A Story of Wild Selves (Thanks Maria Scordialos)

Maria is a friend and colleague. I’ve loved the connection with her over the last 10 or so years that has included a few working places — Art of Hosting and Large Conference Hosting. I’ve also loved the social settings — Maria was key in helping to arrange and host my Dad / Daughter trip with Zoe in 2013 that is forever ingrained as transitional marker in our family.

Maria also has a gift of being able to feel and speak an authentic invitation, which is itself, a story. This below is from Maria’s recent invite shared through the Art of Hosting network to share some of the continued journey in Greece. I love it, and her, for the way this story resonates well beyond Greece. I love it for the call to practice, deepen, and remember our wild selves.

Dear Practitioners,

For some years now, we have been witnessing and incubating intentions of supporting practitioners and apprentices to the practice and also stewarding to deepen into themselves as the practice.  

We see more than ever before how important it is for each one of us to now show up with our art forms of hosting, holding space, listening, harvesting, witnessing. Our World is in trouble, we are in trouble and it is time.

We can feel in our bones how we need to step away from our comfort and remember our wild selves.  

We have experienced over the years that the Art of Hosting and Harvesting Trainings are increasingly becoming such spaces of initiation, rites of passage, as people open a doorway of stepping deeper into themselves to create the systemic transformation we individually and collectively long for.

We want to create an Hestia, Hearth, where people who have crossed to being practitioners can deepen their practice and deepen themselves.

Here’s to finding the call in each of us, and in the unique way that wisdom is found among us.

On Practice — More From Gunilla Norris

I am one who very much relates to the term “practice.”

All of life as practice. All as attention, sometimes very nuanced.

All as imperfect, yet lovely.

Whether the art and history of serving a cup of tea or the practice I’m currently in to make a delicious pot of soup.

Whether learning to be conscious with self or to be convening a community.

Gunilla Norris, my favorite writer of the week, offers this wisdom on Practice from her book, Inviting Silence.

Walking, eating a meal, dancing, breathing, chanting —
anything can be a practice so long as we are mindful,
so long as we are fully present. 
There are many ways, many traditions.

To bring silence into our bodies and minds,
we must learn to be quiet. We being by being still.
If a period of physical stillness is all we can muster,
that is enough. We have begun to practice.

If we can simply learn to follow our breath
in a steady way — attending to the inhalation
and the exhalation until we feel that we are no longer
breathing, but are being breathed
— we have grown in practice.

The point of practice is not to perform,
but to participate — not to achieve specific experiences,
but to develop a new relationship with experience itself.

Delicious, right.

Like tea, and soup.