Category: General Learning

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To Be Touched

The book “Embers” by Richard Wagamese is good. Really good. Each page can be used (even randomly) as immediate direction.

It is a collection of Ojibway meditations, a few of which were fresh for me on the weekend. Here’s one used to set tone for the beginning of a thoughtful gathering:

“I don’t want to touch you skin to skin. I want to touch you deeply, beneath the surface, where our real stories lie. Touch you where the fragments of our being are, where the sediment of things that shaped us forms the verdant delta of our human story. I want to bump against you and feel the rush of contact and ask important questions and offer compelling answers, so that together we might learn to live beneath the surface, where the current bears us forward deeper into the great ocean of shared experience. This is how I want to touch and be touched — through beings — so that someday I might discover that even the skin remembers.”

Ahhh, love it!

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Pause

One of the people that has taught me the most about the value of pause is Ann Linnea. Ann and I have known and appreciated each other for the last twenty years. She is cofounder of PeerSpirit and The Circle Way. She is author of books about nature, rites of passage, wilderness quests, and of course, circle. She is a good soul whose very pace of being can’t help but still the soul.

In the tradition that is The Circle Way, the pause is an essential agreement. “We agree from time to time to pause to regather our thoughts and our focus.” Often this is done with the ringing of a bell, bowl, or tingsha. I can hear Ann’s voice as clearly in my mind as I can anyones, her speaking after the pause — “I asked for the bell to give us a deliberate pause in our good thinking that is now becoming quite speedy. I want to feel deeply what is being spoken.”

Another person I’ve learned a lot about pause from is Roq Gareau. Roq is as smart and thoughtful as they come. He has “elder” written all over him. He is in his early 40s. And he is the kind of elder that I uniquely enjoy — he can turn to playful in a heartbeat. Roq is one of the most kind people I know that can come from deep eldering.

Roq has taught me about a form of pause, interruption. It’s related to pause, but different. It’s not the interruption of speaking over top of someone. It’s not the rude kind (though I get that this is sometimes needed). It’s the wise kind. I’ve often heard Roq revere interruption, in a way that continues to reverberate with me, “Our work is to interrupt the pattern of isolation that we find ourselves defaulted to in contemporary society.” This wisdom in Roq’s words is not about what follows the interruption. It’s not that level of specificity — not yet. His words are about the simple act of interrupting. Stopping. Daring to let go of the default. Taking a walk. Letting it go for a while. Interrupting physical, emotional, neural entrainment. Getting out of the deep carve.

Both pause and interruption are deep principles to me. They are practices, perhaps more understood by elders and people with eldering instinct. Pause isn’t paralysis. It isn’t freeze with fear. Pause and interruption are goto steps for me when I don’t know what to do, or when a group doesn’t know what to do. The are invitations to reground, and to trust in something less visible and less obvious. Pause and interruption challenge me, and I believe all of us, to go beyond the highly revered “doing” that contemporary culture so often demands (because there are deadlines to meet, right). Pause and interruption have a deep trust behind them, which is a rather good pattern to reinvoke in ourselves, with each other, and in the groups that we live and love our lives in, no?

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Principles for Living Reconciliation Meaningfully

As a Canadian, this wakes me up. Disturbs me. Encourages me. Calls me to integrity. Reminds me of need for community.

It is written by pal and colleague Chris Corrigan, who has given this attention for 30 years. Chris goes on to list five principles for living reconciliation meaningfully.

Wednesday is National Aboriginal Day and ten days later, Canada commemerates its 150th birthday. Since the centenary in 1967 and even since Canada 125 in 1992, the whole enterprise of Canada has become deeply informed by the need for reconciliation between indigenous people and communities, and settler people and communities.

We are all treaty people. Everyone in Canada who has citizenship is also a beneficiary to the treaties that were signed and made as a way of acknowledging and making binding, the relationship between settler communities and indigenous nations.  The ability to own private land, for example, is one way in which settlers benefit from treaties that were signed long ago, even if those treaties.

Waking up isn’t necessarily easy. But it is essential.

Thanks Chris.

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Convene to Nuance Integrity

Earlier this week I read a friends completed dissertation. It’s Sara Rosenau, a pastor and friend within the United Church of Christ faith tradition. Sara is wicked smart. Very thoughtful. And playful. It’s a really nice combo. And I’m glad we are working together in support of a cultural evolution in the Central Pacific Conference.

Sara’s dissertation is filled with good developed content (150 ish pages) and fantastic concise gems built around her overarching theme of becoming church, with particular focus on an ecclisiology of failure, embodied politics, and queer grace. It’s loaded. It’s full. I told Sara that it advances scholarly work and human consciousness. It’s the real deal.

Here’s the utmost gem for me, as one who has been working much with faith communities over the last ten years and trying to sort through the complexity to see what is unique about faith communities and participative leadership.

Sara writes, “Church doesn’t market to sell product. It convenes to nuance integrity.”

That’s gold, right! It’s not about manufacturing good humans. Though that has been tried with much success in some traditions. That success tends to top out with obedience, which has always felt kind of disappointing to me. Clear thinking, inspired community able to wrestle with all kinds of good, bad, and ugly — that’s a lot more compelling to me. I love Sara’s second part. “It convenes to nuance integrity.” Still gold! That’s the part that recognizes that some things must be done together, this nuancing. And it recognizes something that is already there. Already in people.

Thanks Sara. Clear. And accurate. And beautifully spoken.

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Gifts of Circle - Question Cardsasd
Gifts of Circle is 30 short essays divided into 4 sections: 1) Circle's Bigger Purpose, 2) Circle's Practice, 3) Circle's First Requirements, and 4) Circle's Possibility for Men. From the Introduction: "Circle is what I turn to in the most comprehensive stories I know -- the stories of human beings trying to be kind and aware together, trying to make a difference in varied causes for which we need to go well together. Circle is also what I turn to in the most immediate needs that live right in front of me and in front of most of us -- sharing dreams and difficulties, exploring conflicts and coherences. Circle is what I turn to. Circle is what turns us to each other."

Question Cards is an accompanying tool to Gifts of Circle. Each card (34) offers a quote from the corresponding chapter in the book, followed by sample questions to grow your Circle hosting skills and to create connection, courage, and compassionate action among groups you host in Circle.

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In My Nature is a collection of 10 poems. From A Note of Beginning: "This collection of poems arises from the many conversations I've been having about nature. Nature as guide. Nature as wild. Nature as organized. I remain a human being that so appreciates a curious nature in people. That so appreciates questions that pick fruit from inner being, that gather insights and intuitions to a basket, and then brings the to table to be enjoyed and shared over the next week."

This set of Note Cards (8 cards + envelopes)  quotes a few favorite passages from poems in In My Nature. I offer them as inspiration. And leave room for you to write personal notes.

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Most Mornings is a collection of 37 poems. I loved writing them. From the introduction: "This collection of poems comes from some of my sense-making that so often happens in the morning, nurtured by overnight sleep. The poems sample practices. They sample learnings. They sample insights and discoveries. They sample dilemmas and concerns."

This set of Note Cards (8 cards + envelopes)  quotes a few favorite passages from poems in Most Mornings. I offer them as inspiration. And leave room for you to write personal notes.

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