarity of story that we arrived at on the phone together. Or key points of the story that help their work now.

1. Together We Are Stronger — This is the belief that Joseph and Angeline expressed. As well as variations of it: “Together we are better.” I offered the African proverb that I heard long ago. “If you want to go faster, go alone. If you want to go further, go together.”
2. In Coming Together We Partake of that Strength — This is a fundamental belief in the value of coming together. And I believe it is one of the core questions that Joseph, Angeline, and Debra are asking: How can we experience the power of together in a way that lasts? This is different than just hearing the words, inspiring as they may be. And this is where I feel I can be helpful with them, offering social technologies and participative formats that entangle the group heart if you will, or the group imagination.
3. Harvest Commitment — It is great to focus immediately on what we intend to harvest. Commitment is part of that. Appreciation is another. As powerful as it is, we don’t come together just to hear the strength of story and appeal to compassion. We invite and welcome that energy to move into the qualities of deeper relation and action.
4. Make it Better — There are many of us who continue to adopt an energy of saving the world. I continue to learn patience to just make it better. I say this hear because many of the worlds that we are living in require a lot. There is a trap (of utter exhaustion for one) in expecting to save the world. Or to make it perfect. My friend Margaret Wheatley is a great teacher for me of these traps, reminding me that the spiritual warrior’s way is to do good because it is ours to do.
5. Our Greatest Resource Is Each Other — Debra has a very strong voice on this. It is a call to reclaim the belief that human beings are resourceful. This contrasts some of the last several decades of a welfare model and disposition. I love the way that she challenges beliefs of scarcity of currency to abundance of human beings in relation with each other.

Serving better. Getting to the heart of it through well-held social engagement and interaction with each other. Inspiring.

Last night I hosted an event with my friend Carla Kelley of the Human Rights Education Center of Utah. It was an evening with 100 people from the Glendale community in Salt Lake City.

One of the things that I think we did particularly well in this evening was to keep a simple and purposeful design. While people were eating, I introduced some simple context. First, a concept I’ve learned with my Berkana colleagues — “Whatever the problem (dream), community is the answer.” And second, a principle I’ve learned with my friend Chris Corrigan about community work — “There is no finish line in community work.” I shared that in community work, we know that we must turn to one another. That is what we would do during the evening.

There were multiple ethnic groups gathered for this event with need for language translation: Spanish, Tongan, Swahili, Burmese, Nepali, Somali. Carla, John Erlacher (Glendale Middle School Principal) and I agreed that we wanted part of the evening to be less reliant on verbal communication. We played some simple cooperative games that had people standing in circle and crossing through the middle with different levels of interaction and attention with other participants.

We then moved our evening into two rounds of cafe style questions. The first, inviting participants to share stories with one another about what they appreciate in this community, and what they know is a challenge. We harvested these. The second round was an invitation to share suggestions for improvement. Again we harvested these.
It is a lot to ask to move into what many would define as concrete action plans in the space of 90 minutes together in a first meeting. Carla, John, and I knew this. However, what is essential and what I believe we accomplished very well was helping to create a pattern of invitation, of turning to one another, of sharing stories, of being curious with each other. It is the re-establishing of pattern that helps a system to begin to change. This is a fundamental principle of working in living systems. We created the format for interaction — in play and in conversation — that can create conditions for well and thriving community. And it was a lot of fun.

There was some news coverage from one of the local TV stations. That report and video is here.

My friend and colleague Glen Brown posted a thoughtful blog on the evening. It is here.

Some of the other pictures I have from the evening are here.

Great to be part of this story, and to offer a process that will help it be sustainable and attractive.