Stone Soup and the Wisdom of Not Knowing

Discussion Groups

Ward: We have a ritual that we’ve done, since the very first Chautauqua, and it’s called “Stone Soup.” I originally devised it as a ritual for the ritually impaired. Being myself somewhat ritually impaired, this was my defense against rituals that were too strange or I felt embarrassed by. So this is a very low-threshold ritual. There are a couple of parts to it now because we all have a tendency to embellish. Lulu would you pass this (basket) around, you can pick a large stone or a small stone out of the basket, depending on your predisposition. While she’s passing that around, this is a story that most people probably know. What I discover is that every year my interpretation of the story changes. I think something about stories, is that you can have the same story, but you can change your relationship to the story.

This is the story of a village that was starving. A strange shaman-like man walked into the village one day and noticed everybody was starving, and he called the people together and he said, “I have a magic stone.” He brought a stone with him, and he said, “With this stone I can feed the whole village. What you need to do is to get a big pot and put a fire under it, start boiling water, and I’ll put the stone in it, we’ll make soup for everybody.”

The villagers, given that they were starving, thought that was a good idea, and they built the fire and put the water in the pot and put the stone in the pot. And the stranger said, “You know, the stone will feed everyone, but you know what actually gives some flavor to this? Has anybody got an onion?” And one of the villagers raised his hand and said, “You know, I have an onion that’s under my house, it wasn’t any good for anything, we couldn’t feed anybody with it and we were saving it.” And so he went and got the onion and put it in the pot. And the stranger said, “That’s excellent. And what will even make this better is if anyone has a potato.” Well there was somebody that had a potato that they were holding back because it wasn’t enough to create a meal with, and of course this went on and we got some celery and a turnip and a carrot and so on. And by the time all this was done, and the soup was cooked, they were able to nourish the village.

Shantam, Bob and Kerrie

As the story evolves for me, it is that when we come together, each question that we bring into the village is a form of nourishment. Because our not-knowing connects us in a way to reduce the starvation that we experience in isolation and separateness. We live in a fragmented world. We live in a world where we imagine that our welfare is not somehow inextricably connected with the welfare of others. I think one of the things on the South Africa journey recently with my students was that as we connected with people on the margins there, we discovered is how much they mattered to us and how deeply connected we were to them once the field of our humanity touched. I think this is a common story, that “connecting is healing,” and disconnecting is the ailment. So that when we bring our not-knowing, and we begin with our not-knowing, what we do is we are assembling in the name of the thing that makes us most essentially human. We’re assembling in our humility and our vulnerability, and that truly makes us human beings together. In the listening that comes from not-knowing, we nourish one another.

So the symbolic act of having a stone which has a question attached to it, is a way that we’ll nourish the village, because we will bring our questioning, we’ll bring our vulnerability, we’ll bring our humanity, and we come together as human beings, not as experts, not as people attempting to colonize other people with our good ideas. In fact co-opting others to our good ideas is one of the more pernicious things that we can do in our enthusiasm to make things better. Instead we can actually deeply listen to another human being, and to listen to their not-knowing without giving advice, without presuming that we would understand the complexity that each life is, but just to truly listen. As we are working together today we can to learn to ask questions of clarification rather than give advice. And of course one of the most important questions of clarification is, “Why does this matter to you? Why is this important to you?” And when we do that, we actually “listen” each other into our own answers. We know that any really true answer is going to come from inside.

Chene Swart

This year when we were in India, we had the privilege of interviewing Samdhong Rimpoche who was the Prime Minister of the Tibetan Government in exile. We saw him in his final days of office after doing that for a number of years. The last question was, “Well sir, do you have any advice for us?” And his response was, “No.” (laughter) He said, “Advice is the easy way. This is something you have to reason out yourself, otherwise it can’t truly belong to you.” And so, in dialogue, we can reason together.

So, the exercise this morning is to think about a word that is central to your inquiry. This idea came from a conversation with Sara Truebridge who came down to visit me. She was the educational advisor to movie “Race to Nowhere.” We were having a conversation and I noticed that a word kept coming up, and suddenly it dawned on me that there are certain words that attract our inquiry. And those words change over time. What is the word that attracts your inquiry, the word that has a magnetic force for you around not-knowing or around aspiration and possibility and that’s the word I would like you to place on your rock. Now the really challenging part of this ritual is that after you’ve done that, the scary part is that you have to get up and put it in the circle, that’s the limit of your exposure on this, okay?

So take a few moments and be in reflection. Just sit and see what comes up and if it’s nothing, you may put a blank stone in there, and if you are really ritually challenged you can just stick it in your pocket, you don’t even have to get up. (laughter) So we have options here. As Peter Block says, “If you don’t have a ‘No,’ your ‘Yes’ means nothing.” So everybody has a “No.” here.

(musical interlude for reflection)

Chené Swart – Narrative Therapy

Chene Swart

Chené: Thank you for giving me the space to speak. It is a privilege, and holy ground, always. My journey with the Narrative work started when my story was really stuck and I thought my world was so fixed, that I could not move. A good friend of mine said that he’s just come across this wonderful new kind of therapy, called Narrative Therapy. I said, I’m so stuck, just help me out. And it was the most wonderful experience to feel how my world opened and broadened, and how I could start to breathe again. So I was all in – and I thought, how on earth am I going to learn how to do this? The Narrative work is quite new in the world. It started about thirty years ago with Michael White in Australia and David Epston in New Zealand. At the Dulwich Center in Australia you can be trained as a Narrative therapist. I had a wonderful opportunity in South Africa to be trained.

Another good friend of mine said, “This work sounds lovely. Why don’t you try it in corporate world?” Oh, that was and still is a wonderful learning journey, because they would ask me, “Can you do de-briefing for our executive team?” And I thought, “What’s in a word? – A world…”  I would say, “Tell me about de-briefing. What does that mean for you?” And then I would listen and say, “ok, I think we can do that.” And so this whole new world of organizational (O.D) development opened up for me. There were words like ‘change management’ and ‘team building,’ and ‘check-ins and check-outs.’ This whole idea of “What is in a word, a world,” has been part of my exploration in the O.D. field. I find the world so fascinating and every opportunity an opportunity to learn from, or to be transformed by the other, by whoever’s in the room.

I’m going to give you a quick explanation of the Narrative work which I have been challenged to do by Peter Block often times in situations where I would have only ten minutes. I’ve been taught in my training within Narrative therapy that it takes a long time for people to understand these ideas. It is complicated and difficult.  Explaining these ideas within a limited time frame was a wonderful challenge for me, because I had to deconstruct the power of my own field and training to rework and explain what the ideas are about.

In Narrative therapy, we believe that human beings are interpretive beings.  We cannot but make meaning of our world. So if I asked you, what comes to mind when I say the word “blue”?

Participants: Sky. Ocean

Chené: What kind of ocean? A blue ocean; a kind of Caribbean blue, or a more Atlantic? Caribbean blue?

Participants: Judgmental. Jeans, velvet, sad, blue notes

Chené: Can you hear all the meanings in this room made of only one word? Can you imagine what happens when we think we’re having a great conversation and everybody’s on the same page; and we’re assuming that we know what we are all talking about without verifying our own assumptions?

The Narrative approach is a not-knowing approach – never assuming that we know what the other person is saying or meaning. And we never assume even that we can understand fully. We are on the way of understanding. That’s all part of the practice. Events happen in our lives and we as human beings connect the dots by making meaning of these events. When we tell a story, we tell the story of the meaning we made of a bunch of stuff that happened to us.

There are also things that we are not telling in the story. And sometimes these stories are hidden. As Narrative therapists, we are curious about the stories, and the evidence, and the things that happen that have not been shared yet. And so, why are these incidents that tell a different story hidden? They’re hidden because of power; because we authorize people to speak about our lives. This is also true for teams, for organizations, nations… We give over the rights of this story to other people. We’re saying, but my parents think this is what I should do. When we have a conversation around our nation, and who we can become, it’s the government, or the president that needs to bring the change, we give the storytelling rights of our story over to others that are powerful figures. Who else are powerful figures that we can authorize to speak?

Participants: God, and the three Rabbi’s. The experts.

Chené: The experts, who are they? Teachers, parents, scientists, leaders, are all people we authorize to speak into our lives, our community stories, our nation stories, and our organizational stories.

In addition taken-for-granted beliefs and ideas also hide the alternative stories of our lives. So what are the taken-for-granted ideas and beliefs we have about young people?

Participants: They’re naïve, selfish..

Chené: Definitely, that’s a loaded one in our culture

Participants: Limitless potential.

Chené: Is that a common theme, a common story – a common taken-for-granted belief and idea in our society?

Participants: Here it is a story, a belief, an idea that we have about young people. Impulsive, adventurous; children should be seen and not heard, and hurt.

Chené: Can I hear some of the voices of the teenagers in this room? I would love to hear more about the things that you’ve heard people tell you about who you are.

Participants: Fix what your generation of older people messed up. Unreliable-

Lulu Haltom: That we should know what we want to do for our lives.

Quincy Mitchell: Here to continue our parent’s legacy.

Participant: Multitasking. Glued to technology; connected; the future. Enjoy this while you’re still young. You’ve got no problems; one day you will understand what this real world is about.

Chené: Those are the ideas and beliefs of just one topic we took to explore. But if you look at your own story, there are also taken-for-granted beliefs and ideas that can limit and inform your story. If we look at a problem story like anorexia, what are the taken-for-granted beliefs and ideas that keep anorexia alive? Women should be thin, and a certain kind of thinness – and the media tells us that story as well. Do you think in certain countries in Africa, anorexia would make sense? So anorexia is kept alive by taken-for-granted beliefs in a certain society around thinness. A black man on the mines, whose stomach was standing like this, said, “I am rich.” So what does that mean? Tell me more. He says, “Look at my tummy. I am living the good life.” And in certain other cultures, you would say, no way, you have to see a doctor, you’re not in good shape. We have a lot of ideas in society that make us think the way we do. And that informs this world that we take for granted.

In the Narrative work, we work with alternative stories, and we ask questions around these stories that are not told. We assume that these alternative stories are there, always. That is the assumption we work with.

We also invite people to re-author their lives. These same principles in understanding the stories that inform us are used in working with teams, organizations and companies. I’m currently involved in work in some of the operations at Anglo-American Platinum Mines, and these communities of workers are re-writing and re-authoring the story about who they are as a company, and it’s just fascinating to be a part, and to be privileged to see the transformation happening right in front of my eyes.

