Tonight I read Marianne Knuth’s recent post “Reflections on our participation in a world gone wrong”. Having just heard Rob Stewart share his message about the impact humans are having on the planet (hint = not good) and then watching his documentary Sharkwater this weekend, this topic of our participation in a world gone wrong is circling in […]
Tag: change
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What Is This Field?
Chatting with a friend over email and she asked about the Art of Hosting and the participatory methods of facilitation, conversation hosting etc. What would we call the field or methodology that this is part of? Are they design theory / social change? I shared my thoughts and acknowledged that other people would likely have something different […]
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On Power and Love
“To be able to break down the barrier of space between self and other, yet at the same time to be able to maintain it, this seems to be the paradox of creativity.” ~ from The Forms of Things Unknown Coming across this quote prompted me to go back and explore the notes I took […]
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We Aren’t Machines
I like this tweet from Jan de Man Lapidoth: It would seem that leading politicians and executives still think humans can be “changed” or directed like machines. Fascinating. It reminds me of a piece I read some time ago by Margaret Wheatley where she highlighted how much of our language is mechanistic. Here is one example: […]
We stood all around the edges of the room, alternating between looking down at the masking tape shape on the floor and the story of it that flowed from our hosts. We were learning Berkana’s theory of change: Two Loops. My messy sketch of it (or a slightly cleaned up version is here): The theory […]
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Wings that Whir
Last summer it was the dragonfly that kept appearing in all kinds of significant and insignificant moments. The message in this animal totem is: Dragonfly is the essence of the winds of change…call on Dragonfly to guide you through the mists of illusion to the pathway of transformation…think in terms of two year periods when […]
Some wisdom from the incredible Lisa Heft about Open Space Technology (a large group, self-organizing process) about what can be accomplished in an OST “of two days, ideally”. I don’t think conflict is something that can often be resolved in a single meeting. By a single intervention. Resolution is not what I seek by offering […]
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A Little Monday Rah-Rah
If you’re a change maker, rebel, revolutionary, activist, igniter, entrepreneur, insert-your-own-descriptor-here, you might be putting up with some grief this Monday and looking for validation. Lean into your grittiness. You are doing the hard work of moving the world forward to a better future and we need you. If you are an agent of change, […]
Loving Chris Corrigan’s post on Interior Transformation. These two excerpts in particular (emphasis mine)…. I once had a very good friend and teacher, Bob Wing, point this out to me. We were together in a small Open Space, and we were in different conversations. In my conversation a small group of us cracked a vexing problem […]
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Lessons: From Closing to Opening
This poem, The Lesson by Mark Nepo, was shared in the Art of Hosting community today by Jerry Nagel: When young, it was the first fall from love. It broke me open the way lightning splits a tree. Then, years later, cancer broke me further. This time, it broke me wider the way a flood […]