Human to Human

OK, I’m not sure why, but this feels like a bit of a confession. Perhaps more accurately, an admission to myself. I offer it in hope of inviting a reframing of documenting and harvesting. So that I can settle down a bit in my own practice. And as a question about harvesting that can help all of us who do it to improve our craft, to center our craft.

Despite my very strong desire to harvest out oodles of insights that happen on a daily basis — all of which are extremely valuable in some way — I can’t keep up. Some are from work events. Some are from books or articles. Many are from conversations with colleages and friends. Many are from work meetings. Some are from simple times of quietness. I don’t feel particularly unique in this way. Most people I know are very busy, living life, in the doing, and are very full. Few of us capture all of what comes to us.

However, I often feel disappointment in my not harvesting more. Like a huge gift just got overlooked. In participatory leadership, it can be the difference between “that was a good conversation, now lets get back to our real work” and “that was a great meeting that now launches clear and sustainable action steps.”

So, as I was thinking yesterday about the many things I wanted to harvest — many of which are now old dusty post-it notes and feeling like a burdon piled in a growing stack — I found myself asking how I might think differently about harvesting? What would free me from the tyranny of volume into the aliveness of periodic noticing?

A translation of this question could be what other choices do we have than creating laborious, thick, text filled reports that few read? Massive effort. Less than massive impact. What other ways might help capture the energy and power of the whole without needing a detailed complete history of all that happened?

The insight for me was about documenting. I don’t have the time to document, as in record the full and comprehensive history, of all of the work that I am in or of all the life that I am in. There is a part of me that wants to make the time to do so, and believes that I can — who needs sleep anyway. But for me, I know inside this is unnecessary and quite draining. What I do want is to choose one or two…artifacts…that give me / us access to the energetic whole of the comprehensive experience.

“Access to the energetic whole” is I suppose another form of the old adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” That image of my son Isaac holding his first fish that he caught brings me energetically to the whole of the experience — the lake, the peanut butter sandwiches we ate, the breeze coming off of the lake.

I know that many of us are in a deep practice of creating artifacts, the pictures. Sometimes as words, or stories, or pictures, or images, or videos, or phrases, or music, etc. I think the world view underneath this is what is calling to me now. A holistic view that I practise is that not only is the whole greater than the sum of the parts, but also, the whole is available in any of the parts. Like I’m told the DNA for an entire body is available in each of the cells. From this view, the work of harvesting shifts from an obsession or obligation to get all of it in its volume, to the freedom of following one or two sparks that provide gateway into the resonance, the energy of the whole experience. Gateway to the resonance is the hit for me.

OK, I wonder what this view might free me / us to do in the practice of harvesting?

My first clarity is that in writing some on this blog, my resonance shifts into feeling a harvest of the whole — which in this case may be more about a stream of consciousness and learning and creation rather than the log of all things. The resonance as the center of the harvest is what I sense is most lasting. And I have this sense that many of us are coming to see and language more of this. In my hosting settings, I want people to remember and reactivate the feeling of clarity and community that they felt in being together, and organize from that.

The part as gateway to the whole — that honors the multiple ways of getting to what matters and it does so through simplicity. That’s a practice I want to spend more time with.

Another post on four levels of harvest from some work with The Center for Human Development. See the very end.

Lately I have noticed a few improv resources that I am finding really helpful. One is a book written by a man, Robert Poynton, whom I met many years ago at a Berkana Dialogue. Robert emailed me last week to tell me about his book, “Everythings an Offer: How to Do More With Less.” His website for the book is here. I like its playful design in an of itself. I also love the language he uses to sum up the book in six words: “Let go. Notice more. Use everything.” Good guidance for most aspects of life.

Here is a bit more context from Robert’s website:

“This book explains how to make more with what you have, using less effort, less energy and less resources (and with less difficulty and stress). And who wouldn’t want that? It describes how and why we all need to improvise (let’s face it, no-one has a script for their life) and explains that the seemingly magical abilities of improvisers in the theatre are based on a small set of simple practises that anyone can learn.
This method, it turns out, can be used by anyone leading a busy and complicated life (that’s you isn’t it?) to build any kind of relationships or ideas. The book suggests that improvisational practise is like a new language which gives you new ways to understand and respond to events that are beyond your control and is illustrated with a wealth of stories and anecdotes, personal and professional, that include everything from advertising to zen.”