So the principles and the assumptions that we work with are the following: when you sit with somebody, you are curious. You ask questions that you don’t know the answer to. We do not use questions that assume that we know the answer, like “Don’t you think you should be?” These kind of questions say that I’m putting myself up as the expert; asking a question, but I already have the right answer to that question. We work with a not-knowing approach. When we are inquiring around these taken- for-granted beliefs, people would say, “This is just the way it is”. We would be curious and say, “Oh that’s an interesting idea. Where does that idea come from? And what is the story telling you?”

Part of this whole process is also naming our stories. When we name our world, we can decide about the relationship that we want to have with the name and title of our story. The naming is invited for both the problem story, and the alternative story. When we name the story, we can distance ourselves from it and say, “Is this the story that I want to live into or not?” In addition the Narrative ideas work within a community. When a person has decided and named an alternative story that they want to live into, the community is called in. This community is selected by the storyteller because this community knows things and sees things that that person doesn’t always see. They see the gifts, competencies and skills of the story teller. Together with this community of concern we have a celebration of the new story.

So now I want to invite you, to take a look at your collage that represents your experiences, and your meaning making of your own life story on the first page of your journals. I want to ask you to give a title to this page. If you had to give a name to it, what would you call it? Please divide into groups of three and have a conversation around the naming of your story. Everyone in the group is going to have an opportunity to tell the story of this one-page collage and give it a title. The task of the other two participants in the group is to listen while the story is being told. You’ve got a very important job: you are allowed to ask questions that you don’t know the answer to. You are allowed to be curious, and you are allowed to be transformed by the story that you are listening to. You are not allowed to try to fix, or help, or give advice, or assume that you know what the story is about. Even if it sounds familiar – you know what we do? “Oh, that sounds just like my story, I know exactly how you feel!” You don’t know, because even if it sounds the same, you don’t know, unless you’ve had the opportunity to have the conversation.

Divide into groups of three, with people that you know the least in this room, so that you can be surprised in the process. Share your story, and your meaning making, and your name or title of your story. And the other two people ask questions. Let’s give each person five minutes for their stories. For some people it’s going to be a long time, for other people it’s going to be short. Is it clear?

Day Two – Peter Block

Peter Block: This is always a homecoming, which is a wonderful thing. The word sustainability is popular these days, so we have to be suspicious of anything that’s popular. So I thought, a couple things – one is, if I was serious about sustainability, what might that mean? Is there a way I can relate to that? Why is it so difficult? And the second concern is just the fact the intimacy that you felt yesterday with a stranger – why is that rare in the culture, because the longing is so deep? The theme of this is about education. And why is intimacy and education seem at such odds to each other?

Back to sustainability – I was in Hawaii last week, and I was in a meeting Friday morning, and they said sustainability is life. For something to be sustained, it’s affirming alive-ness. Usually people say, “Well this has been great, how do we sustain it?” In other words, how do I bring into the future the experience I’m having in the moment? The answer to that is, “you can’t,” because otherwise you’re living a memory. And every time you reconvene you’ll want to recreate what you left behind, and it’s always disappointing. So I like the notion of aliveness – Maybe sustainability means, “How do I keep the quality of aliveness?”

The dominant modern culture is organized to consume aliveness; that education as we know it, is an industrialized design, and we’ve organized the school building as an industrial model. We’ve organized education as a feeder system – to lower labor costs for work places… Same with resume building like it’s never been before, and the order of the day is fifty minutes – sit in your seat, behave yourself, socialize yourself – even though we know that that’s difficult for young people. All the research says that if they start the day after 9am, their performance goes up a whole grade.

So it leads me to think, well this is the empire in action. The empire being in control, consistency and predictability, is what I want out of the world. I want to know what’s going to happen; which tells me that the idea of education reform is an impossibility. That you can’t use industrial means to de-industrialize experience.

What we’re doing now, we think better technology, more certification, better testing, better measurement – the state of Ohio is spending $26 million this year on better testing,  as if a hog did get fatter sitting on a scale. And all that is life consuming. All of that is life consuming – the idea that, “I want.” So I started thinking, so what is life giving? I also really believe that the conversation of education reform, health care reform, government reform, economic reform, has no chance of being a conversation of reform. It’s just using the disease to cure the illness. To give more order, more structure, lower cost efficiency – that is the language of empire.

“Empire,” meaning is that work is done in service of pharaoh (the emperor); in service of leadership, in service of management, in service of the teacher. So the teacher in most classrooms is the emperor of the moment – in charge. We just spent a billion dollars in Cincinnati on new school buildings, and they are up to date with 1944 designs. It’s just the windows are new, a little more light, the sight lines are a little more pleasing, the cafeteria is a brighter color; but the chairs are still lined up, the teacher is still in front of the room; all of that is still occurring. So you might say, sustainability is about the de-industrialization of, in your case, education. That’s how I see these gatherings, to support the experience of de-industrializing learning. So that’s one set of thoughts. The other thought is, what are the components of aliveness?

The Components of Aliveness

Notion of Mystery

One element of aliveness might be the presence of mystery – the “not knowing.” There has to be space for mystery. The system world hates mystery. It hates surprise – I grew up in the system world, and I knew that I could tell my clients anything, as long as I didn’t surprise them. So if I told them that the building that was destroyed over the weekend, and all employees have quit and moved to Mexico, their common response is, “Well, that doesn’t surprise me.” As if surprise is the only thing they’re truly worried about. In a system world, do anything you want, but don’t surprise me. The stock market’s that way. As long as you are on your projection, it doesn’t matter how bad they are.

Mystery is the anecdote to predictability. And so you say, “How do we design mystery into our experience?” Knowing that that’s where all creativity resides, is in mystery. Mystery means, not only that I don’t know, but also that some things are un-knowable – god forbid, that there are things that science will never figure out; and some people (including some of my family members) don’t agree with that – that science eventually will figure everything out. And so you say, “How do we keep the mystery in the form of our gathering? ”

The Notion of Fallibility

The second dimension of aliveness is something to do with fallibility. So the system world is longing for perfection. That’s why we do annual performance reviews. So the wish for perfection is the wish for sovereignty. It’s the wish for dominance. It’s how I claim ownership of you, by letting you know that you’re imperfect and that that’s a problem. It’s a problem that you’re imperfect, and we got to do something about it, so once a year we sit down with you and talk about improvement goals.

My daughter wanted to get certified as a pastoral educator. She was always having to write a paper every two months about her growing edges. So she had to collude with the notion there’s something wrong with me, and more important, “I’m working on it.” If it was just something wrong with me, I can live with that, because I have a lot of evidence that it’s true: there is something wrong with me. And I have learned in 72 years that working on it has no impact. I’m working on the same stuff today, that I was when I was 24 years old and began getting institutional feedback. “Peter, you’ll interrupt people, you’re a little cynical. Somebody else starts a sentence, you always want to finish it…” So infallibility means I’m permanently incomplete. It’s a permanent condition: I am fallible. The community world, the world of aliveness accepts that and finds it interesting; the weirdness in me, the vulnerability in me, the edginess in me, the dreamer in me, all the things that I’ve been working on, try to be practical – be grounded. I live in the air.

I once had a body worker, she was kind of a Chinese mystical creature, and I turned over knowledge of my body to her. I had no interest in learning about my body. I gave her full responsibility. I had these violin strings from my throat to my belly, and you could almost play music on my stomach, it was so tight. And so I said, “Jane, your job is to loosen those strings up. I’m going to lie here and see how you’re doing.” I said to her, “What am I going to have trouble with?” She says, “Your knees.” “You are as ungrounded as they come. You live in the world of ideas, in a kind of aloof and distant manner. I think your knees are going to be a problem.” So I took her seriously, and I’ve been working on my knees. But that’s me; that’s my fallibility.

The learning world, the alive world, the community world loves you for your fallibilities. The system world fixes you. So one of the qualities of empire life is that whatever you are, it’s not enough. So we’ve internalized that by saying, “I’m a work in-progress.” Rather than saying this is it, done. Cooked, finished, package as delivered. What do you think: is this lovable, or not? And so there’s a whole notion of fallibility versus perfection.

The Notion of Speed

There’s a question of speed – so Angeles says nature has two speeds, medium and slow. The life-consuming world says “fast.” Speed is a value. Everybody wants to FedEx things to me that I have no interest in. You have a FedEx – I tear up the notice, hoping that it’ll go away. And they’re spending $24.56 to get me this letter overnight. And so you begin to say, “Well time matters.” In community we have time. There’s plenty of time. I have time on my hands. The love-song of aliveness is, I’m biding my time. I love that song, because that’s the kind of guy I am. And so the whole notion of speed, quickness, is what consumes my energy. That’s the only reason why I’m tired, is because I’m in a hurry.

All the technology is sold on the basis of speed. So, another quality of the empire feral life is restless productivity. I’ve always got to be busy. I was at a resort last week in Hawaii – at the pool, half the people were on blackberries or iphones the whole time. Which means they weren’t at the resort, so they’re vastly overpaying for the facility. They could have done that at the Holiday Inn. In these two days this gathering is an example of a life creating design. And I like the notion that design kinds of gives you a channel for experience. That the reason you design something is to guide intentions. The setup of the room is a declaration of intention. That’s why space matters so much. This space means I can see most all of you. In the traditional conference, all we see is the front, the foreground.

Notion of Relatedness

The last one is the notion of relatedness. In the empire world, relationships are expedient. They’re a means to an end. I don’t have to like you in order to work with you – you hear this all the time. In the community world, in the aliveness, creating relationship is all there is. It’s the point. We take space for that. Given a little space yesterday, intimacy means there was time for relationship. A friend of mine says, that the purpose of the challenges and problems in the world is to give us an excuse to be together. I’ve begun to think, that’s true. So bring on your problems, I’m interested in all of them. I’ve lost interest in solving them. I’ve decided I’m no longer a results oriented kind of guy.

People say, “What results have you seen in your work over the years?” I said, “None that I can discern. None.” Once in a while, people will come back ten years later, and say that was good. And I say, thank you. Nice but all hard to measure. Mother Theresa was great – people ask, “what kind of results?” she says, “I’m called by grace, or love. I’m not called by results.” I just saw that Berrett Koehleraer has published a book called, Mother Theresa, CEO – the nine principles of Mother Theresa to get things done. So I may have to get a new publisher. Relatedness becomes the point, our connection, and it has a function. And that’s a set of things – you talk about fallibility, you talk about mystery, you talk about time, you can talk about relatedness; the alternative to relatedness is autonomy.

