Seeds for a happy planet

It is Sunday morning now, more snow has come during the evening and the night; so postcards are everywhere you turn your head. Meditation has just ended and a few people are doing their morning exercises.

Yesterday evening we treated ourselves with a special gift: a hot tub in the open air, with the full moon right in front of us! It was a fabulous experience, with the moon coming in and out of the clouds, getting hot in the water and then rolling in the snow to get cold and back in the hot tub again. Time to just be and enjoy the experience and nothing more...

It wasn’t an easy morning yesterday. We were in the proces that Arnold Mendell calls becoming a True Community. First there is the happiness of finding like-minded people and then – all of a sudden? - the diversity shows up! Weren’t we friends; and now I am angry at you! In the language of Theory U this is the point of opening the heart, realising that all emotions that we project on each other are ours and we have to take responsibility for them ourselves. Going beyond the right and wrong, or any polarity that is present, and opening to the diversity and how other people are different than us. It was a big reminder for all of us, me included, never to violate the rule of the talking stone and an invitation again to speak to and from the middle and not addressing someone in specific. Reclaiming our projections is needed to re-weave the strands of the collective.

It was nice to see how throughout the day more and more people started drawing or playing with colors on paper. Amasing pieces of art emerged before our eyes by just taking one color after the other, not having a plan upfront what it would need to look like. This is exactly what we invite people to do here – to be here – to live in the moment, sensing where impulses are coming from and express them when they are authentic. We were releasing the tension of having to reach something. And we were, step-by-step, coming to this point of not-knowing. The mental not-knowing that hasn’t a clue how to draw energyfields, but if we try it turns out we can! It is possible to sense into that and observe and notice it in some way. There is something below the visible and the tangible...


Saturday morning in our 9th Women Moving the Edge gathering. I’m sitting here in our working space, early morning, while many others are sitting in deep meditation. Looking out of the walll with windows all over, there is this fairytale landscape, every branch of every three fully covered with a small layer of untouched snow. It is extremely beautiful as the surroundings here are all natural and birds don’t fly up when you approach them.

Yesterday afternoon we gathered with 12 women for this gathering, here in The Netherlands. We spend our time on arriving, being present and sharing stories. For me it is special to be in this venue as it was here that I got a deep, transformational and life-changing training in the early 90’ties, called Emotional Bodywork. Here I got my basic lens to look at people, relationships and transformation. Of course what I learned here has been moulded by my unique way of being and many other trainings and workshops, but it is still a deep root in my way of being.

We checked in yesterday around the questions: What made you come? What is your edge? The stories unfolded, all held within the container of both a deep circle practice and our guiding question: If the need of the world/Earth is an invitation to become fully ourselves, then what is our role as the evolving collective feminine? Sharing circles and our way of working of going with the flow and what is unfolding doesn’t give us a straight line right to the answer on the question. We wander around, we circle around, we explore the territory... so here are some of the themes that came up...

We are all part of the puzzle; we all have our unique place.
...healing sisterhood...
The need to be connected, because that’s the way we will reach the needed intelligence.
... the magic of co-creation...
What if it is easy? IT IS!!! It is a change of perspective...
Being in the rhythm with Earth... re-weaving the web...
Do I dare to return to the Wild...
the Mystery...
the natural below the conditioning...
where magic is real...
the truth beyond the heart...
the rhythm of the body...?

I’m here to be with what is...
to get out of the way...
no interpretation...
witnessing what is happening...
to learn together the feminine approach.

Evoking all our grandmothers...
reweaving across time...

The courage to make connections...
across time...
reaching out to nature spirits...

Connections growing from parent-child relationships
and power dynamics
and sisterhood
to real partnerships.

I need you, because of us.
I need you, because of the web of life.
Can we live as the Earth?


I want to share this story, that led eventually to a book The Power of Half. It’s a story about an american family that made an unusual decision… they sold their house (the american dream) and bought a much smaller house and gave money to the Hunger project. Here the article in The New York Times, and here the video – made by the son:

Lately I start to replace the word sustainability with thrivability, and now I came across the word trivancy. The big English-Dutch dictionary that I have here doesn’t know any of these two words… I expect them to mean the same…

Here is what Jack Ricchiuto (yes, again from him!) writes as part of a longer article:

The good news is that all groups can thrive. The quickest way for groups to experience more thrivancy is to design them for more thrivancy. Like everything else in life, thrivancy happens by design. Things always perform as they’re designed to perform.

The work of designing groups for greater thrivancy is the work of designing the four core elements of a group’s interactional space. When any of the four elements of this space is better designed for thrivancy, groups become smarter and better together.

This week we started the first conversations within the hosting team for a next Art of Hosting training in Belgium, Flanders. Part of the conversation was around finances and do we attract the right participants when the price is too high etc. While what we want to accomplish is that a sense of ‘mateship’ – kameraadschap – to be integrated back in our communities and society.

Jack Ricchiuto writes about the same:

Did economic development today in a rural midwest community where people instantly got the distinction between economic and community development. The difference is in the metrics. Economic development is about coins and community building is about connections. Two completely different directions. We need to change the conversation from economies to communities even though it takes us far beyond the comfort zones of conventional approaches.

I don’t think I have written here about my interest in Permaculture. In these days of less ‘work’ and less scheduled time I spend a lot of time looking at video’s and websites. The hours I have spend is still way below the average that the default Western adult spend on watching television, but to me it was a lot! The good thing is that I can knit while wathching – listening… I love it!

Tonight I came across this video, which isn’t a selling statement for Permaculture, but a good conversation of what is at the heart of it. Highy recommended!

Yesterday I came across this site: Ecoversity – with many, many video’s… if you want an interesting evening of TV-watching!