Human to Human

Simply rich. Stories. Wonderings. Shared among Berkana friends. Focused on a question. Listening. Giving full support. Daring to be in our learning edges, knowing it is the only way.

How Are You Navigating in this Time of Dramatic Change?
November 2008

Can you hear me? I am near, me. Near without fear.

I’m tellin’ a story about these Atlantic waters.
In my first ocean worthy boat sailin’ with all of us new in the deep sea blue.
I thought the harbor would be visible and open.
Of fuck, it is all haze.
I saw the opening for one moment only, but it was all we needed in that day.
I would do it again. And I do.

Popped up in scale, I remind others I have no idea what I’m doing.
I’m shedding myself into longevity and multi scale.
I just read your article and committed to try it. Whack this out. Here we go.
Feelin’ the real, collapsing in the market.
We are nose to nose, on the hunt for what works.
Copin’ for me is in my hope. The only way that I can hold scale is by being in family.
The scale works me in my frail, my shaking tail.

I so want to be there, to get as close as I can.
Not waiting. No gating. Beyond dating. The journey of my soul awakens.

I sound like I don’t know what I am doing, but I do know.
I find my way in the immediately infront, the next simple elegant step.
I’m seeking clarity of direction. Detection of that direction.
Shape and motion in this collection to direction.
Looking at this land, my partner and I, but we are letting come.

Awaken to oneness.
Work with friends.
Work with simplicity.
These are the tools I know that help me navigate
My practice in the day to day, this way to that way.

I’m in my physical parallel breakdown.
Systemic crisis is teaching me what my life is.
Learning that I’m not less than. We are not less than.
In right relation in this station.
I’m so hungry for home. Building beyond this roam.
Integrity, feeling on my edge.
This phase in these days.
Takin’ it in like a sponge and needing my time.

Back in the day, we practiced river time.
Without watches, setting up camp,
watching the stars, seeing my clarity in tending my gear.
I’m often wrong, but never in doubt.
I’m not buying my own bullshit.
This phase is groundless and very confusing.
What is this crap? Grow some food!
There is no release as I spiral in.

Language separates. Sound anchors. Songs. Sounds. Rounds.
Meetin’ in vibration we find our unity in our community.
The ground I’ve found, but the compass of figuring it out isn’t working.
I can feel the gazillions of answers – we remember more in our silence.

I got through labor with low vocalization.
Moo with me. You too, with me.
We are holding you as you move to the rim and get your baby home.
I’ve been to that rim.
My center is in our house. Our home. Our basic home.
Nursing and getting people to bed.
Steppin with my grandfather to the places he couldn’t dream of going.
Travelling across these times, feeling the birth of possibility,
Bringing that baby home too.

It just comes naturally – the mooing. The moaning through the groaning.
I’ve been bailing out my ship, spinning through conversations with friends.
Talking about our stuff on the couch.
I’m trying to be with my mad, unaware of our own neighborhoods.
What if I lose the anger? There are hearts achin’ and breakin’
As I remember what it means to be together.

Speedin’ in this boat, afloat in the choppy waters.
I’m trying to slow down but feeling my heavy foot on the accelerator.
Sleep walking in the consumerist pattern.
Evicted from our garden, from our growing.
I’m opening dialogues, other gardens with conversations about Zim dollars.

Speaking from Greece, we eleven women
Cried our way into arriving, grieving our thriving.
Wearing masks as we show more of our selves in the world.
I knew we just needed to feed these women.
Making bread, up late at night, watching the grief clear.
I need to be clear.
Standing in my places with many faces.
Stil in the world. Being still, still in the world.

Wanting to know my place – it might just be a fantasy.
The dark in the coal mine teaches me to be where I am.
My perspective shifted ten years ago; I turned in to myself.
Taught by my hacking, again,
as I’m being navigated to the sweet spots of deep spiritual outside of all this stuff.
Boldly just be. Boldly just be.
What I need shows up in abundance as I take my jewelry off, just bein’ here.
Doin’ a lot of good deeply in some place.

The first time on that 26 footer in the Gulf of Mexico,
I learned about shielding myself to the sun.
Back up the Houston ship channel,
making our way amidst huge oil tankers in the mid of night.
I was completely aware of the fleet, the sail, and the harmony. Attentive.
Thank you Wendell – “Willing to die, you give up your will. Keep still until moved by that which moves all, you are moved.”
Connect.
Take in all that I can.
Tell the truth. We don’t have time not to.

Another harvest poem from a recent check-in circle in FL. It came after a teaching offered by Teresa Posakony on the birth and death of organization systems. Beautiful again. The words of participants when asked, “What makes you tremble?” and “Where do you stand?” I love the many entries in these words to the work that matters in our hearts, be it in FL or in other places of community and work.

The Place of Tremble

The place of tremble beyond right doing and wrong doing: I will meet you there.

Aware with attention, callin’ it back to center.
No need for a bender — just the mentor in the center.
Listen. Breath. How cool is that!

Sharin’ voice. Sharin’ choice. Sharen Joy.
Other council fires burned before ours, for hours.

I’m in the vision. I fear the rejection, the detection of my own judgment.

Out of the cave of like-minded people to the wave of new, seein’ my bein’.
In the magic of the profoundly open.
Is there danger in the stranger? Perhaps better in a manger.

Thirty years later in the land of gator,
so entrenched — views, words, labels.
Can we foster vision in the people?
Ownin’ it. No bemoanin’ it. Growin’ vision.

Shimmie on the bridge. Do I have the strength in my base to dance the curve?
I did the most horrible things, whispering my truth in the ear of my ex, among many in difference.

My passion makes me tremble.
Can we just get on better with each other, sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers.