The antithesis to relatedness is the notion that I am a self-made man; a self-made woman. As if I produced anything in this world on my own – which I haven’t. And a lot of entrepreneurs like to fashion themselves as self-made men. I’ll always ask them, in my own unkind and aggressive way, I have a gentle tone that masks the dark side (which I love) – I say, where did you get your first dollar? And they said, “Oh, from my father.” “Oh, so you’re not a self-made man?” Autonomy is the empire version of relatedness. And we still reward people individual prizes. I’ve been in those ceremonies sometimes; I’m a speaker at the awards ceremony. Harris Corporation was the best, because they had me on a stage with flowers all around. I thought it was a funeral. I’m giving a talk on empowerment, and the first two rows are empty and reserved. And the whole purpose of the conference is celebrating teamwork – got it ?–  the importance of our people, the little people.

I asked  them at one point, how was last years event? They said, “We had a major problem last year, we ran out of shrimp.” They have a little shrimp celebration after the talks. I finally got what the purpose of this year’s was about, was to have enough shrimp. So the first two rows are reserved for top management. This is so they don’t waste time waiting for the empowerment lecture to start.

And then the people who get an award, every time they get an award, the first thing they say is, “I don’t deserve this.” And I don’t call that modesty, I think they’re right. You don’t deserve this. So relatedness is the alternative to individualism.

Next is the idea of community, it has a job to do. That our connection to each other has a purpose, and it has a function. One of those things is to raise a child. We have outsourced to the school that function. That’s why the school struggles if it’s not rich. And most of the great stories you hear about schools that have transcended out of nothing to become something, in Harlem, in West LA – well they were all helped with a $50 million grant. You start saying, we, citizens, neighborhoods, have to raise a child. The school can’t do it. That’s why school reform is rather futile. You can make some nice minor course adjustments. But we have to raise the child. We also keep each other healthy. That’s a job we have to do in this circle – my health is dependent on our relationship. If I join an association, as opposed to nothing, it adds a year to my life. Healthcare for the elderly, care for the disabled, care for people recovering from mental illness, is a community function. What we’ve done is we have professionalized care in every dimension of my life. So now I hire people to take care of my parents. I hire the schools to discipline my children, to inspect their lockers on a surprise basis for drugs. Where my kids went to school, they couldn’t lock their lockers anymore – they should have renamed those boxes, as evidence containers. Part of the dehumanization is having professionalized those tasks that neighborhoods and functions and us have to do; care for the land.

I’m in Hawaii, and they have an amazing tradition, and this Manu Meyer – I like that, Hawaiian first name, Jewish last name – my kind of woman. She says, “This is our land. We don’t care who owns it now. We’ve never given it up.” “The land is ours” They know that eventually that they have to be self-sufficient as a community, for food. We have outsourced all of this. We think peas grow in the grocery store.

There’s a function to this, what we’re doing. If I want to raise a child, I have to recognize that only a community, a circle, can do that. There’s a use to what you’re up to. Part of the task of school people, is to not take on what you can’t deliver; that you are not in the business of custodial care. The only reason the school starts at Walnut Hills at 7:45 is that so parents can get to work on time – something’s whacked out there. The only reason they have after school programs is because the parents can’t pick them up; they’re too busy in restless productivity. And we’re managing the kids now for performance – which Ward is so beautiful about.

As soon as you turn a learner into a performer, you’ve stolen their humanity. I have to help my children discover what they’re good at and not make them do well. All that is in play in what we’re doing here. These two days are a model of what an energy giving system can look like. It pays great respect in the capacity of my children to learn what they’re good at.

I was reading some of  Ivan Illich notes. He says that, we think the children are our future – stop talking that way. They’re not to be used for tomorrow. They have use now. And we’ve forgotten that they’re useful now, they’re it – this is it. They’re not our future, it’s a way of me as an adult escaping my own freedom and accountability, is by looking to you to provide a different future than I produced. You’re not at risk. There is no such thing as “youth at risk”. They’re just fine. The best thing we can do is say – we’re at risk, but I don’t want to live with that.

Everybody wants to get to the youth sooner. Now we have four year old education. LA county has 322 schools that teach kids, four years old, how to read and write; and I’m sure three year old will be next, and then prenatal education. There’s something that speaks, that looks at the child in the womb, and says, “Hmm, where are they going to college?” So all of that consumes energy. If I’m tired, that’s why, because I’ve internalized empire. The restless productivity, the belief I’m not enough, the belief that children – that something needs to be inculcated into you… So that’s the work, health, land, people in the margin; neighborhoods –

The exodus story is the escape from Egypt, pharaoh, slavery. It is about freedom – to what? Wilderness, what’s that? That’s a place with no viable means of support. So this is the journey that Ward takes people on: a journey into the wilderness. The neighborhood is the modern wilderness, cause it’s lost its function. For educators, there’s a huge task to realize that the neighbors around you can do things that the school can’t do, because the school is enraptured with empire and order, and structure.

Last thoughts: I was thinking, “What is the means of transformation?” What is the means through which a world of mystery and fallibility, time relatedness can be created? There is a question of methodology. So there are four things, and then I’m done.

It is the Economy

One is the notion that we have to pay attention to the economy; the economic system dominates this culture, and if we don’t learn about that, we’re missing something. I know there is a movement to shift our thinking about the economy – one is to make it local. Globalization is part of what steals aliveness from us. And it’s a long story, but that’s a headline. There’s a notion of economics of abundance – why don’t we act as what we have is enough? Right now we only value scarcity. I’m only interested in what’s rare; why, because you can’t monetize abundance. You can only monetize what’s scarce. There’s also an economy of generosity. So there are people named Edgar Cahn that has decided that non-market exchanges are more important than market exchanges. A guy named Mark Anielski wrote a book, The Economy of Happiness. Cahn tracks generosity. Every time you do something kind to me, like give me a gift, you get a credit hour, and I accumulate credit hours. It’s called time banking. Then when I need you, I spend my credit hours, and you accumulate them, and no money has changed hands, and the neighborhood is working fine. We have to be part of this movement to rethink what kind of home management we’re interested in.

Art

Second has to do with art. In the old testament, the prophets were the poets, and their job was to imagine an alternative future. So the function of art is to give form and shape to an alternative culture, alternative future, alternative way of being. It is certain aspects of us that art evokes, it helps, like I have to remember I have a body. Most conferences, forget I have a body; we do nothing physical, there’s no movement; I’ve been involved with an improv theatre, where there is great movement – you make it all up, you pick something up and I hand something to you. And in improv, whatever’s handed to you, you say, “thank you.” You never refuse the offer, no matter how dark it may seem. It’s a yes world.

I have to rediscover my ears, I have to learn something about music; I have to learn how to listen, how to hear. I have to rediscover my voice – in empire voice, ears, eyes, fingers, all are obsolete. Now I can go anywhere on my computer; and Microsoft for years said where do you want to go today? And all I needed was a couple of fingers. The rest of the body withers, sits… That’s the function of art, to reawaken my senses, so that my life makes sense to me. That’s why you have to start the day with music. You have to start the day with song, there has to be a point in the day where art brings us into movement. There has to be a point in the day where my eye takes an image, passes it through my arm, into my hand, and I draw something – instead of write something.

Art is essential, and we still treat it as if it’s peripheral, as if it’s nice, as if it’s entertainment, as if I can be passive in most great concert halls, which are designed for passivity, except for the moment of gratitude. The only time I’m allowed to move or make noise. And they tell me at the start, be quiet; if you have candy, unwrap it before the performance. So if the audience is felt at all by the performers, you’ve destroyed that world. That’s the empire use of art. It is for persuasion. First thing totalitarian governments do is shut down the artists. Shut down the radio stations. So art is designed to bring life back into the room.

Shift the Narrative

The other is the narrative, which my life gives voice to – I know the word was the beginning. I know that my speaking is the world I create; I know I’m constructing, I have constituted my life – that’s how I’ve used my freedom, I am the author of my experience. Even if the experience in many ways, sucks. Anybody who lives their life without regret isn’t paying attention. “I would do the same thing all over again”. You got to be kidding. If I found one thing that I would do over again, I would celebrate that.

Narrative, the nature of our speaking, do I speak into a world of accountability, or do I escape my freedom by talking about what those people are doing; what top management is doing, what Obama isn’t doing – all that conversation. The purpose of the classroom is to create a breeding ground for seeds of accountability – for seeds that the child knows what they need to learn, they can figure out how they need to learn it, who they want to learn it from, what they want to learn… So aliveness is an assault on expertise, it’s an assault on professorship, it’s an assault on – and what I’ve learned from Chene Swart is, it’s assault on who I authorize to speak. Whose speaking do I value? Expert, professional, elder; soften it up, therapist, soften it up more, preacher, minister, nun – softer yet, but I’m still surrendering my own freedom when I authorize expertise to speak. So you say I want to reauthorize the source of speaking, and it’s you I have in mind. All that’s in the narrative.

So it’s everything – all these are everything’s: art everything, economy is everything, the narrative is everything. What you said yesterday, we had intimacy, and what Larry said is true, “I show up not knowing who I am, in the presence of you not knowing who you are, and both of us in our confusion figure out, if we don’t know who we are, we just had a great time together.” In some ways, when we share our fallibility, that is intimacy. Nobody ever got close to a human being by declaring victory. Same with my kids, I always wondered how they would turn out; but by the age of the early thirties, I said, “enough, I’m declaring victory.” They turned out just fine. A little whacko, but most of the time they’re relatively drug free, relatively financially independent, and they’re able to stand on their own accord. I feel, “good job.” With that as an exception, I get close to you by sharing my fallibility, my vulnerability. That’s all in the narrative world.

It means I have to care about journalism, the public narrative is designed to support empire. If I believe that, it makes sense to me. Now I know why fear is marketed as a curriculum in the news, because it keeps me under control. If I’m afraid, I ain’t going outside. I won’t venture out – if I don’t go outside, then I’m not going to find you; if I’m afraid to walk in my city, in my neighborhood. If I don’t go downtown, because I’m afraid I’m no longer experiencing any vitality, any of the aliveness of the center of the city. The public narrative right now is totally designed to sustain the empire. And it’s only interested in what’s wrong, and it calls good news human interest.

