Seeds for a happy planet

“I want people to sail with me through this puzzling and frightening world. I expect to fail at moments on this journey, to get lost–how could I not? And I expect that you too will fail. Even our voyage is cyclical–we can’t help but move from old to new to old. We will vacillate, one day doing something bold and different, excited over the progress, the next day, back to old behaviors, confused about how to proceed. We need to expect that we will wander off course and not make straight progress to our destination. To stay the course, we need patience, compassion, and forgiveness. We need to require this of one another. It will help us be bolder explorers. It might keep us from going mad.”

One paragraph out of an article written by Margaret Wheatley.

Regular users know that I am involved with The Art of Hosting, be it the art in itself or its community. It is the art of designing and facilitating meaningful conversations in whatever community – school – organisation they ask for it or are willing to engage with each other in ‘a road less travelled’.

Recently Ravi Tangri posted an interesting conversation on YouTube (in three parts) in which Phil Cass and Toke Møller tell the story of how these meaningful conversations came into being in the health care system in Columbus Ohio. It is really an amazing story and a very good example for other places and other areas of life.

In Columbus, Ohio, the question started around how to build an affordable and sustainable health care system in their region. Some time later they were asking themselves: What is a health care system for? and recently they had conversations about What is Health? I am in awe for Phill and all the others who are breaking new ground with something as simple as deep conversations…

Please take a look here. As I mentioned before, the whole story is in three episodes.

And Ravi did more! He looked around all over YouTube and gathered all video’s related to meaningful conversations. If you are interested, here is more!

I recently came across many, many good links and interesting video’s that make for a good reading and listening in free hours.

First of all I want to make a link to Blessed Unrest, which is also the title of a book written by Paul Hawken. I didn’t read the book, but I find the video, where you hear his introduction inspiring. The subtitle is: How the largest movement in the world came into being and nobody saw it coming. One of the reasons that nobody saw it coming is because it was not planned, but it is the sum of all individuals and local groups that decide to do something and then do it!

That is exactly what you can see in other video’s on the site of Social Edge; a site dedicated to the work of Social Entrepreneurs. Besides the video’s there are also a couple of interesting blog conversations.

Other inspiring video’s – and a great way of harvest a conference! – are the daily video’s made from the Tällberg Forum. It is a yearly conference held in a small town in Sweden, but it seems to me that very important conversations are held there. These video’s are made by a professional company, of course you note the difference.

Finally I want to inform you about the Global Oneness Project. They seem to travel to different areas in the world, and report on the good projects that they come across. I didn’t see everything, but the ones that I can recommend are: the Seva Café, We are servants, not owners – about being guardians of the Earth, and an interview with Tenzin Palmo – author and Tibetan Buddhist nun.

I just like to see good ‘TV’ before going to bed…

It is so fascinating when you see patterns, same themes arrising in different places at – almost – the same time!

One of these days I found myself sitting on a terrace in Paris, with Anne Stadler and George Por. Anne started talking about being called to some places to heal old wounds. The conversation went on with how we can see the whole web of relations. Is Europe able to see it’s whole history of what it has done in the colonies? Who knows that the North-West of the US was connected with the rest of the world through trade in the pré-history?

It seems that a huge re-uniting, a linking up is going on in so many places. Just a few days ago Juanita Brown, founder of the World Café, wrote about the recent European gathering in Dresden to some friends. Part of her email was:

“Most exciting was the simultaneous hosting of eight local World Cafés throughout the greater Dresden area (on sustainable business, the arts, media, youth and education, etc.), which led key leaders in Dresden to begin envisioning Dresden as a “learning city” using conversational modalities like the World Café and others to engage citizens at all levels in conversations about the questions that matter most to them— the “world as café” came alive in Germany!

This is so consistent, Toke and Phil, with the wonderful work you all are doing in Columbus. Maybe at some point down the line Colombus and Dresden might become “sister learning cities”–depending on how it all unfolds in terms of the follow up and next steps with the folks in Dresden.”

And look what Phil – doing the Health Care Project in Columbus – wrote in response:

“What is so wonderfully strange about this is that Dresden is Columbus’ European “sister city”.  We have certain municipal and cultural exchange relationships with Dresden and have adopted each other as sister cities.  I’m going to be in contact with our former Mayor who sits on our Foundation Board and has strongly supported our “hosting work” to learn more about this, because he was Mayor when this “adoption” took place.”

This is so consistent with one of the last things that happened in this Dresden gathering itself.  One of the last blog post I made while being there was about a Chinese man (sorry I forgot his name) who brought a gift from his country: a cloth with a view on his city: Hangzhou. And he told about his dream to connect cities, and inviting each other. He talked about appreciating the history of the people you will get to know and much more that could lead to a ‘wisdom civilisation’. He got a big applause!

And on the last afternoon in Dresden I participated in a conversation around the question: What is the highest potential of The World Café as a contributor to the development of large-group dialogue and collective leadership in Europe? One of us said that what is missing in Europe is a vision for Europe that is coming from the people, from ‘the inside’; instead of the politicians and other leaders. I noted down one practical idea raised by somebody else: setting up conversations between twin-towns!

Time seems to be ripe for this…

Being present, as the core of being conscious in the here and now, is ultimately an alignment of body, mind and spirit. Being aware of our body, expanding our movements – very literally – refine our capacities for being present and to go beyond our normal limits. All spiritual practices have a connection with some physical practices, let alone to become aware of your breathing. Becoming more conscious of your body brings you – no matter what – into the here and now.

Being present connects us with silence, the quiet spot inside of us. Do we dare to engage ourselves in color, in movement from this still point, with no attachment to outcome, without controlling it? To let inspiration being present ‘in the moment’ with no translation by the mind?
Dancing, singing, drawing, … are all, besides talking, expressions of our wholeness. In our Western culture so many of these expressions have been cut of. Our ‘new culture’ will need to find ways to integrate these ways of expressing and gathering information. We can integrate the masculine and feminine ways of knowing, because if we need to handle ever more complexity, more of the whole, this is the way to go.

Expand mental knowing
Finn Voldtofte wrote for the gathering Moving the Edge, that the individual and the group itself can be an entry point of consciousness. My dance, my walk at the beach, my drawing can also be entry points of consciousness, not only my talking. So much inner knowing in our bodies and in the subtle layers of reality is not directly accessible with our minds, even if we ‘lean into the unknown’ in our conversation. Words needs a certain kind of being aware that we don’t need for expressing ourselves in sound, colour or movement. Exploring this direct knowing more often and intentional can show us a way to access it with words more easily.
Most of the time we don’t go into an inquiry and reflection of our inner knowing, if we notice it at all! But the world is in need of this inner knowing. It can reveal deep, hidden wisdom. This kind of knowing has to come into the world, to balance the importance of the mental, analytical knowing. When we release the mental knowing that we are so used to, we create an opening, a space where we can be open for other kinds of knowing, sensible in the body. If we take time to inquire and reflect the hidden wisdom becomes accessible and then we can share it – also with words – with others.
We all know that an image, a poem, a performance can carry much more meaning than words in a conversation. Let’s use these intelligences more intentional, individually and collectively.

What if we could/would always listen and think with our bodies and our minds?

Creating more community
In the experience of my women’s circle, over the years we have come to value all these different expressions as honoring and living authenticity. Not only the authenticity of the individual but also on the level of community. Isn’t dancing, singing and eating together a core part of every community worldwide? I am longing for creating this kind of shared culture, as much as Check-in rounds and the bells ringing for silence have become a part of the culture that we all create together as we go.