Presentation of Learning

My friend Quanita Roberson has an annual commitment. She asks people to share their “presentation of learning.” It’s anywhere from 10-30 minutes of reflecting on what has been important over the last year. No right answers. No wrong. Just what was important. Quanita does some in person — people gathered in her home to share over an evening together. She does some of it virtually — recording a shared screen through Zoom.

This weekend Quanita and I met for a reflecting back on 2016. She was asking me for mine. She’ll be posting that soon on her site. However, in the mean time, I had a peek at the “presentation” I shared with her two years ago. It’s a 25 minute video that includes these themes:

  • Popping to a new resonance together / the composite being that is a group, whether two, twenty, or more.
  • Saying no to good things / relationship to time and the courage it takes to discern and say, no.
  • In anything is the everything / connection of energy and opportunity. I learn this particularly with my friend Roq Gareau.
  • Nothing less that who you really are / radical honesty. Quanita is one who calls this out.
  • Things you can’t not do / lessons learned from my dog Shadow.
  • Hunger for essence and simplicity / be honest, be clear, be real.

I don’t like the camera angle that has me looking down and away at my notes, but it was my own doing. I’ve always been one who learns and integrates best with a visual reference and a few notes, from which I then just try to speak extemporaneously. The content stirred me up again today — realizing some of where I am two years later.

I’m grateful for friends like Quanita who insist on learning.

Men In Circle

This article was posted on The Circle Way website. I’ve also uploaded a  PDF version here.

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It starts with a drum beat, often. Eleven of us, all men, aged between late 30s and mid 70s, standing together around a three foot diameter drum suspended before us. We each have a drum stick, which we begin to use together in simple, collective beat. The drum itself has a story of where it came from, just as we eleven each have a story of where we came from, that we are eager to explore in this semi-annual retreat. “We” includes those that work in regular 9:00 – 6:00 jobs. Some are retired from 30-40 years of career, and wondering what is next. Some now volunteer with local communities. Some are fathers, and sons. There is ceremony in this drumming together, in this beginning. It feels natural and potent. We are gathered for men’s work, which will have many aspects to it. Circle and it’s premises will help us shift from social connection to a deep listening group of men together.

Circle will help us find our stories together. Get past an initial not knowing what to say with each other. A bit like an oxygen mask restores what our autonomous nervous system knows to do — breath and restore circulation. We will pass a talking piece. Many times over three days together. Each of us will have opportunity to share, to think out loud. Each of us will have opportunity to witness and do what is long forgotten for many, yet so needed. We will debunk a pervasive mythology that we are alone in our stories, and that we should carry them in separateness. Alone in our suppressed emotions. Alone in our not knowing how to return to what American poet and author, Robert Bly calls “original radiance.”

From many experiences over the last twenty years (in most, 25% men and 75% women), I havelearned that men want to be thoughtful together. Whether in men’s work, or in the contemporary lives of leadership as doctors, lawyers, government officials, educators, mechanics, plumbers and such. It’s just a story that men don’t want to share, or can’t share. Men want to share openly. Men have much to contribute.

My friend and colleague Quanita Roberson started a project a few years ago that demonstrated this yearning that men have to contribute. Her project started as a a few bits of advice to gift to a thirteen year old boy, but then turned into a book. She asked me and 65 other men, “What do you wish someone would have told you when you were 13?” The men she asked ranged from their 20s to 70s, were born and raised in eleven different countries, and were from diverse stages of life, artistry, spirituality and sexual orientation.

Says Quanita, “What struck me most in their responses was how generous and thoughtful they were in sharing their wisdom with me, and therefore with Jason, a boy that only one of them knew. In the questioning, and their answering, I realized that we [as contemporary society] are asking men for everything but their wisdom, and that they are desperate to share it. There is something in them that knows this wisdom is needed now. There is something in them that knows our boys are lost without it. Maybe some of them have been lost without it as well.”

Wise together. It’s different than wise alone. There may not be a drum in the room. But there will always be the possibility of a circle. Men, joining with women, people joining together, to be wise. Many men, but gladly not all, have just forgotten form in a way that many woman have not. We’ve forgotten how helpful it can be to slow down to listen with ample pauses. To include silence as part of our speaking. To just feel, not fix. To elder each other into a presence and ability to stand in today’s complex world.

The circle is for men too. Never doubt it. This is a call to men. Men, please hear it. Join in circle. Make it part of you. Make it part of your leadership. Be part of an evolving and available healthy masculine. Listen. Share. Discover. Be moved. Be moving.

It was one of the other men, Chandu, whom I have met now at two weekend events, who summed it up nicely for Quanita’s book given to her 13 year-old friend. “Remember perfect doesn’t mean infallible; frail doesn’t mean weak; strong doesn’t mean right. Start with empathy; love will follow.” That’s what men have to contribute, and remember in circle.

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A footnote: I read a draft of this article to my 11 year-old son. I think I wanted to share it with him to seed an idea and alertness in him, perhaps more for his future 21 year-old self. He was working on a picture puzzle when I read it to him, moving the orange colored pieces around at that moment. I asked him if it would be ok for me to read to him what I’d been writing. His response surprised and delighted me, which he added without blinking. “I have one more thing to add. Men have been mean, you know. Like not letting woman vote. And they have been told to protect their families and told not to cry. But men have feelings too. They’ve just been taught to keep them inside and not share them. But we need to because if we can’t it can hurt you for the rest of your life. And now women are acting like men used to act. Some are being mean. That’s not right. We all need to be who we are. And let it out. It’s awful not to. We all have things to say, but we are scared of being judged.” Maybe Quanita’s next book might be asking a bunch of 11 year-olds what they want to say to grown men.

Meaning Making Creatures; Meaning Projecting Machines

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QT, the gathering I cohosted on the weekend with Quanita Roberson, is largely about the simple process of being curious together. I like it that it is that simple.

The stuff we invited people to be curious about is that which has their attention. That’s pretty simple too. Sometimes, quite literally, attentions like those harvested in the photo above. A wall of post-it notes, in this case seven per person, with the freedom to respond at any layer. Thanksgiving — great. The Bengals football game — great. Racism and presidential politics — great. There are no wrong answers in “what has your attention?”

Sometimes, the “attentions” were accessed through dreams. We started the day by inviting people to share their dreams — with awareness that the dream might just be for, or connected, to the group. The subconscious works that way, right. We didn’t process the dreams therapeutically or with imposed objective definition. We simply used them as sets of symbols upon which we could individually project meaning. “If that were my dream, my detail would be the van driving to Columbus.” Then from there, to say just a bit about why that symbol stands out and has personal meaning, for example, “I relate to being lost.”

It’s a beautiful process. And this time, it taught me something further. We, we humans, are meaning making creatures. We can’t help but do it. Our brains, hearts, and bellies can’t help but make associations through connecting experience and ideas. Yes, there’s a whole pile of that that happens subconsciously. But we can’t help it. It’s as natural as blinking. Or smelling. Or our heartbeats.

But also, we, we humans, are meaning projecting machines. And my machines, I mean extremely productive. Prolific. Mass produced. Sometimes running amuck. Projection, the phenomenon of attributing (or piling on / heavily imposing) meaning in someone else’s behavior that comes from the projector, not the projectee. This one takes discipline to realize that we are doing it, which of course is at the heart of shadow work.

The former, meaning-making, is part of being human. The latter, meaning projecting, is part of learning to become more human, more aware, and more awake.

I’m grateful for a weekend of fantastic meaning making together, to all of the group in Cincinnati. And to the men in particular, for those 25 minutes in the kitchen of sense making and evolving the edges of healthy masculinity.