Religion

The fourth everything is religion. This I’ve been adding lately, at some peril. I was at a conference, in Cincinnati, and there were some ministers who felt they couldn’t talk about God. And I thought, what kind of world have I participated in creating, when we couldn’t talk about God? So we need to create space, if we care about mystery – and God in some ways is a place-holder for mystery – then it has to be free to talk about God, and if I’m free to talk about God, then I have to be free to talk about not-God. Either way is fine. Just don’t make it a marketing pitch, ok? Bringing religion in creates space for God, and whatever that means – in our conversation I shouldn’t be shy about that. It creates space for mystery. It creates space for kiros, which is time measured in depth.

Now you could use the world spirituality, but that has gotten neutered. It’s washed out. So as soon as you say, no let’s talk about spirituality, it means there’s no risk on the table. It means there’s nothing to be upset about; nothing to be committed to. That is the mystery. In religion, time disappears. In community, time slows down. But in religious sense, time has no meaning. It’s all about depth, it’s all about the mystery of things. In Hawaii this is how they say “the land is ours! I don’t care if you think you own it or not. That over time, or in a time-less world, we still own this land.”

Those are the methodologies: economy, art, narrative, religion. If you say I want to design a classroom that has a quality of producing energy, rather than consuming it – which is the opposite of covering a certain amount of material, then you pay attention to economics, art, narrative and religion. Sometimes when I do a workshop, they say, “Peter, we’re running out of time. Do you have material you want to cover?” Well why would I want to cover material nobody was interested in? Including me? If I thought it was so important, I should have started with it. So in this world, nothing is forgotten, nothing is left out. That’s where energy comes from. “I’m only tired at the end of the day,” is a social construction. If I’m burnt out, I’ve constructed it – somebody calls me with a nice proposal, you want to do this or that? “Hell yes!” You get back at one in the morning, exhausted, “You hungry?” Yes. “Good, let’s cook.” Then you have energy for everything.

These thought are within your power to construct. Because every moment of your life, you’re in a room, and you’re in a place, and community has to be grounded in a place. The notion of an online community is just a silly thought, because I have control of my online life. I can read you if I want. I can answer you or not – that’s why email doesn’t count. If you email something to somebody, you get no credit for communicating, because it’s costless, it’s free. I can answer in asynchronous response – what does that mean? I don’t know. Something’s out of sorts, I know that. Anything with the word a in front of it means something’s out of sorts.

So Angeles and I did a gathering a while ago, and one of the things in the gathering – one of the ways empire invades community, is the notion you got to hear from everybody. So if you get more than nine people, it takes a long time. We were in this gathering of 25 people, and we end the day with a reflection, nothing wrong with that. But we go around the room. So we’re slogging around the room, one person at a time; with verbal people. I don’t mind going around the room, as long as their deep introverts. I’ll go around forever, as long as they have nothing to say. I realized, if you go around the room, only five people are interested. The two that just spoke, are wishing they said something different. The one speaking is trying to act interested, and the two next in line are worried about what the they’re going to talk about! And everybody else is going, “How many more to go?” So we meet in the morning, and I said, “What’d you think of the circle last night? What did you say?”

Angeles Arrien: Boring.

Peter Block: She said, “Snore.” So we decided that in design, the only question is, who goes first. Everything else is just chit-chat. So these two days are an example of that: configuration, the seating, the unpredictability of it, the not understanding half of what’s going on; the space for fallibility is celebrated in this circle. You’re not supposed to be doing great when you come here, that’s why it’s relief. And we have time, how long do we have? All the time that we need. So these are all design elements. And one other  thing I would add to live giving, is gift-mindedness.

We come here to be confronted with our gifts. Which I’m blind to without you – I can’t wait for my eulogy, cause I’m going to miss it. That’s the only time I will be truly forgiven, is when I die. And remember All That Jazz, the movie, where this guy just kind of ran over people like a train all his life, and every morning he’d pop some pills in his mouth and he’d go, “Showtime!” And that was his life. And the last scene, he’s dying, he’s on the operating table, he’s about to die, and all the women he stepped on are surrounding him. “We love you, we love you.” And I thought, that’s the moment we’re all waiting for.

Gift-mindedness changes the world, and I have decided to learn about what my gifts are. And I have decided, even though I fall back a lot, only be interested in what your gifts – and I’m not interested in conversations of deficiencies. I’m not interested in youth at risk, I’m not interested in what your disabilities are, I’m not interested on what you’re working on… Why? It’s not that they’re not true, it’s just it doesn’t take us anywhere. All it takes us, is into the land of deficiencies. The truth is they get stronger over time. I’m more interrupting now, than I was in my thirties, if that’s possible. I get more interested now, than I have been in finishing other people’s sentences. It takes all the will power and prayer I can muster to let you finish a sentence, let alone have a complete thought. So I can testify, it’s only going to get worse. So you say, let me stop the narrative of not enough, and replace it with the narrative of giftedness.

In a neighborhood, if I was an educator in a school, and I knew that I couldn’t raise these children, I would get interested in what people in the neighborhood knew how to do. And I would send a group out to interview every house, say, we’re from the local school building, and we’re worried about our children, cause we can only give them so much. What do you know how to do? What are you passionate about? What are you interested in? What are you willing to teach other people? There is no more respectful question in the world than, what are you willing to teach another.

Then ask if they would you mind if I come back to you if I find someone who’d be interesting in learning that? And I don’t care what they say. If they say, “I’m good at prayer.” You write that down. If they know how to listen, write it down. If they say, “I have experience with loneliness; I like dogs; I can cook; I can sew; I can pay attention; I never get bored. Or, I am cynical and bored about life. And that’s what I’m good at.” Thank you. I think there’s a market for that. And I would collect those, and I would match them up. That is what gift-mindedness means.

Finally, there is hospitality, like what Amber said, “I discovered a stranger yesterday.” Hospitality is the welcoming of the stranger.

So every time you break people into small groups, it’s always with people you know the least. And every time you break people in small groups, you tell them don’t be helpful, be curious. And every time you break people in small groups, you force them to sit uncomfortably close together; you get them away from tables. And the last thing you do before you let them leave each other, you have them tell each other in specific terms, what did you do in the last twenty minutes that touched me? What did you do that was useful to me? And you instruct the person hearing this kind of love, to say, “Thank you, I like hearing that. Tell me more. Tell me what my comments meant to you, and here’s what it meant to me.” And that’s a life giving conversation.

A footnote: We don’t do Q & A anymore. Q & A is giving lip service to engagement. Q & A means you’ve got the question, and I’ve got the answer. Which is just backwards. So you don’t structure it that way. And you know you’re an empire when people love Q & A, and sometimes they write down their questions, so they don’t have to stand for anything; I can pass it in. And my favorite, I don’t if I’ve mentioned it before, once, I was giving a talk and they were passing in questions, and I’d answer the question. Afterwards, I said to the guy, “Any questions you didn’t give me?” And the guy said, “Yeah, one.” I said, “What was that?” Somebody wrote in, “Where did you get this guy?” which would have been the only interesting question anybody asked.

Thank you.

Day Two – Angeles Arrien

Angeles: So, we pull on the threads this afternoon from this morning. One of the things that I so loved about this morning was how joy and laughter opens us not only to possibilities, but also to learning. I love that Victor Borga said that, “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” I’ve kept thinking about that this morning. Laughter not only joins us but it opens us to each other.

I think about the power of embracing not knowing and the power of connecting with uncertainty, because we can count really only on two things in our lives. One is our death, we just don’t know when and how that’s going to occur. The other is change. We can count on change. We can count on it. For those of us who have the illusion at different times in our lives that we can control change, we quickly discover what a very frustrating and futile endeavor it is. Death and change are uncontrollable.

Every moment is a possibility between every human being on the planet. I awoke last week thinking about this, that every human being wants to be loved and every human being wants to be happy. Human beings are really here for two purposes. One is to learn all that we can about love and to express love. There’s not a human being that’s not been touched by love in life. Love has many arms: gratitude, appreciation, acknowledgment, joy, forgiveness, and recognition. I love the five A’s of really being present. You know that love’s presence is there when there is attention. When there’s acceptance. When there’s appreciation. When there’s allowance. And out of attention, appreciation, acceptance and allowance we hit the bedrock of affection. I love that the first part of affection is “affect”. We closed this morning with how we affected each other by giving our appreciation and our allowance to each other, through the quality of attention that we extended to each other. In the crucible of safety, always there is a generosity of acceptance. It’s a beautiful container for affection.

It was wonderful to walk in this morning and see how people who have been to multiple Chautauqua’s were saying, “Oh you came, you came!” and the new people that have come and the new important strangers joining us in the exploration of this journey. Every human being is here to learn about love and to express love and affection, and we’re also here to create. That’s the unique factor of our human species. Each one of us has a call or a purpose and a contribution to make. Peter’s conversation about gifts and what we are passionately excited about that matters most, is always much more exciting than the conversation about deficiencies.

I’ve been thinking about love and creativity. In the fairy-tales of the world when they always talk about the “creative fire”, they always say, “Ahhh, the creative fire. The fire that takes no wood.” And it’s a spark in every human being that cannot be diminished, taken away, put out, no matter how much we’d like to do that. It’s impossible. We’re constantly creating and we’re constantly creating in the daydream. And it’s important to pay attention to what I’m creating in the daydream because it sets up the matrix for the self-fulfilling prophecy. The daydream sets up the matrix for the self-fulfilling prophecy. Just think about what are all the positive daydreams that I have? Give it a title, anyone. What is a positive daydream that I visit constantly – just this year – for those of us who are daydreamers? We’re all daydreamers. It’s not a very conscious, comforting thought but many of us are daydreaming while we’re driving. We don’t have many conscious drivers on the road. But we have many people daydreaming. Processing. Daydreaming. Possibilities.

Participant: My next trip to Italy)

Angeles: That’s a positive daydream. Another one. What am I currently this year visiting, dreaming about? If you can title it, you have it. Another positive daydream.

Participant: To be free to do what I want.

Participant: Taking a good nap.

Participant: 50 cities in the world performing the charter of compassion

Angeles: In South Africa among the Sutus after a positive daydream they would say:

“And that’s a healing story.

And that’s a healing story.

And that’s a healing story.

And that’s a healing story.”