A second resource is another book, “Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up” by Patricia Ryan Madson. The book is here. Though I haven’t read it yet, the chapter titles alone were enough to spark many ideas for me in my design of events. Check these: Say Yes; Just Show Up; Start Anywhere; Pay Attention; Wake Up to the Gifts; Make Mistakes, Please; Act Now; Take Care of Each Other; Enjoy the Ride.

Simply rich. Stories. Wonderings. Shared among Berkana friends. Focused on a question. Listening. Giving full support. Daring to be in our learning edges, knowing it is the only way.

How Are You Navigating in this Time of Dramatic Change?
November 2008

Can you hear me? I am near, me. Near without fear.

I’m tellin’ a story about these Atlantic waters.
In my first ocean worthy boat sailin’ with all of us new in the deep sea blue.
I thought the harbor would be visible and open.
Of fuck, it is all haze.
I saw the opening for one moment only, but it was all we needed in that day.
I would do it again. And I do.

Popped up in scale, I remind others I have no idea what I’m doing.
I’m shedding myself into longevity and multi scale.
I just read your article and committed to try it. Whack this out. Here we go.
Feelin’ the real, collapsing in the market.
We are nose to nose, on the hunt for what works.
Copin’ for me is in my hope. The only way that I can hold scale is by being in family.
The scale works me in my frail, my shaking tail.

I so want to be there, to get as close as I can.
Not waiting. No gating. Beyond dating. The journey of my soul awakens.

I sound like I don’t know what I am doing, but I do know.
I find my way in the immediately infront, the next simple elegant step.
I’m seeking clarity of direction. Detection of that direction.
Shape and motion in this collection to direction.
Looking at this land, my partner and I, but we are letting come.

Awaken to oneness.
Work with friends.
Work with simplicity.
These are the tools I know that help me navigate
My practice in the day to day, this way to that way.

I’m in my physical parallel breakdown.
Systemic crisis is teaching me what my life is.
Learning that I’m not less than. We are not less than.
In right relation in this station.
I’m so hungry for home. Building beyond this roam.
Integrity, feeling on my edge.
This phase in these days.
Takin’ it in like a sponge and needing my time.

Back in the day, we practiced river time.
Without watches, setting up camp,
watching the stars, seeing my clarity in tending my gear.
I’m often wrong, but never in doubt.
I’m not buying my own bullshit.
This phase is groundless and very confusing.
What is this crap? Grow some food!
There is no release as I spiral in.

Language separates. Sound anchors. Songs. Sounds. Rounds.
Meetin’ in vibration we find our unity in our community.
The ground I’ve found, but the compass of figuring it out isn’t working.
I can feel the gazillions of answers – we remember more in our silence.

I got through labor with low vocalization.
Moo with me. You too, with me.
We are holding you as you move to the rim and get your baby home.
I’ve been to that rim.
My center is in our house. Our home. Our basic home.
Nursing and getting people to bed.
Steppin with my grandfather to the places he couldn’t dream of going.
Travelling across these times, feeling the birth of possibility,
Bringing that baby home too.

It just comes naturally – the mooing. The moaning through the groaning.
I’ve been bailing out my ship, spinning through conversations with friends.
Talking about our stuff on the couch.
I’m trying to be with my mad, unaware of our own neighborhoods.
What if I lose the anger? There are hearts achin’ and breakin’
As I remember what it means to be together.

Speedin’ in this boat, afloat in the choppy waters.
I’m trying to slow down but feeling my heavy foot on the accelerator.
Sleep walking in the consumerist pattern.
Evicted from our garden, from our growing.
I’m opening dialogues, other gardens with conversations about Zim dollars.

Speaking from Greece, we eleven women
Cried our way into arriving, grieving our thriving.
Wearing masks as we show more of our selves in the world.
I knew we just needed to feed these women.
Making bread, up late at night, watching the grief clear.
I need to be clear.
Standing in my places with many faces.
Stil in the world. Being still, still in the world.

