Month: July 2011

With appreciation to my friends Jerry Nagel and Michelle Murton for sharing these two gems on the Art of Hosting Listserve. They are a couple that I want to share with my kids too!

“To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the ‘music,’ but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow your mind’s hearing to your ears’ natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning.”

– Peter Senge

If You Really Pay Attention

When I was a little bitty kiddy, about five, my Dad began a process … anytime somebody came and said something to us, my dad would say, “You remember what he said, honey girl?”  I would tell my father what the person said until I got so good at it that I could repeat verbatim even long presentations of what the person had said.

And he did this all the time.

Finally, one day there was this old gentleman, Richard Thompson. I still remember his name, he lived across the street.  And every time my Dad started to mow the lawn, there came Mr. Thompson. And so I would stand out there.

Dad says, “You might come and listen to this man, honey girl.  He’s pretty interesting.”  And so I listened to him, and then my dad would say, “What did you hear him say?” And I would tell him.

Well, eventually I was repeating all the stories he liked to share with my dad verbatim.  I knew them all by heart.

And my Dad says, “You’re getting pretty good at that.  But did you hear his heart?”  And I thought, what?  So I went around for days with my ear to people’s chest trying to hear their hearts.

Finally my Dad created another learning situation for me by asking my mother to read an article from the newspaper.  He says “Well, I guess if you want to understand that article, you have to read between the lines.”

I thought, “Oh, read between the lines. Hear between the words.”

So the next time I listened to Mr. Thompson’s stories, I tried to listen between the words.  My Dad said, “I know you know his story, but did you hear his heart?” And I said, “Yes.  He is very lonely and comes and shares his memories with you again and again because he’s asking you to keep him company in his memories.”

It just came out of me.  In other words, my heart echoed his heart.

And when you can listen at that level, then you can hear not only the people. If you really pay attention, you can hear what the Universe is saying.

—Paula Underwood, clan mother of the Turtle clan, Iroquois nation

Yes, I continue to learn much from the quantum paradigm and world view. At one level, there is a way in which I feel I can relax my certainty of gaze into feeling the fluidness of invoking energy into material form. So many more choices that become available. For me, it is more like stepping into the playground and being able to feel it. The learning is about how to work with it. What to do with it.

At another level, it is about beginning to see difference. I appreciate some of the comparisons: linear to complex, Newtonian to quantum. These themselves have limits, of course. That is what language does. It reveals and it conceals. Sometimes even tricks us into an old energy pattern. Reifies a form that is just another guess of what is happening. But the language creates invitation to see differently. I find if I don’t get stuck on the words, or even the concept of words (if that makes sense), the field of seeing becomes much larger.

Here’s a few of those comparisons that I just saw from a colleague, Howard Mason in Kentucky. I met he and his colleague a few years back at an Art of Hosting training.

Newtonian
-Atomistic (focus on functional parts)
-Abosolute (assumes certainty and predictability; emphasis on control)
-Reductive (the whole is the sum of the parts; parts exist independently and are interchangeable; coordination must be imposed)
-Either / Or (selective and exclusionary; there is only one truth and one best way; there is inescapable tension between the individual and the group)
-Certainty (focus on here and now, facts, actuality; values ignored)
-Subject / Object Split (leader is detached from people of the organization; the world is out there)

Quantum
-Holistic (focus on relationships and integration)
-Indeterminate (value in uncertainty and ambiguity; requires trust and intuition; nurtures emergence)
-Emergent, Self-Organizing (whole is greater than the sum of its parts; each part is defined by relationships with other parts; order or patterning emerges spontaneously)
-Both / And (inclusive and synergistic; individual and the group are mutually defining in dialogue with experience)
-Possibility (focus is on creating; thinking outside the box; exploring unknown, potential; value are central)
-Participatory Universe (leader is “in the world;” both are mutually defined)

From the world view, the leadership capacities become more clear.

• I assume capacity to act. To get busy. To go fast. To get things done. To be smart. All qualities of doing. An… (cont) http://deck.ly/~llnfU
• When energy is brought into form, it becomes accessible. Writing does that. For the energy, the form, and the process of touching energy.
• Learning that, for me, writing is a practice of letting consciousness flow through me so that I can occasionally express it in words.
• Berkana’s Bob Stilger: “decision happening” rather than “decision making.” Uses collective discernment, inquiry rather than driving quickly.
• Friend Chris Corrigan on emergence: when everybody leaves from the party with something that nobody came with.
• Simple bits of encouragement on meditation forwarded from my friend Christy Lee-Engle: http://bit.ly/kkku2D
• http://yfrog.com/kk8tmrj That’s my son Elijah. A walk tonight in the neighborhood to feed carrots to the horses.
• RT @acuginotti: When we learn that knowing models are not enough to succeed, we have less copyright madness and more collaborative action.
• At Four Winds energy medicine school. Fire ceremony, bands of protection, and other practices in deep levels of hosting.
• Fireflies and sheet lightening tonight in Stockbridge, MA. Nice for a walk after more at 4 Winds energy medicine school.
• At the Stockbridge Bowl, last evening before completing at 4 Winds. http://yfrog.com/hslnndcxj
• What is possible in working with light, developing a relationship with light? Learning illumination practices as healing energy.
• Delighted to welcome Yuya-san and Katsu-san tonight to our Lindon home. Catching up on Japan stories, ALIA, and more.
• Some important work from my friend Margaret Wheatley on comfort with uncertainty. Times are changing. http://bit.ly/pfheUk
• Life as practice. Not role-playing. As being in process of learning, improving. As imprinting. As gaining cellular memory.
• Two upcoming AoH trainings. Early bird registration now. Saskatchewan: http://bit.ly/onlybj. Bowen Island: http://bit.ly/nit7Bz
• Lovely from Judith Blackstone: It is through inward contact with our own organism that we become capable of true contact with other people.

Kathy Jourdain is very good friend. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is one of my dearest teaching and hosting companions in the Art of Hosting Network. I love the way that we connect with each other — one of those friends where the right timing always seems to show up without effort. I also love the way that she is a committed writer. She is committed to the practice of writing, which I’ve also been learning a lot about lately.

Kathy has written three pieces recently that feel like essentials for contexting the Art of Hosting and the deeper patterns that become available to participants and those of us that steward this work. I see them as fabulous pieces to offer, particularly when people are just starting to explore what this work is or whether to come to a training. Her context to me helps invite the awareness of really important skills, and, the rich, rich possibility underneath those skills that shift paradigms and becomes ways of being.

One AoH Training Does Not a Practitioner Make — I love the call to practice here. Not as role-playing. And not as volume or certification. Rather, as getting the deeper pattern and resonance.

Becoming an AoH Practitioner — Some further description and guidance on beginnings. I’ll add this piece also that I wrote a while back on Credentials as Practice. It speaks to the need to just start and learn as we go.

The Art of Stewarding — I love the reference here to knowing and feeling the resonance of people gathered in learning. Also, the importance of self-work (and clearing, etc) to change the relationship of holding group. What is underneath has always been a compelling question for me. I wrote some of this here, Hosting What? Consciousness, Wellness, Wholeness, and Resonance.

So much to explore. For me, I give attention to world views and practices from the quantum paradigm, intuition and alchemy, energy and light, reification. Like Kathy, and gladly, with her, finding some really helpful levels of essentials that further feed this beautiful and practical Art of Hosting choice for doing good together.