Human to Human: Blog and Podcast

Every time I work with a new client, in a first meeting, I give significant attention to what I want to ask them to start us in a good way. Typically this meeting is over the phone, or Skype, with anywhere from 1 – 5 people. Typically it is to plan some meeting or engagement that is anywhere from 1 – 9 months into the future.

Typically there are a few nerves in first meetings. Some of it is social. It’s natural — first meetings can draw out some anxieties. I feel some nerves in me. I want it to go well. I want to be honest. I want to be genuine. I want them to like me. The client is usually ready to jump right in, eager to get to the “how to do this” and the “how to do that.” It can be a bit like a first date on which one of the people starts asking about how many kids they want. Good question, just way too early.

Typically, after listening for a bit, I give them a really simplified narrative of what I believe we are trying to do together in that first meeting.

First, we are simply saying hello to each other. The hello matters. We are beginning a possible relationship together. I don’t want to be hired as a robotic facilitator and I don’t think they really want that either — “come do your thing, we will plug you in.” I want to see what kind of journey they are on and see where I might be helpful to them. Usually, when I say this to people, “we are just saying hello,” it slows us all down. It’s comforting. It’s an immediate and more helpful marker of whether we fit or not. I’m deliberately breaking a pattern (efficiency is everything) to offer a choice of not only how we are together, but how the group will be together for the engagement they are imagining.

Second, I ask two basic questions. “What is some of the story of what is going on here that has you wanting to do something?” I don’t ask for all of the story. It’s nutty to think that I will get all of the story (many sides to every story). I want to introduce them, from the get go, to a world of partial truths made up from perceptions. There is nothing dumb about the perceptions shared. It’s just that they are partial, and thus, help to make the case for listening well together, so that we might have our best chances of hearing the whole. The other part of this is that by invoking “story” it elicits, what Christina Baldwin has taught me, a somatic trance. Story immediately signals a different way of listening and engaging each other.

I take notes the whole time. Usually I use a planning tool, The Chaordic Stepping Stones (here’s a good version recently updated by my friend Chris Corrigan). This helps me to put information into a few categories that can help structure our next questions together.

The next question I ask is, “What is some of the broader story within which this is all taking place?” This invites them to speak about some more history and context. Or some bigger dreams and long horizons. I’m again being deliberate about seeing from many perspectives and giving them an immediate taste of something real, honest, and informative. A big part of the job is helping them see each other.

The third thing I do is share some of the choices that they have before them. I’ll reflect back some of what I heard. I’m usually translating the stories into a couple of key questions that if they addressed together, would help them with what they are up too. One of your choices is to engage each other, to be smart not just individually, but together. To start, or add to, their culture of turning to one another.

Then I encourage them to go away from the phone call, talk among themselves. I encourage them to discern in the best ways that they can, and to notice what stays with them, naturally, without trying.

That’s it. Those simple steps.

I suppose there are days when the best you can hope for is putting one foot in front of the other.

Just get out of bed. Just journal. Just meditate. Just exercise. Just eat, something. Just show up to that one meeting. Just write that one section of that one report.

Just try to believe in something. Anything.

Just put one foot in front of the other, even though everything feels like it is collapsing. Relationship. Health. Family. Job. Spirit.

I have known those days. I have known friends in those days, more commonly that most of us might realize, when as David Whyte says in his poem, Sweet Darkness,

When your eyes are tired 
the world is tired also. 
When your vision has gone 
no part of the world can find you.

I have learned over the decades that it isn’t shameful to acknowledge these days. Breaking the silence, heals. And bridges. And claims a bit more of our humanity together, the kind that is not portrayed in the seduction of perfect lives.

I have learned in days like these, that letting go is important. Oh, it takes a discipline, doesn’t it. Letting go of stories, hurts, wounds, shames, disappointments. Letting go, to dwell in the emptiness, the between space, so that something might come forward from it.

Or maybe, just to dwell in the emptiness for a bit, without regard to whether anything will come forward from it or not.

David Whyte continues,

You must learn one thing: 
the world was made to be free in. 
Give up all the other worlds 
except the one to which you belong. 
Sometimes it takes darkness
and the sweet confinement of your aloneness 
to learn anything or anyone 
that does not bring you alive 
is too small for you.

And perhaps that is our job too, to just continue, welcoming an emptying, or an unfolding, even through those days when the only vision is the next foot in front of the other.

I love these words (and picture) from my friend, Charles LaFond, writing in The Daily Sip. I continue to learn about the difference in these orientations, knowing that I appreciate both.

It is the timeless, however, that I find myself longing for more of. And though I acknowledge that there are many external things to do in life that are better served by a chronos disposition (even obsession), it is my internal permission for kairos that I really want to cultivate. I doubt it is an external world that will cut through my commitments to grant me the blessing of kairos being.

Earlier today, a friend reminded me of a road trip that we took a few years back. On this road trip in northern British Columbia, we drove near a herd of bison. One of the mothers in that herd, had just given birth to a young calf. It was brand new, and a bit messy. Laying on the ground. Being licked by its mother. My friend reminded me, “life starts and ends in a beautiful mess.”

Back to Kai and Kairos, and Charles, enjoy his words.

 

My English black lab is named “Kai.” The name comes from “kairos” which is a Greek term for “the time in which God lives.” There are two kinds of time in theological terms. One kind of time is chronos time – chronos – like chronology – the clicking of seconds and minutes and hours of human clock time. This kind of time in which humans live on earth, based on the movement of the planets, did not become much of a big deal until the early 1800′s when time became “money” in our western culture as factories became prevalent and clocking-in for work became the way people were managed and – soon – the way humanity was judged by itself.

Kairos time, on the other hand, is not linear like chronos time is. Kairos time does not move from second to second to minute to hour to day and to year in a line moving forward in one direction with the past lost and the future unknown. Kairos time is less like a line on a page with notches moving relentlessly in one direction. Kairos time is not an advancement of a commodity which is lost as it moves forward. Kairos time is a way of being. 

Kairos time, that “time” in which God lives is not linear but is three-dimensional. Kairos time is a time of constant love, playfulness and creativity. kairos time is not gained or lost. It is not used up or spent. Kairos time is a way of being rather than the being itself. If chronos time is seen as a line with notches in it then Kairos time is “laughter at a dinner table” or “two fiends sharing their lives with each other” or “sex” or “one’s favorite food.”

It’s Spring in Utah. The time of Spring when Magnolia Trees (my friend calls them tulip trees) are in full bloom. This is one on the path where I most frequently walk my dog, Shadow. I couldn’t help but stop to take in this full-flowering tree, against a bright blue sky.

Beauty matters. I’m not talking about the critique of beauty. I am talking about the experience of beauty. The moment of feeling timeless. The moment of senses being alive and fully present to just that moment. The moment of temporary communion, soft enough to be changed.