Most indigenous people of the world have what are called “seal phrases,” phrases that seal something that I don’t want to forget. Let’s think about a challenging daydream. What’s great about our positive daydreams is that they hold all of our healing images, and our images of possibility. I think it’s so interesting that there are two phrases that are repeated in the sacred texts of the world. One is “Ask and you shall receive”. And the other healing phrase is always stated as “People who cannot envision will perish.” Our healing images and our inspirational visionary images are our positive images. And that’s a healing story, and that’s a healing story. It sets up a matrix for the self-fulfilling prophecy.

So, what are our challenging daydreams? What’s a challenging daydream that I visit a lot? Or a negative daydream that I might visit a lot?

Participant: Will they offshore my job?

Participant: Self-compassion

Angeles: That’s a challenging one? Yes. Okay, great, great. Just that you’re going there is a healing story, that you’re conscious of it. But to extend it to yourself is amazing. That’s wonderful.

Participant: I’m not enough

Participant: Not enough time.

Participant: I’ll never really be thin again!

Participant: Failure in general

Angeles: Yes. And among the Sutus in South Africa they say,

“And that’s a story that doesn’t need to happen.

And that’s a story that doesn’t need to happen.

And that’s a story that doesn’t need to happen.

And that’s a story that doesn’t need to happen.”

Our psyche does not distinguish between good or bad, positive or negative, right or wrong. The psyche says, “Oh, there’s a lot of energy going over here. I think I’ll just help it along. Oh, there’s a lot of energy going over here. I think I’ll just help it along.” But when it comes up against a seal phrase, “Oh they’re aware. They’re aware.” It stops. And then the psyche will put energy in the middle for you to place it where you want, rather than help it along. And that’s a healing story. And that’s a healing story. And that’s a healing story. And that’s a story that doesn’t need to happen. And that’s a story that doesn’t need to happen. And that’s a story that doesn’t need to happen.

So this afternoon, at different times, you just might check in. Where am I in the daydream? Am I in a positive daydream? Our challenging daydreams hold our fear images or our deprecation images. The positive daydream holds the possibilities and the healing images. Where am I spending the most time? The daydream sets up the matrix for the self-fulfilling prophecy. You can think about all the time that you have wanted to manifest something and how much energy you put towards that; consciously or unconsciously. Images of healing or images of fear carry a magnetic field for possibilities of manifestation.

My life’s work has really been as a sleuth or a detective looking for the points of unity in all the different cultures. Even when I was a small girl, I collected dolls from around the world and would line them up at the end of my bed. I would have a language for each one of them and would be talking to them about what they were learning in their culture at this time. I’d spend hours making up these languages, and the only gift I ever really wanted was a doll from another land. It’s interesting how that played out ultimately in my own life’s calling and journey, that interest in different languages and different peoples of the world and being raised bi-culturally. The other thing that I have found through my bi-cultural experiences, is that all people have a language beyond their languages, and could understand each other even though they did not understand each other’s language. This fascinated me and I went exploring in the last two months around another universal experience that we’re having as humans.

Besides all human beings wanting to be loved and to be happy, all humans are here to learn about love and to express love and to create. But all human beings have the same desire for connection and freedom. Everyone wants to feel connected and included. The two universal primal fears that we have are the fear of entrapment or the fear of abandonment or loss. The frightening things we do when we’re afraid, and if I have the fear of loss or abandonment I will entrap or limit, restrict, or restrain. If I have the fear of being entrapped or limited or restricted or restrained, I will abandon, and when I am terrified I’ll probably do both as fast as I can. The frightening things that we do when we are afraid. How do I befriend fear? Fear’s whole function is to constrict energy, that’s all it does. I love that among the Masai when they teach their children about facing the unknown or something that they’ve never experienced before, they have a hand movement that goes like this. What that is – is; shorthand for “When you’re facing the unknown it’s time to get larger, go deeper, not smaller. Larger go deeper, not smaller.” So when we’re facing uncertainty we get larger, go deeper, not smaller. Larger, go deeper, not smaller.

Look at the spirit of aliveness that is generated by hand movement. Indigenous people always use the hands for imprinting sound, sonics, and concepts. And that’s a healing story, and that’s a story that doesn’t need to happen. Notice what happens to the voice, the voice is used for induction and imprinting. When we face the unknown we do what? We get larger, we go deeper, not smaller. We get larger, we go deeper, not smaller. Oh yeah! Oh yeah! Oh yeah! The first percussion instruments besides our own voice are our hands. Our voice is the first musical instrument. If we were to record every voice in this room on a sonogram each one of us would have it’s own unique pattern. I think that’s awesome. Even with identical twins, they have different patterns in their voice. Nowhere else duplicated in the world. Recent research has shown that the sound of our own voice strengthens the immune system, especially if we will spend at least 15 minutes a day singing or chanting.

The four forms that all cultures use to enliven the human spirit are singing, dancing, storytelling, and silence. The four portals for uplifting the human spirit. There’s not a culture in the world that doesn’t sing, or have music. There’s not a culture in the world that doesn’t have sports or dance; the body wants to move. And there’s not a culture in the world that doesn’t have the art and craft of storytelling. Storytelling is the oldest healing teaching in the world. There’s not a culture in the world that doesn’t recognize that in the sweet territory of silence we touch an unexplainable mystery, a wordless mystery. If you ever go to a Shaman, a medicine person, or a holy person among tribal peoples of the world, especially of this continent of North America and Central America, they will ask you one of four questions if you are disheartened and dispirited. They will say, “When did you stop singing? When did you stop dancing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories, particularly your story? And when did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence?” Wherever we stop singing, wherever we stop dancing or moving our bodies, wherever we stop being enchanted by stories, our own story, or wherever we lose comfort in silence is where we begin to experience loss of spirit.

It’s so important that we don’t lose our connection to what uplifts the human spirit. It should be a primal part of education. To evoke memory and the imagination at an authentic level. I love the word authenticity. It comes from authicos, authos. Which is self, and thesos is work. Self-work.

I love that the word “invention” really, when you look at the etymology of it, means, “to find a way.” We are in a time in history where our creativity is being called forward, the fire that takes no wood, to reinvent, or to remember, or to re-imagine, what the heart of true education truly is and to bring that back in. The other connection besides love and creativity and connection and freedom that I’ve been taking a look at is “not knowing” and “revelation.” I love not knowing or embracing and befriending uncertainty, and anything new. It always takes me to the path of revelation. Something is going to be revealed. Something that I don’t know, that’s been incubating for a long time inside, is going to emerge and reveal itself.

Children love surprises and I love that Peter brought in the element of surprise this morning as well, because surprise and laughter are two teachers that will reveal to me where I’m still flexible. If I don’t think it’s very funny anymore, I’ve lost my sense of humor. It’s good to track where I’ve lost my sense of humor because it shows me where my attachments are. How do I handle surprise? Adults have a tendency not to handle surprise so well. It’s that deadly question, “How did this happen? Who is responsible for this?” We can count on surprise. I love that the Inuit people say, “There are really two plans to every day. There’s my plan, and there’s the mystery’s plan.” When we get too attached to our plan, the mystery brings us a surprise. Or the unexpected. You can count on a surprise and the unexpected every day. Children approach life with “I wonder what’s going to happen today”, “I wonder what’s going to happen next!” When a surprise happens they have two responses. They go Ahhhh! Or they burst into giggles. They cover their mouth and they just giggle. Adults… stunned horror. What’s my response to surprise? How flexible am I? Surprise and humor show us where we are still flexible and resilient, or not, in how we respond.

I would like to take us through a process of uncertainty and revelation to experience them both at the same time. This exercise will take us into a conversation about discovery and feelings regarding such situations as excitement, illness, love, fear, masculine, feminine, anger, and peace (a drawing exercise using only straight lines and curved lines––creating eight abstract portraitures without creating forms). Angeles concluded the morning session working with click sticks, and how they are universally used as a self-management tool.

Day Two – Robert Inchausti

Peter Block: So Larry agreed to have some comments and reflections on the morning. I’m having a great time right now anticipating what he’s going to say even though he’s a little irritated with me for setting him up like this.

Robert: Well, when he asked me if I’d say something I felt like I was the emperor’s puppy. One way you get to join the emperor’s elite crew is to publish a book or have a big presence on the web, so I snuck into the court I guess. One of the things that Peter did this morning that I thought was really a contribution, was the humor that he added. It was not hostile humor. It was very funny, and very thought-provoking. So I thought my contribution would be to tell a few jokes in the spirit of the inquiry.

Mother Teresa’s name came up and I have some interesting experiences with people that knew Mother Teresa personally. I thought I’d share them with you because I think this group would appreciate it. I don’t know if any of you know this Tony Robbins, he’s like a self-help guru. I don’t know if he actually works for the empire, but he’s the empire’s golden boy, and Mother Teresa, as you know from her journals, was experiencing some depression in the later parts of her life, and they invited Tom Robbins to Mother Teresa’s house of charity in India to give a pep talk and to maybe get the nuns all into a more a more effective organization. This is Mother Teresa as CEO. IN this interview with Tony Robbins the interviewer said, “I’ve heard you worked with Mother Teresa” and he said, “yes” and they asked “Well what did you say to her” and he says, “Well I said to her what I say to everyone: ‘What turns you on? What excites you and makes you wanna work just ‘till you drop? What is it?” Mother Teresa said “the look on the face of a dying man or woman when they go to their creator knowing they are loved.” And Tony Robbins said “I can’t work with that…I need something a little bit more positive. (laughter) She was the only one I couldn’t really get to.” So I thought that was interesting that Mother Teresa was, what would you call that, irredeemable until the end.

The other story was, and this one should probably stay, but I’ll change the names so it won’t offend. I knew this priest that was one of Mother Teresa’s confessors and he wouldn’t tell me exactly, you know they can’t tell you what they say in confession. He was a priest that worked on a reservation in New Mexico with Indians and poverty stricken people, and one of the things they gave him was a little corn kernel as a gift because he had to leave that reservation. He had the corn kernel with him when he was called. Mother Teresa was dying, and they called him to come to take her confession. He really tells this story better than I do.

He was driving to San Francisco airport as fast as he could so he could get a plane to India before she died and all the cars were in the way. He was praying to Mother Teresa, and all the cars were opening up for him. It was like this miraculous thing, and he found a parking spot and he got there, and made it to India and he was with her at the end of her life. When she finally died she was in this little casket and everybody left. They said, “father you can go in and give her a last blessing” and he had the little native American corn, so he threw it in her casket and we’re the only ones who know that. I often thought that was such a wonderful gesture because, you know, what if it grows? You know, these saints, after they die, you know miraculous things…What if there is somewhere in Mother Teresa’s grave a Mayan corn stalk just coming out of her chest? That would be a wonderful image for 21^st century religiosity? Mayan connection.