Wanting to know my place – it might just be a fantasy.
The dark in the coal mine teaches me to be where I am.
My perspective shifted ten years ago; I turned in to myself.
Taught by my hacking, again,
as I’m being navigated to the sweet spots of deep spiritual outside of all this stuff.
Boldly just be. Boldly just be.
What I need shows up in abundance as I take my jewelry off, just bein’ here.
Doin’ a lot of good deeply in some place.

The first time on that 26 footer in the Gulf of Mexico,
I learned about shielding myself to the sun.
Back up the Houston ship channel,
making our way amidst huge oil tankers in the mid of night.
I was completely aware of the fleet, the sail, and the harmony. Attentive.
Thank you Wendell – “Willing to die, you give up your will. Keep still until moved by that which moves all, you are moved.”
Connect.
Take in all that I can.
Tell the truth. We don’t have time not to.

Another harvest poem from a recent check-in circle in FL. It came after a teaching offered by Teresa Posakony on the birth and death of organization systems. Beautiful again. The words of participants when asked, “What makes you tremble?” and “Where do you stand?” I love the many entries in these words to the work that matters in our hearts, be it in FL or in other places of community and work.

The Place of Tremble

The place of tremble beyond right doing and wrong doing: I will meet you there.

Aware with attention, callin’ it back to center.
No need for a bender — just the mentor in the center.
Listen. Breath. How cool is that!

Sharin’ voice. Sharin’ choice. Sharen Joy.
Other council fires burned before ours, for hours.

I’m in the vision. I fear the rejection, the detection of my own judgment.

Out of the cave of like-minded people to the wave of new, seein’ my bein’.
In the magic of the profoundly open.
Is there danger in the stranger? Perhaps better in a manger.

Thirty years later in the land of gator,
so entrenched — views, words, labels.
Can we foster vision in the people?
Ownin’ it. No bemoanin’ it. Growin’ vision.

Shimmie on the bridge. Do I have the strength in my base to dance the curve?
I did the most horrible things, whispering my truth in the ear of my ex, among many in difference.

My passion makes me tremble.
Can we just get on better with each other, sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers.

Trusting in the bridges of possibility born on busses that plunged unknowingly.
In chunnels, tunnels, funnels of absolute authenticity.

Do we have the courage to let fall away?
The mired and the tired. Why are we holding on, we spirits in human form?

Am I really changin’? Can I trust my self, my self?
Trustin’ in the right place to be free.

I have visions. Is it real? Am I alone? Alone in this tone?

I think it’s tiiime we learn how to swim.
Gonna be a dolphin.
Letting go to the place of no story, trustin’ my dolphin muscles.
Knowing choice, choice in my voice.

When someone close dies, and goes away — that’s change.
I would like a place just as it seems.
No thinkin’. No red meat.
We have the will, but oh those snickers are good.

If I ain’t trembling, I tremble.
What if I forget?

Can I come to still?
What is the under this in unlearning? Grounded on my feet, and workin’.

I’ve always done work. What the hell am I doing?
Those old methods don’t work for me anymore.
No more fixin’. Just leap and float.

The ecstacy of near death has been with me all of my life.
What do you mean, no!
Ecstacy, frustration, anger, cry, laugh.

I can’t split. But I can walk back and forth
on rope bridges in Ireland lookin’ for birds above salmon.

I was in the bathroom, takin’ care.
It’s up to me – really – every day.
Awesome, fearsome.

I’m at the no point of every point,
trembling in the sacred, that wholeness.

Those toes, my toes, blistered and callused because I use them.

I wonder where that new flow is going.
I wonder with no blunder.

I saw these systems going away —
like unfolding flowers, showing it is possible.

Can’t be a hero of a story that your own creed created.
What if it were a new story altogether, the old that we’ve had all along in the new?

In another life, I thought I was bringing in change.
What if all organizations have soul?
Can we bring this back? What woud it mean to fail in soul?

It’s a new place. Bring my heart as I bend the curve.
Making the heart. That is my start.

I care about spirit and contributing when moved — this is my groove.

I’ve decided to be a voice for families of the future.
Living in the now, this how, not knowing where we’re going.
But knowin’ we could do better.
Kids deserve it. Our future. Knowin’ we can do better.