Gems in Short

These are phrases I’ve heard this week at the PeerSpirit Circle Practicum.

  • On emergence and patience,
    “We are stirring a pot together. We just don’t completely know what the soup is.”
  • On shadow as healing,
    “Protect the truth-tellers and help pull the shadow off of them.”
  • On depth,
    “In calibrating to a circle, there is fear and longing.”
  • On changing form, yet holding to circle,
    “Just because you shift the rim, doesn’t mean it is gone.”
  • On elephants in the room,
    “It’s amazing how many elephants shrink in the process of ceremony.”

Some weeks are meant for good learning. Perhaps all are. It’s just that in some weeks, they are just a bit easier to see.

On Shadow

Shadow

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I am in some good learning this week at the PeerSpirit Circle Practicum on Whidbey Island. This particular piece is on shadow as it applies to hosting circles. What is shadow (a broadly used term now, a bit like collaboration or cooperation, it requires some definition)? What is conflict? What is sabotage? What is unspoken? How grief relates to this? How all of these relate to each other?

It is one of those learnings for which I have more questions than answers.

Is addressing shadow to resolve? To let breath? What discernment is needed to decide what to follow, what not to follow, and how not following is not the same as denying or ignoring.

I’m not surprised it is a rich question field here at the practicum. Grateful for good container holding by Christina Baldwin, Ann Linnea, and Alex Cukier so that these questions can surface.

 

Wake Up Call or Don’t Bother At All

Robert Jacobs is a fellow I met in the mid 90s. He and I have both been involved in systemic change over these many years.

Jake published an article about implementation recently. It is a wake up call. Or a myth debunking.

He shares a few good stories that invite

  • challenging our assumptions about definition of implementation (not a check list item because you sent an email),
  • approach to implementing (involving a system in the process),
  • and mindset for implementing (appreciative approach, as in what you give your energy to grows).

One of Jake’s premises is that despite many of us giving much attention to successful change efforts, the success rate for implementation remains disappointingly low. I remember this very assessment 20 years ago in my grad school days too. Argh.

The encouraging part is that I feel people like Jake continue to encourage a systemic view and practice. That doesn’t necessarily sell well in a world that is so patterned to speed and efficiency. It takes longer. It takes an shared ability to be in uncertainty. It takes attention to relationships (beyond a few cute team-building exercises). It takes a pattern real inquiry together and a commitment to a bigger picture. Living the change (patterning it) in the interior and in the exterior.

There’s a boldness in Jake’s words. Wake up or don’t bother. I appreciate the realness of this.

 

The Power of Downward Mobility

Wayne Muller is founder of Bread for the Journey. He is author, speaker, spiritual director, and community builder.

I read one of his blogs this morning on “The Power of Downward Mobility.” A piece of it is excerpted below. The article is worth a read.

What I find with the precepts is that they are particularly good when people, groups of people, are considering what to do next. Realistically, most of us have many choices most of the time. The choices and the prioritizing can be paralyzing, enough to render action impossible. A bit like spending the night considering options for a movie, but running out of time to actually watch it.

To me, his words point to the maturing that is committed to the simple, and, a framework for why that makes perfect sense.

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The threads of continuity that bind us together are woven out of a few simple precepts, ways of working which have stood the test of time. When we began, our precepts were clear, and few:

  • Keep it simple.
  • Fund people, not projects.
  • Trust in authentic relationships, rather than proposals.
  • Small is beautiful.
  • Start with a strength assessment, not a needs assessment.