Then one more story and I’ll leave you because I could talk like Peter. I’m a kindred spirit with him that way. This summer I’m taking care of my wife’s 98 year old father, and I was really not looking forward to this, because you just sit in a room and you help him go to the restroom then you help him go back and he’s got a memory of about four minutes so he’ll begin again every three minutes. It’s like living with the Buddha.

It turned out to be this wonderful experience because I’m sitting there writing or reading and he’ll say “beautiful day!” and I’ll say “Yeah…” “Beautiful day!” and he’s just like always in the present moment and he’s the most peaceful human being you could be around. It was a good example of community versus empire logic, because he really isn’t doing anything other than being, but his being is so generous and pleasant, that it’s an inspiration. I don’t think I could write around a lot of busy people or in a big room, but this guy is just great. And then the idea that every three minutes you start all over. Totally forgiving.

I was taking him over to where my wife works and I was late, and of course, I’m moving opposite from his time which is like negative 500 miles an hour to business time. “I gotta get there by 1:00pm.” So, I leave my cell phone and my wallet on the top of the car. We’re driving down the freeway and I look in the rear-view mirror and there goes my cell phone and then there goes my wallet and it’s spread all over the road. I’m freaking out, “We gotta pull over, I gotta get my wallet and my cell phone.” “Fine,” he says, “we got all day.” If it was anyone else they would have said “Wait, wait! You’re gonna get hit by a semi! No, no don’t be running around the high way,” and he would just say, “You get hit by a car, I’ll call my daughter, she’ll come get me.” So there are treasures in that world. I was dreading it and it turned out to be this wonderful thing at least for right now because I know that other things happen later.

Those are just a couple of stories from Peter’s invitation to us, to share and to find the ironies and the humor in the experience. Thank you.

Vulnerable Leadership

Ward: Welcome, Everybody, to our third day, which is classically, the Return. We have the Call, the Journey, the Return which is the process of witnessing and being witnessed. What I and witnessing or noticing concerns something that I think is very hard to attain. It has been hard for me to attain in the classroom, but something that I notice is very present in this gathering, in this community, and that is the act of vulnerable leadership.

Angeles Arrien and Peter Block

In the Stone Soup metaphor when people bring that magic stone of their question, they’re bringing their vulnerability into the public space, and that makes room for everybody else’s gifts to show up, and for their humanity to show up. It was something that never really occurred to me in. In all my models of leadership growing up it was about having answers and being invulnerable, being right. My peers will tell you that that has been a long struggle in my life; the need to be right. It does clear the room, and it’s isolating, but nonetheless, addicting. (laughter) Yeah, I’m still not over it, but I’m in the struggle.

Vivian: It’s not going to get any better. (laughter) Declare victory.

Ward: I think we heard that from Peter, earlier, so I’ve actually quit working on myself.

Vivian: What’s the point?

Ward: Yes I’m no longer a fixer-upper, you have to take me as I am.

The act of placing that vulnerability in the center of the room to be seen, and I have to say, I have to credit Peter. From you I learned that when you lead with your vulnerability, you create trust, a ‘pipeline of engagement,’ and once that trust is established, the genius comes through. Because once there is that vulnerability of who I am as a human being meeting who you are as a human, and being in the space of our not knowing together, then the genius that is each of us shows up. And that creates a learning field like no other. This is just a brief commentary on what I feel and see in this room, that the genius has shown up through the vulnerability of not knowing. We avoid speeches, we avoid the experts, we avoid the knowing, and when we show up in that not knowing, that’s when I think we are most intelligent, we are most human. I wonder why vulnerability is not a subject, why vulnerability is not a practice. I think we have gifted teachers in this room, of all ages because people have shown up as who they are and in their vulnerability, and that is deeply inspiring and the source of great learning.

Angeles, and Peter, and Vivian and all of you; some people have this capacity to name it in a way that we understand it in ways we didn’t understand it before. I was talking to Kelly this morning about the South Africa trip, and she said “I don’t know if what I’m experiencing with the kids in their Return is something that germinated or came into being on the trip, or was already there.” I think the answer is it was already there. And the experiences that get created by our journey reminds us of the capacities that are already there.

I learned that from you, Angeles. We had a conversation one day, and I said “What’s up for you?” and you said, “I’m trying to create learning experiences, and to stop teaching.”

The gift here is that we all naturally showed up as that. That’s who we are. That’s probably why we are here and I just want to express my appreciation to everybody in the room for demonstrating such great teaching skills thought your willingness to be vulnerable.

Facilitated by Peter Block and Angeles Arrien

Fishbowl Design

The final gathering of Chautauqua 2011 was to bring the 10 students who were attending together in the center in what is sometimes called a “fishbowl.” This is where a small group is witnessed in conversation by the larger group that sits outside the circle.

Peter had the rest of the participants choose one of the students in particular to witness so each student had a support group of four or five participants. Then the students sat in a circle with Angeles and Peter and the following discussion took place. When the first part of the discussion was complete, each of the students sat with their support group to discuss the process, and then reflected back to the large group what the experience meant to them.

Student Fishbowl

Peter Block: So now we have the small question of what’s the purpose of this conversation? Angeles do you want to say something to that?

Angeles Arrien: One of the things that I think that would be wonderful for all of us to hear is, in coming to this Chautauqua, what have you learned, or what motivated you to come? And, how have you found it at this time? I know many of you’ve had this really deep experience in South Africa, and it’s still working you. You’re still being shaped, and re-shaped by that experience.

I know when Nelson Mandela was involved in the Truth and Reconciliation process, he asked the entire townships of South Africa to say this three line invocation every single day; said, “Let us take care of the children, for they have a long way to go.” That was the first line. The second line, “Let us take care of the elders, for they have come a long way.” The third and last line, “And let us take care of those in-between, for they are doing the work.” And this whole collective here is in those places. We have, “Let us take care of the children, for they have a long way to go.” Which we have the holy privilege of really hearing and listening to you today about your experience and what’s deeply working you and shaping you as a result of that trip, and also as a result of being here, as a part of the return. For those of us who are elders, we’ve come a long way, and still we continue to learn, from you. You are our hope. And for those in-between, for they are doing the work, and there is such learning in that work. So I’m so excited to hear what you have to say; and to learn from you.

Peter Block: What this is not, is a discussion of the trip. Otherwise, you’re living in the past. The trip was over, it was wonderful, it was well documented, and in addition, reports are always boring. Except to the reporter, and their immediate family. So I think, you said this beautifully, but what’s the experience you’re having being here today? So let’s just see if there’s something you came to say, and then I’ve got some specific questions to help. Sorry for putting you one the spot, but that’s the way it works.

McKenzie Caborn: I’ll just say a short thing about Africa. In Africa, one of the biggest lessons I think that I learned was, it’s not about going there to take care of people, or to help them, per say, it’s about going there and offering a support system for which they can take care of themselves; and just going with an open heart and loving them for exactly where they are at that moment. Coming back here, I’ve been longing for the same opportunity, and I think Chautauqua – has embodied that concept, because we all come here, we’re at different stages of our lives, and we’re all just embracing and open to new discoveries, and the unknown, and helping each other figure it out together. I don’t think anybody has come here from a place of authority, or coming here to help others, it’s just coming here to listen and provide a support system, which we can all take care of ourselves.

Peter Block: Do you think you’ve been able to support or help others in these two days?

McKenzie Caborn: I hope so. I think I offer a new perspective, being in a different stage in my life than a lot of people here.

Peter Block: Thank you for starting McKenzie. Let’s not go around the room because that’s tyrannical.

Mari Fox: The Chautauqua just holds a really special place in my heart because, in addition to how I feel while I’m at Mount Madonna, I just feel really accepted. I’m a part of the community despite the fact that I’m younger than most of the people here. I also just feel responsibility in being here; that I’m taking responsibility for my own education and being here with so many great educators, and people who are genuinely concerned with how education affects our lives and your lives. It’s an amazing experience to be able to hear from people who are, in general, authority figures in my life and to see them as humans and to see them as active members of my education; not just as my teachers, but my support system, my community, my friends, and to see you all in a very human level is refreshing. It allows me to come in and look at education in a very different way. I hope that you guys can all take this and bring these feelings to other students, and I have confidence that you can. I really appreciate everybody here and the Chautauqua in general: it’s a very important week in my life every summer. So thank you.

Taylor Krilanovich: There are a lot of educators in this room, and I know it’s unusual for students to attend an educational conference; it’s kind of out of the ordinary. But it was really touching to see their interest in what helps us; again, it’s like McKenzie was saying, they’re willing to help us create a system that works, and really gives us what we need. And I really appreciate their concern for us.

Lulu Haltom: In South Africa, everyone – everywhere we went, I felt like I was coming home, like I was part of their family. So coming back to California, I’ve had kind of a hard time, because everyone here relates to each other so differently; and instead of going up and hugging someone, it’s more normal to sort of make eye contact, and give a handshake. So I’ve had a hard to relating to people, I guess, here. And coming to Chautauqua has felt like coming home, because everyone here so quickly becomes a community, and so it’s really refreshing to feel that again.

Blythe Collier: I think, last year I came to Chautauqua, with no idea what to expect. I thought, “ok people are telling me it’ll be a good thing for me, so I’ll go.” I went, and I was going into junior year, and I was nervous about that; but the community here and the humanizing that Mari talked about, I think it gave me confidence and independence that I didn’t have before. And it taught me how to be self-sufficient, I think in a way. But at the same time, I guess it’s kind of a paradox because it also taught me about the community and relying on the community. This whole year I’ve seen the barriers between like, this is your teacher, this is the student, and this is the wall – that’s not there. I felt like it was ok that I looked at teachers as friends and mentors, because for me, a mentor and a teacher, they should go hand in hand. I think often, well I’ve never been to another school, but I think sometimes they don’t go hand in hand. I think a mentor is the emotional teacher, and then the teacher teaches you the facts, so I’ve learned so much more being able to have emotional teachers who are also my teachers. And coming back to Chautauqua has re-established that, and just confirmed it.

Angeles Arrien: Well thank you.

