Human to Human

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It’s Just Sparky

I have a couple of friends / colleagues that I’ve come to know very well, and to expect that when I talk with them, it’s going to be good. Sparky. Lots of ideas. Real. Typically deep. And fun. They know who they are — I don’t need to name them here.

I spoke with two of those people this week. It made me smile to see them on my calendar — “this is going to be fun,” I thought to myself in anticipation. In both cases we didn’t have a particular agenda. With one of the friends, we talk every month or so. Skype so that we can see each other. Usually for 60-90 minutes. With the other friend, it is a bit more frequent, every two weeks — we also have project work that we share.

What I noticed this week is that, I believe, because of the quality of our relationships, whatever we talk about has far-reaching impact. Talk about family — sparky insights. Share a story about my trip to Canada — good traveling insights. Wonder out loud about work — lots of stuff to jot down! I didn’t talk to my one friend this week thinking about designing The Circle Way Practicum that I’m teaching next week. That wasn’t it at all. However, in the course of our conversation, ideas just kept popping. Sparky. I began to imagine very clearly and easily a few exercises that I’d love to have as part of the practicum.

What is that dynamic? That sparkiness?

There are some people that have done a lot of work — inner and outer. I’d like to think I can fit myself into that category. Generally, it is true. It makes the conversation real. It makes it honest. There’s no need to prove anything with each other — isn’t that relieving. It’s free wandering together, perhaps inspired further by the premise that all things are connected. It’s great to be with people that don’t have to work to see the connection, nor do they need to overplay the connection. We just learn together. Well.

I suppose it could be an agreement. Or a value whether for a team or organization. I’d like to suggest that “sparky” is a very legitimate and attractive commitment — welcoming it to arrive, even expecting it. And when not expecting it, or experiencing sparky frequently enough, to take a good look at why not.

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Death and Taxes

It was United States founding father, Benjamin Franklin, that once spoke what is now an oft-used phrase about impermanence — “…in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

It was the 5th century BC Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, that spoke another oft-used phrase about change — “the only thing constant is change.”

I’ve been thinking about these two statements a lot lately. Personally, checking my own ability to adapt. With my 19 year-old son, encouraging him in some movements in his life. With my designs for groups convening that I know need to go to a place of deeper learning — “relationship to uncertainty” is a doorway.

Life is uncertain. Inherently. Despite any of our heroic, societal efforts to mask the not-knowns. You can’t get around it. Like death and taxes.

What’s called for in us is the ability to be in change (yes, about now would be good to offer the qualifier, “do as I say, not as I do”). Learning to be with impermanence and a continued change is a life-long practice. No finish line. Never done. Learn some in our teens. Some in our 20s. And 30s. And on. And on.

Learning to be fluid and adaptive is a massively good skill. Doing that from a clear enough sense of who any of us are (that doesn’t change so readily) — that’s gold!

For me, one of those orientations I learned from my grandmothers, is that I’m a learner. There is always learning to do. That statement grounds me to be able to shift into the multiplicity of environments that I learn in. Now I’m learning as a father. Now I’m learning working with educators. Now I’m learning as I offer a workshop. Now I’m learning as I grieve a pending loss of my dog. Now I’m learning as I live in Utah. Now I’m learning as I live in Seattle.

I remain the learner. The place or the topics that I learn in doesn’t remain. My ability most needed is being fluid.

Amidst impermanence. Amidst change.

Gold.

 

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Respectful Disagreement

My friend Amanda Fenton, with whom I’m hosting The Circle Way practicum in a week, wrote recently about some of her learnings on respectful disagreement.

I love it that Amanda takes on the issue of consensus amidst dialogic practice. Just because we talk, and listen, in good ways, doesn’t mean that we will agree or get our way. But it’s different to have that disagreement with real opportunity to be heard than to have disagreement “resolved” with imposition of power.

I think what happens in the best of processes, is that we welcome an understanding to come forward, and in so doing, we’ve built or improved fundamental relationship that in fact can stand in integrity with disagreement.

Amanda’s post is worth a read. Give it a go.

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The Need To Tell Our Stories

It is fundamentally human to do so. Tell our stories that is.

It is social glue — with more than 140 characters or two short paragraphs. It is the way that we share experience. “Tell us about your weekend. What’s been happening with your family? Your job? Your garden? Did you watch last night’s episode?”

Or, it was (I would say is) part of ceremony. “Tell us what you have seen. Tell us of the great beyond.” I can imagine those times sitting round the fire. Listening as if life depended on it.

Ah, there it is — perhaps life depends on it, this telling of our stories, and this listening to others tell their stories. Not just social nicety, though I like that too. Nothing wrong with a passing remark about last nights’ ball game. Not just chit chat, filler before moving to the next moment of isolation. Smile. Check.

Our lives depend on the stories we tell ourselves and each other. It takes friends, company, good listeners, and good challengers to help make sense of them. I’m introverted enough to not always want to be out loud. But at some point, our lives our meant to be lived in some community. It is where sense-making is tested, where systems of imagination scale.

In ten days I will be hosting The Circle Way Practicum with a friend and colleague that I really respect — Amanda Fenton. Together we will host a group of 22 people over six days to develop the ability and recall the memory of telling our stories. We will work in large group and in smaller groups of sixish. We will invoke with others a basic process for listening, for presensing, for letting go, and for calling forth — story. “What’s it like to be you? What has your attention? What is important to you? Is there a crossroads you feel you are at?”

With minimal structure, a clear purpose, a real curiosity, and the invocation of story, I believe we can change the world. Grow it back to one that practices engagement and story, evolving the edges of who we are and what we dream possible.

Thank you Charles LaFond, a great story inviter and teller, for inspiring this post.

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