Trusting in the bridges of possibility born on busses that plunged unknowingly.
In chunnels, tunnels, funnels of absolute authenticity.

Do we have the courage to let fall away?
The mired and the tired. Why are we holding on, we spirits in human form?

Am I really changin’? Can I trust my self, my self?
Trustin’ in the right place to be free.

I have visions. Is it real? Am I alone? Alone in this tone?

I think it’s tiiime we learn how to swim.
Gonna be a dolphin.
Letting go to the place of no story, trustin’ my dolphin muscles.
Knowing choice, choice in my voice.

When someone close dies, and goes away — that’s change.
I would like a place just as it seems.
No thinkin’. No red meat.
We have the will, but oh those snickers are good.

If I ain’t trembling, I tremble.
What if I forget?

Can I come to still?
What is the under this in unlearning? Grounded on my feet, and workin’.

I’ve always done work. What the hell am I doing?
Those old methods don’t work for me anymore.
No more fixin’. Just leap and float.

The ecstacy of near death has been with me all of my life.
What do you mean, no!
Ecstacy, frustration, anger, cry, laugh.

I can’t split. But I can walk back and forth
on rope bridges in Ireland lookin’ for birds above salmon.

I was in the bathroom, takin’ care.
It’s up to me – really – every day.
Awesome, fearsome.

I’m at the no point of every point,
trembling in the sacred, that wholeness.

Those toes, my toes, blistered and callused because I use them.

I wonder where that new flow is going.
I wonder with no blunder.

I saw these systems going away —
like unfolding flowers, showing it is possible.

Can’t be a hero of a story that your own creed created.
What if it were a new story altogether, the old that we’ve had all along in the new?

In another life, I thought I was bringing in change.
What if all organizations have soul?
Can we bring this back? What woud it mean to fail in soul?

It’s a new place. Bring my heart as I bend the curve.
Making the heart. That is my start.

I care about spirit and contributing when moved — this is my groove.

I’ve decided to be a voice for families of the future.
Living in the now, this how, not knowing where we’re going.
But knowin’ we could do better.
Kids deserve it. Our future. Knowin’ we can do better.

A harvest poem I harvested from a recent lovely circle in FL. It may not be true, but it is how I remembered it. The circle was hosted deliciously by Holly Masturzo. Literally — the talking piece was a FL orange. It was on the last day of a four day Art of Hosting training on Applied Practice in Change Leadership. This was a check-in circle, a circle of beauty, honesty, tenderness — human beings together in deep friendship and work. Each phrase takes me back to those who spoke and to the feeling of community and the commitment to work in a way that matters.

What is Ripe in You?

To the deeper essence — no pretence.
Embraced in the gravitational field.
Thanks and love to fierce Finn.

In and out at the same time.
With courage to live in the question without looking over my shoulder.

Embodied redemption — no exemption.
In heart, soul, body — living in the transforming.

I’m ripe in my silence. In beauty, churning and learning.

Hearing the Indian man chanting, I’m ripe for gravity.

I’m opening another aperture through hugs from my friends, and speaking my language,
knowin’ seeds, deeds of the heart.
Becoming me in becoming you.

Juuuuiiiicccyyy as Jiiiilllllll are these seeds.
I have people. I have people.
Greetin’ the next century breathing.

I’m a councilor but never thought the group could be so powerful.
Wow! What is this? Hmmm.
There really is power in the group and the people every day.

Sweet, the treat, feelin’ a day in two minutes.
Profound intimacy in the circle of meeting anew.

Cookin’ — ready to nurture in my family and in my self.

Lookin’ at Lina and seein’ it grow.
It? Shit! It? Friendship. Friendfull.

I’m missing my wife today. You remind me of her.
We so desparately need to bring the divine feminine, restoring wholeness, in men and women.

There is no wonder in the problem. I’m shifting to the dream.
The dream in the team of bigger, bigger, bigger.

As people laugh, I stretch my listening.
Even when I can’t hear, I see the glistening
of the blue sky and the simplicity of the rain.

Possibility is ripe. No hype. Keepin’ it in sight
this journey of being human, being spirit
renews my wonder to keep goin’, to keep seein’.

Sucked in as a newbee. Who knew!
New words embracing me as I cry out my sharing in this real world.

Tiiime for this girl to start swimmin’
in my joy and in my sadness.
My motion is to the ocean — being me. The gift of being me.

The utter beautiful power of love to create
at the core of the soar.

In the whiff of orange oil, I now know things I never heard of 15 years ago.
I’m holdin’ the course, even through broken teeth in the mountains and rivers.
Not just me. Remindin’ of my unity in community.

Hmmm. No words to give for this gift.
This looking in your eyes to the skies
of hope and all that is possible.
Willin’ to laugh and wiggle.

Keep practicin’. Keep learnin’. Even in the turnin’.
With people, I’m practicin’ being curious.

At Hope Community Center, we know what are people suffer from.
We know about living in the past and the present.
We can stop that in our presence.

I was invited here. To find out about others that are building like this.
To inspire and conspire.
I’m happy. Followin’ my heart, my part in the start.

What keeps coming is courage — time for me to show up.

I’m into the stuff that isn’t sexy. That’s sexy.
I’m not always drawn to the flesh and the juice.
But I am drawn to what feeds me, to what seeds me.
Just the rind.

I’m offering a piece. Without lease.
Back to my start of the dolphin.
Maybe I’m ready to get out of the chaos.

I’m back.
And I’m ripe now.
Through my heavy load, seein’ this place in my core that is spotted and has me not breathin’.
I’m into the space, into the space.
Breathin’ hurts.
Breathin’ helps.
Keep breathin’.
Keep showin’ up.

I love this photo of another way to create an OS market place.

From Nancy White on the OS List.