Robert Inchausti

Amber Leigh: So I talked with SN (Ward) a little bit about this a few weeks ago, and yesterday I talked about the connection I felt to other people. Throughout yesterday and then today, and thinking about it last night, I realized the other person that I felt the connection to, was myself. I found the connection between my heart, and my mind, and my gut, through the vulnerability of expressing myself and my imperfections to other people. Through that connection and bond, I found myself in a wholeness that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before. I feel like I’ve come into myself through this experience, and through other people. And I’m really thankful for that opportunity, because it’s something that I feel like – I hear people talk about and people strive for it. And it’s a physical experience. I physically feel it in myself, as well as emotionally. And that’s really what I’ve taken out of this whole experience, is connection to other people and through that, to myself.

Quincy Mitchell: Well, in SN’s (Ward’s) value’s class, it’s usually the last five minutes of class, and the first twenty minutes of lunch that we spend doing our sharing of what struck us and what we’ve learned that day. And usually in that time period is usually when people are the most annoyed; people talking, they just want to go to lunch, and whenever the next person talks, people get more mad cause they’re getting hungry. (laughter) So it’s usually been hard to feel that what we share is sort of appreciated, and I think what I’ve really liked about going to Chautauqua is, you can share your thoughts, and people actually take it for what it is, rather than a delaying of lunch.

Amita Kuttner: Well, I came here yesterday, this is my first time. I had no expectation. I had heard it would be a wonderful experience; but I had no idea what would be said, but I thought it would be beautiful, and it turned out to be more beautiful than I could have imagined. The things about land, and elders, and looking after all of that, and the children, has just reinforced something within myself that I found really important. As well as the reverence and the irreverence of everybody who speaks, has been great. And I think I was driven to come because I’m devoted to learning, because I don’t see any other reason to be here, other than to learn from everything. I’ve realized, I did not always believe this, but I realize, that in order to learn, you must first admit that you do not know. And in the subjects that I study – I study science – you can’t think that you know. You always have to say, “I don’t know. And that’s alright.” And then you can proceed. So, thank you.

Peter Block: When you said, learning is the reason I’m here, you mean that’s the reason you’re on earth?

Palak Bhatnagar: What Amita said, for me it’s also about learning. But I’ve always gotten the sense, at least at school, yea it’s about learning to get somewhere in life, but I think Chautauqua really enforces the fact that the most important thing is learning about yourself and who you are. And last year I came here, never had taken SN’s  (Wards’) class, which is similar to this in many ways, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, and having that first experience, and now – still not really knowing what I was getting myself into coming here, and just the whole Africa experience, trying to figure out what I want to do. People telling me I should know, society telling me it’s not ok that at this age that I don’t know what I want to do. I’ve just – I was talking to SN (Ward) and Dr. Nicole about this, that I’ve always thought, when I get older, I’ll have it all figured out, I know I’ll get there. But I guess coming here, everyone here telling me, “Oh, I don’t have it figured out.” It freaks me out, because it’s my time to figure it out, and you don’t know. I think it freaks me out, but also makes me feel confident, because you guys are doing fine, and not everyone knows what they want to do, so everybody is ok.

Peter Block: So, I thought of a question, and the question would be: What is it that you think we don’t understand about you? What don’t we as adults, get about you?

Taylor Krilanovich: I think that they don’t get how much we change from day to day. Cause this is the most fluid time of our lives, and I think we do – some of us learn something new everyday, and a lot of it – a life changing experience is very easy to come by at this age, I think. So I think they kind of are constantly amazed at how much we’ve changed-

Peter Block: Surprised, disappointed…

Taylor Krilanovich: Because it’s so internalized, I guess, we don’t carry it as close to the surface as we think we do. But we definitely do change more than you guys know.

Peter Block: Hard to keep up with, for us.

Palak Bhatnagar: Adding to what she said, about changing everyday – personally, I definitely don’t like getting told what to do. But the other opposite of that is, being in an ocean, and not having any boundaries. For me, that’s just as bad as being told what to do, because I feel like I’m so clueless, and I don’t have a sense of direction, that I think that the older generation sometimes feel that they should let us just figure out on your own, it’s like, “Ok, do whatever you want.” And the other half of that is, “No, you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re too young, and this is what you need to do; blah, blah, blah.” But I think it’s finding that balance of guiding us, without telling us what to do, but also not leaving us so clueless, because we do depend on you guys to, in a sense, know what you’re doing – even if you don’t.

Peter Block: We’re good at faking it. It’s what works.

Student Fishbowl

Blythe Collier: Actually, when you asked that question, I remembered in South Africa, I think it was our first day there, at Novalis, we had this exact discussion, talking to adults and children – talking to each other about this exact topic, and about the generations, and thinking about is there a divide between generations? At first, I was like, “Yea, yea, adults don’t understand us. They can’t remember what it’s like.” Then a classmate said something that struck me and I’m kind of channeling more what she said, than what I said, because what I said then is not what I think anymore; she said, “Adults were children once, and that they do understand us.” And one thing that I think goes along with that, is, adults have been  children, but we’ve never been adults. And I think that that’s the difference, and that’s were the miscommunication comes; adults have seen both sides, so they maybe know things, or have memories and can connect them. But we can’t connect our memories now of what it’s like to be an adult, and that’s where I think the divide sometimes shows up.

Mari Fox: I feel like adults really feel like they need to emanate the sense of perfection and just uphold it at any cost, and for us, we need that vulnerability, because when we’re looking at out mentors, and our teachers, and our parents, and in this case, our friends, upholding this sense of perfection, we feel like we need to copy it. And it’s a lot of pressure to have, and if feel like it really disrupts, in a lot of ways, the process of learning because we’re not focusing on what we actually need to know, but rather, we’re focusing on mimicking your false sense of perfection.

Peter Block: Pretty much wraps it up. Thank you. That was beautifully said.

Amita Kuttner: I think that many adults don’t know that we know that you’re still children inside, and you still like to play, and that we would be perfectly happy to play with you.

Peter Block: Thank you. Thanks for the invitation. Here comes Quincy – What’s it like being the only guy in the circle? Don’t you get tired of that?

Quincy Mitchell: No. I think something adults don’t understand about us, is that we don’t respond at all well to getting put down when we’ve made mistakes. Like we don’t have any motivation for self-improvement when we get shut down. I think we’re already aware when we’re bringing home a bad report card, that we’ve messed up. And sort of getting shouted at into the night about it, doesn’t make us feel any better about trying to improve it. That’s always something that comes up in my life. And I don’t get any desire or motivation to improve, when I get shut down for any efforts that I’ve made.

Lulu Haltom: I think that because it’s such a time of change for us, that a lot of times adults don’t really take seriously our dreams, or our goals, because they think everything is changing – and everything is changing, but I don’t think that means that our dreams are any less potent. And for me, I love to sing, and dance, and do theatre. And I was always told that that’s not a good career path for you and that you shouldn’t do that. And so I just kind of shut down that dream. And I think just realizing, that even though we are constantly changing, our dreams are still very important to us.

Peter Block: So, how about if we take a break now? Am I shutting anybody off who wants to say anything? No? Ok. Because the idea that everybody has to say something means that the last three people are lying, because they’re just trying to get this over with. So it’s nice that some of you haven’t said anything. So how about you meet with those who are standing behind you, and have whatever conversation seems rich for you, and we’ll come back in about eight minutes. Ok? So let’s do that now. Take a break. So any reflection you have, especially on the experience we’ve had together this morning, that would be wonderful to hear what it meant to you, or any challenges it presents to you?

After the Break

Amber Leigh: One of the first things that struck me is, through the structure of Chautauqua, I don’t get much of a chance to listen to my fellow students speak, because we’re often in groups with adults getting to know people who we’ve never met before. But to hear the people I do know, speak with such heart and beauty, was really touching for me, because I know you all, and I speak to you all everyday. But there’s something different about what happens here at Chautauqua, and what that brings out in you. And I love you all infinitely, but at the same time, it made me realize the amount of respect I have for you. And it just makes me love you guys even more – if that’s possible… And then also, when I was back in my group of supporters – supporters is just a perfect word, because even just as I’m speaking now, and I look around, I feel the support of every single person in this room. And that is such an incredibly unique experience, to truly feel complete and utter support and love from people you met two days ago. Thank you all, so much.

Blythe Collier: For me, I made a realization or discovery while talking to my group, that I tend to journal out loud, where I just think out loud, and analyze myself, and sort things out while talking to people. My friends have put up with me, not making any sense, and they just listen to me. And I wanted to thank my group for asking me so many questions that I hadn’t asked myself yet, and giving me the time to sit there, a little bit confused, thinking about it before answering, and then truly listening and letting me discover, and feeling like my discovery was worth something.

Peter Block: Anybody else like to say something?

Taylor Krilanovich: Describing this school to people is so difficult. But having people from the outside come to an event like this that is the quintessential essence of everything I love about Mt. Madonna, is really refreshing, because you finally are able to show people what this school is about, and why we love it. Because you really can’t appreciate it until you’ve experience it. And I love that you all have gotten to experience it.

Peter Block: Any final one or two? Don’t feel pressured. Quincy wants to say something? Let him go last. It’ll make him feel better.

McKenzie Caborn: Yea, he always finishes the show.

Peter Block: He’s in heaven right now. So let him enjoy it.

McKenzie Caborn: I just want to echo my appreciation for everybody standing in this room, because I think sometimes with adults – it’s a great intention that they want to hear children speak, but sometimes they don’t really listen to what we’re saying. They’re just appreciating that children are courageous to speak in front of adults. And when I got into my group, and Sampad told me how much what I had said, that specifically what I had said, touched him, and he knew the meaning behind my words. I think it just shows that you guys see us as people, and not just children, and I’m very, very grateful for that.

Quincy Mitchell: Lhadron asked me a really a good question when we were in our group over here: she asked me where I get the drive to participate in things when I’m the only guy student in the circle, and other things where I’m sort of unique and alone in what I’m doing, and how I get my motivation to do stuff like that. I think it goes to a bigger question in education, like in a better way to motivate students, is rather than condemning their failures, but asking them what drives them to succeed, sort of focusing on that drive.

Peter Block: Well said. Angeles any final thoughts you had?

Angeles Arrien: No, except thank you, very much. Thank you.

Peter Block: God bless us all, and let’s take a little break.

