Author: Tenneson Woolf

Deeply appreciating these words from colleague and friend, Tamara Levine of the Canadian Labour Congress. She is writing the words below to introduce her colleagues in New Zealand to attend an Art of Hosting that I’m coleading in August. She is reflecting on an event that I hosted with Chris Corrigan and Esther Matte, and a great bunch of union leaders.

“The Art of Hosting (AoH) (see http://www.artofhosting.org/home/) is about ways to bring people together in conversations that matter in response to a powerful question in order to strengthen our work and our communities. It’s about emphasizing the value of building relationships and learning into our work so that our work and our communities can become more grounded, relevant, and stronger.

I met Tenneson about a year ago when he co-facilitated a 3-day session with staff of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the largest union in Canada. The question developed by the CUPE planning group for the invitation to that session was “What more can local unions be?”. CUPE participants left the session with deep bonds to each other, to the work, and with a new set of skills to bring to how they organize more participatory and meaningful meetings and conferences, write more dynamic courses, revitalize union locals, etc. Since then, the ripples of AoH continue to spread throughout the organization, bringing new energy, enthusiasm and possibilities.

Last fall, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) Education Department was beginning to plan a retreat for our Education Advisory Committee. The CUPE rep on the committee highly recommended that we use AoH both as a way to host the retreat and as a training session for those who would attend. We started planning what came to be called our “Learning Circle” in December with a committee of affiliate reps and three facilitators, including Tenneson, hoping that we might get 25 or 30 participants. However, because of the fabulous planning and invitation process, because word of AoH was getting out into the movement, and because of the enthusiasm of the planning committee members within their own organizations, we had 70 participants at the CLC Learning Circle in May who responded to our question ” What is needed from us as activists and labour educators in these challenging times?”

I’ve attached some of the eloquent comments that have been coming in from participants at the Learning Circle FYI. Like in CUPE, the stories of how Aoh is infusing the work of the labour movement continue to inspire. Hosting the Learning Circle was seen as an important and valuable convening role for the CLC to play as the national central labour body.

Earlier this week was in a good skype call and video with friend Chris Corrigan. The beauty of skype video — seeing Chris’s deck, yard, garden and sharing a bit of the duck ponds out my window. I loved our exploring. As is always / often the case, much shows up in our interaction that feels like a gift.

One was the sense of “learning edge” being at the center. Quite often in our work together we encourage ourselves and others to go to the learning edge. Most often I think of this as something “out there,” something that is far away. In fact, I’d asked Chris something about what was the most “far out” learning that he felt he was in. He shared some of his. I shared some of mine. And then we began to notice some of what makes things feel far out. Uncertainty. And in particular, uncertainty when it has implications on the lives of the ones we love. Such is life indeed — an invitation to many uncertains. And such is the process of being awake or alert — an invitation to go to those uncertains. It can take us to what feels like an edge, often marked by such things as “conventional wisdom” or “majority perspective.”

That conversation helped us both realize something anew. It is the process of coming to have radical trust in our own wisdom. Or in the wisdom that is not as apparent in “conventional wisdom.” And then this gem — that to come to have radical trust in our own wisdom is to come to trust our own core. To shift the learning edge is to shift the identity at the core of who we are. To be at the learning edge is to live into the very center of who we see ourselves to be.

Interesting to think of the invitation that this provides for any of us and our clients. Go to your learning edge. OK. Go deep into your center to recognize what is at the core. Be willing to recognize what might be audacious in your belief or action, and dare to find at the learning edge, the very center from which “unconventional wisdom” is trying to be born.

A good one to play with. A gift of another way of seeing it.

A few reflections from Labour Educators at an Art of Hosting in May. I love what shows up in closing reflections as participants are making sense of their experience together. A closing poem and a participant feedback also below.

Closing Circle Reflections, Intentions
See also: http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/1007857/CLC_Reflections

– Implementing hosting in IDEW and CAW training
– Specific direction
– Inner peace of mind
– Excitement about changes I can make at home
– Meeting other union labour educators – I haven’t done this for a long time
– We can do more in the collective than we can alone
– Enthusiasm and confidence to use these skills
– A respectful process for me to integrate
– I’m so full I’m leaking!
– Taking away a community
– Worked on a real-life planning event
– I don’t always need the answer
– A sense of caring
– Plans and ideas for an international postal conference
– What might a world café look like without words
– Quickly put ideas in place
– Renewed and increased respect for crafting friendship
– Human rights planning program
– Going away with a lot of work!
– Stable enough to be sustainable; creative enough to deserve the name of life
– I go away with the feeling I have when I dance – humming, soaring, electricity
– Aware of an invisible presence in this country
– I’ve got a heart going – yippee!
– Bringing the right people together for getting to answers
– This has transformational powers
– I feel like I won something
– Group wisdom
– Accomplished a lot in a few days

What in your life is calling you?
The Terma Collective

What I you life is calling you?
When all the noise is silenced,
the meetings adjourned,
the lists laid aside,
and the wild iris blooms by itself
in the dark forest,
what still pulls at your soul?

In the silence between your heartbeats
hides a summons.
Do you hear it?

Name it, if you must,
or leave it forever nameless,
but why pretend it is not there?

Participant Feedback

“This learning circle was like the force of gravity that shoots a spaceship around the moon. I had no idea the power of joy that would be created. I feel hopeful, renewed, rewoven into a community, and surprised. I needed this filling.”