Seeds for a happy planet

Un unseen spark
fertilizes the space
ripening what is
between us…
Who are my mates
and who wants to play?

Who is here
and who wants
to partner
in the story of us?
What is the juice
that drips from your soul?
How do your passions
nourish the world?
If your heart is a spoon
whose holy mouth
do you feed?
What is the story of us?

A covenant with nature
without the illicit affairs
without electricity,
stuff
and things.
Un collaborateur
with my body and yours
us-ing is a verb.
A collective presence
in an unseen field
of purple energy
tucked in a wild canyon
of artful learning
and joyful play.

What is the story of us?
5 hybrids in the parking lot
with “PLU” (people like us)
on the liscence plate.

Community Conversations
and Servant Leaders
longing to language
something unseen but felt
What is the story of us?

Feet in two worlds
with our heads in the sky
and our shoes in the dirt
of intentional community.
Seeding the moral imagination
in a polarised word
where Self is the Other
and things are not what they seem.
Cosmic identity
in a universe of voices
where boardrooms
and warrooms are
one the same.
What is the story of us?

What does the world need?
What brings us fully alive?
This is our quest;
The Great I Am
And Who You Are
could heal the world.

To be human is possible.
Ditto.
Ditto.
Ditto.
If we just live the shift
In the midst of the crowd.
What could Real Also Be?

The story of us is
the faces we see
the poems we write
its rewilding
and sometimes walking out.
The deep collective inquiry
is the future growing in us.

Here Now.

This is the story of us.

Captured by Ed’veeje, from the sharing in circle – on the second day – around the question: How is our passion, our emergent work the new story of us?

Third day in our learnIng gathering. We started with some singing and then moved to some excersises that were inspired by the systemic constellation work. First it was a relating to our highest potential – life’s work – soul – higher self; all in silence and using the body to sense the nuances and try new things out.

Then we did a collective sensing in how we relate with The New Story. As intro we used a poem, written by a dear friend living in Greece, and these days confronted with the reality of living without oil and what then comes to a halt. Again all happened in silence, and being aware of the many subtle ways that we know. What follows here are the nuggest spoken in a circle about what we learned, new insights we got, out of this last constellation; either on elements of the new story or how to relate with it.

I advice you to read it slowly, letting time between each line; maybe read it twice as we did in the circle this morning.

Expansion and flexibiity
Opennes and uncertainty of direction
Potential and bodies reaching for each other; no sense of what the new story is.
There is an opening between humanity and the source; the connection is beginning.
Role of attraction and allurement; of beauty; and the attraction of the trees.
Opening out.
Wicked cool! Wicked friends! Cool!
The light coming through the leaves and looking at the ground. The trees are solid.
I am the Earth, the old and the new story. I want respect.
Slowing and noticing.

Creative tension between opposites. Is humanity ready? It does not have to be big.
Spirits are here to guide us. Learn to ask and listen.
The call of the great wild cosmos.
Aware of pressure.
Each of us connecting to the earth, and the rest of the universe, and each of us seeking each other.
Being open to receive source.
Like a kid in a candy store: curiousity, playfulness and so much to discover.
It doesn’t seem incidentical that we are passing time (a little clock being the talking piece); counter clockwise.
People trying to connect in many different ways.
Lots of energy and potential and conversations and relationships.
Receiving the trees, guarding the forest; knowing there is no away.
Wonder, awe and curiousity.
Aware of being a small node in a vast system.
When you turn the clock face over there are stars.
Attention to the shifting whole.

Collages from our experience in nature… the invitation was to listen to nature. This was the overall question: What is it that humanity needs to remember in order to rewild, repattern and restory?

The Dutch translation of this poem, originally written in German, was for years on the wall, where I changed my cloths. So, I read it many, many times in the morning or when going to bed; sometimes consciously, sometimes less. But it dripped in, slowly but surely. Now I came across it again… It is such a deep wisdom, that is also at the core of any transformation work, be it individual therapy, systemic constellation work or… it is also useful for the state of our world.

It is what it is, says Love…

“It is madness
says reason
It is what it is
says love

It is unhappiness
says caution
It is nothing but pain
says fear
It has no future
says insight
It is what it is
says love

It is ridiculous
says pride
It is foolish
says caution
It is impossible
says experience
It is what it is
says love.”

Erich Fried (Es ist was es ist. Liebesgedichte Angstgedichte Zorngedichte) – Translation by M. Kaldenbach

The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
by Wendel Berry
via Chris Corrigan

A song to enjoy!

Last bit of our journey here together, the harvest of the open space sessions and the final closing. Three words jump out: Mystery, Mastery and Artistry.

Mystery… how to describe?
Can we reach the Mystery through Mastery?
Mystery of our individual being in the world, mastery of the subtle arts, which then allows us to grow to a collective mastery, a mastery of the collective being.The use of arts seems to come more to the foreground in our inquiries, as are stories. Indeed, people were using color and paint in their notebooks, and in the conversations.

Really beautiful pages I saw all around. Both arts and stories are related with our embodied presence. And both are easy ways in to let people participate in. It brings us easily from I to we. When mastery comes in, it goes even beyond the We! Collective intelligence, collective wisdom and collective being shows up.You will notice that the people-place relationship in its surface form had more or less disappeared. As we noticed in another session the areas of life: I, We and profession/vocation are collapsing into one whole, into wholeness. So also the people and place collapsed into how we are as human beings in the world – in a new way.

The importance of stories and the weaving of them into a story-field was not really new to me, but I realized that this is a big part of what I do! I weave the stories that hear and that I am part of in order to show the new meaning that is arising in many different places. I imagine the new storyfield to be an inspiring possibility and opportunity for people who feel the dis-ease of the old story.

Mystery
Mastery
Artistry
In service of the whole
In service of evolution

Magic!

I have been reading Dave Pollard’s blog for a long, long time. This time I want to share something – because after all he is a good writer! He goes on naming what is required from us in these times:

“Instead of seeing conceptually I have to learn to see perceptually.

Instead of using the tools of propagandized modern language, I have to learn to use the natural tools of intuition and attention and appreciation and sensation and presence.

Instead of learning based on planning and presupposition (based on what I’ve ‘learned’ before) my learning must be based on openness to all possibility, on appreciation of emergence, and most of all on humility.

Instead of applying complicated, analytical learning methods I must apply the ways of complexity: experimentation, discovery, observation, imagination, and practice.

Instead of learning by the traditional means of separating myself from the object of my study (”the environment”, “the culture”), I must learn integrally, as a connected part of all-life-on-Earth.

I have to relearn to learn how a child learns: authentically (=Gk. being oneself).

………..
To move forward now I have to become un-civilized, wild. Agile. Authentic. Finally, fully, nobody-but-myself.

………..

To do that I must let go of everything I believe, everything I think I ‘know’, everything I fear, everything I think is appropriate (or not), expected, accepted (and acceptable, or not), everything I have unintentionally become and everything I have ‘taken on’. All that baggage. All that stuff that holds me, holds all of us, back, and holds us in place.

I have to become light.”

Beautiful.

Raw.

True.

I love it!

Yesterday, surfing on the net, following writings from friends, this is what I found: a truly, inspiring story, as much in the content as in the way it is published!

It’s all in the question.

Find it

Explore it

Open it up to others

Learn from it about it

Experience its power

Enjoy the feeling

Assimilate the knowledge

It’s all in the question

Written by Hala Makarem – found her blog, Inspirational Reflections, through the Presencing Institute community site.