Peter Block

Angeles Arrien Response

“For the past seven years Chautauqua at Mount Madonna has been a gathering place for teachers, leaders, innovative business owners, healthcare professionals, parents and students to learn and grow from and with each other. It is a circle of engagement, which evokes the best of people’s gifts and talents to be shared. Each year in a fishbowl context, the students of Mount Madonna remind us how inspirational and important value-centered learning is. In this enriched learning environment which includes the integration of art, music, and reflection in small and large group interactions, we become a community to explore what matters most to us, and leave renewed and filled with possibilities and perspectives of how we can evoke the best in each other in all circumstances. Through Ward’s ingenuity, vision, leadership, and acute discernment, he extends annual invitations to explore different themes from diverse perspectives, that always ignite meaningful conversations which inspire creative application in different contexts that are important in our lives!” — Angeles Arrien

Peter Block Response

This gathering is notable for its humanity and egalitarian nature. It is as much about neighborliness as anything else. It is not about education, it is education. Learning from collage, music, thought and questions are the pedagogy. I attend because of the quality of the human beings in the room. The program features Ward who convenes and holds the intention, Larry brings an intimate literary instinct, Angeles the mysteries, Vivian a little facilitative wildness, Bob and Shantam the genius of chord progression and the breath in a song. We glimpsed the real thoughts of our mostly grown children, no small feat. The lesson is that education reform is in our hands. It is not about curriculum, or planning, or master teachers, or measurement. It is only about replacing performance with humanity and valuing relationship over competition.  I was driving in the suburbs today and saw the signage for Blue Ash, Ohio. It displayed the name of the town and the tag line underneath was “Aspire, Achieve, and Advance.” This shamelessly names the materialistic and divisive intention of the modern American classroom. The Chautauqua gives form to the original American Possibility of aliveness, freedom and the experience of joy. — Peter Block

Robert (Larry) Inchausti

Robert Inchausti Response

The Chautauqua convinced me of two things that have been rattling around in my head for several years, but for some reason, I never had the words or the confidence to accept. Now that I’ve seen these ideas confirmed publicly by Peter Block and Ward, and Angeles and Bruce, and Cheney and Amber and Vivian and Quincy and Bob and Susan (and others too numerous to mention), I can at last own up to my own beliefs.

The first is that the era of performance (or shtick) is over.  No one wants or needs to be preached to again, explained to themselves, or given answers to their problems by some “higher” (more famous or more ideologically driven) human being. We are either all in this together– working out our shared destiny in fear and trembling and with mutual regard—or we are forcing our own conclusions, agendas or projects upon others in order to shore up some weak image of ourselves.

We went through a time in the sixties and seventies when there was a flood of innovative thinkers and teachers and visionaries. I’ve even written books about these folks. But in retrospect, these intellectual stars and cultural divas were a bit over-indulged, and so their imaginations became a bit excessively self-referential as the century moved to its close.

I am thinking of counter-cultural heroes like Ivan Illich, Marshall McLuhan, Muhammad Ali, Norman O. Brown, Allen Ginsberg and Maya Angelou—charismatic souls who eventually disappeared into their own untethered ideas of themselves, and by so doing bred a kind of cult of personal vision and celebrity that infected the entire culture with a desire of “hold forth.”   Perhaps, the reason the internet evolved into a tool for narcissism and self-promotion has more to do with this aspect of our culture than the nature of the technology itself. Everyone is peddling an answer, a shtick, a REVOLUTION of one stripe or another. But—and here is the thing I learned at the Chautauqua– everyone knows these programs are bogus, boring, insincere self-promotions.

The era of the guru is over, and systems for world change (or conquest) a dime a dozen.  None of them can work because once you freeze creative perception into a idea, you become—to borrow an elegant phrase from Norman Mailer—”the rhetorical equivalent of a bugger on his victim.” Perhaps this is why we hate politicians who are constantly repeating themselves, and why –when Maya Angelou started her own line of greeting cards for Hallmark titled “The Wisdom Collection”—our collective stomachs turned all at the same time.

Indeed the entire mass media — from publishing houses to radio stations—have become the weapons for attention getting know-it-alls hoping to colonize our minds with their images and ideas. For thinking people, television is no longer a wasteland but a form of Crime Watch where cultural predators assault their victims in full view of entire neighborhood making all of us complicit in their crimes. And the new media (Twitter et al.) haven’t under mind these manipulations at all, so much as invited us all to participate in them on an unequal footing—each Tweeter believing the false promise that, perhaps, they too can manipulate the masses in some self-interested way if they only become one of the manipulators.

So I guess my first revelation was that the jig up is up, that shtick has been called out, and that the cultural task at hand is not to “get an audience” for one’s ideas or “market” one’s programs, expertise or cause, but rather to let the performance driven society with its gurus and celebrities die a peaceful death through non-participation in its inanities.(Although I still reserve the right to watch Celebrity Rehab as a form of anthropological research!) I know now with a new surety that I  have only to turn my attention away from the Society of the Spectacle to defeat it. This is far easier than organizing a movement against movements on Facebook or becoming an anti-celebrity celebrity–which has taken a huge load off my mind!

The second insight was more personal: namely, that what motivates our best work is love—not in the abstract—but in the feeling of it—the emotional experience of love—and that if I am not actually feeling positive regard, love, trust, or admiration for my students, I am probably not doing them (or myself) any real good.  The value of Being—expressed better by the poor children in South Africa better than the moneyed elites—is universally available at all times to all people through love, generosity, trust and selfless presence. And that this is not an intellectual achievement but an act of the heart to which I must come back to again and again.

These two insights also helped me to understand why I was so taken by Leonard Cohen’s little essay “How to Speak Poetry” warning writers not to create works or false personas through which to extract the admiration of others.  Here is a short excerpt:

“What is the expression which the age demands? The age demands no expression whatever. We have seen photographs of bereaved Asian mothers. We are not interested in the agony of your fumbled organs. There is nothing you can show on your face that can match the horror of this time. Do not even try You will only hold yourself up to the scorn of those who have felt things deeply. We have seen newsreels of humans in the extremities of pain and dislocation. Everyone knows you are eating well and are even being paid to stand up there. You are playing to people who have experienced a catastrophe. This should make you very quiet. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Everyone knows you are in pain. You cannot tell the audience everything you know about love in every line of love you speak Step aside and they will know what you know because they know it already. You have nothing to teach them. You are not more beautiful than they are. You are not wiser. Do not shout at them. Do not force a dry entry. That is bad sex, if you show the lines of your genitals, then deliver what you promise. And remember that people do not really want an acrobat in bed. What is our need? To be close to the natural man, to be close to the natural woman. Do not pretend that you are a beloved singer with a vast loyal audience which has followed the ups and downs of your life to this very moment The bombs, flame-throwers, and all the shit have destroyed more than just the trees and villages. They have also destroyed the stage. Did you think that your profession would escape the general destruction? There is no more stage. There are no more footlights. You are among the people. Then be modest. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Be by yourself. Be in your own room. Do not put yourself on….Do not work the audience for gasps and sighs. If you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. It will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. It will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence. Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired, You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty.”

When I first read them, these words spoke to me, but I didn’t really understand how important they were until I experienced their meaning in operation first hand at the Chautauqua where the traps of knowing, expertise, helping, and being in-the-know were exposed as the very things systematically distorting our lives, politics, communication systems, and souls. And once I saw this, I knew immediately—once again– that I had to change my life. — Robert Larry Inchausti

Taylor Krilanovich

Joel Kauffman Response

I spent a few days recently at an Education Retreat that was at a center where we installed solar.  Amazing group of people that have built a community and school.  I was one of a few non educators there but every topic translated to business perfectly.  I took away a few gems that I wanted to share with you because I do feel that they are transformative.

“If you lead with vulnerability, creativity and genius will follow” – this was a quote from Ward Mailliard, President and one of the founders, on the last day and it summed it up for me.  So often we make decisions and act like that is the word of God.  But none of us really know, we are all just trying our best.  If you lead with authority no one wants to be creative and risk being wrong.  But if instead you open with the possibility that you do not have all the answers and that genius can come from any of us, it is much more likely that it will.

The youth are wise and we should bring their creativity into our business and Gov’t.  One of the unique things about this conference is that there were kids there age 14-18.  There were many famous educators and authors but the most profound and honest thoughts came from a 14 year old girl.  It made me realize that we believe in our society that Wisdom is somehow gated by Age.  Meaning only the old can be wise.  This was so clearly not the case at the conference.  I thought of my own example.  Growing up in Santa Cruz and running a business at a relatively young age of 26 I was able to focus our business on what the community wanted because it was so obvious to me.  It was easy to succeed.  How can we bring the energy and wisdom of youth into our business?

- We need to create time in our business to allow for creative ideas to flow.  I have heard of many examples where companies shut down for two months of the year,  1 year out of 7, or give their employees one day a month to work on whatever they want.  In all these cases the company ends up profiting from the space they give their employees because they bring back ideas that add profit to the bottom line.  What can we do at our company to break from the endless grind that we are all a part of and allow creativity to flourish in our work place.
On this topic I just asked all the Marketing Coordinators to take wed off and do something they never have time to do in their life.  They are all extremely stressed, overworked, underpaid and thinking of leaving.  No chores, shopping or childcare, just by themselves.  At the end of the day everyone is going to spend an hour reflecting on their job and life.  I will let you know what comes out of it.

Hopefully these ideas resonate with you as much as they have with me.

Best
Joel Kauffman

Vice President of Marketing & Business Development
Real Goods Solar, Inc

Bob Caplan, Shantam Galuten

Shantam Galuten Response

When I was invited to participate in Chautauqua, I immediately said yes, without knowing anything about it, mostly because of the feeling I got being asked. You said to me, “hey, weirdo,” or something like that, and I felt your meaning. My father used to say, “The best gift you can give someone is your attention.” When you called me a weirdo, in your weird loving way, I felt seen. I remember asking you what Chautauqua is, but I don’t really remember your answer. I remember asking follow-up questions, but I don’t remember the answers to those either. I just remember hearing vague concepts and enticements. It seemed like the more I asked the less I knew what to ask. But now I get it. You were building mystery.

As I reflect back on the retreat, I am still filled with the feeling of mystery. Even after having gone through it with everyone, I have very little I can say about what it is. What I can say is that the mystery was present the whole time. It’s almost as if the goal of Chautauqua was to ground us in mystery, to learn how to harness it and keep it alive. I remember so much beautiful detail about what happened, but I would never choose to explain it in those terms. I know now, as you likely did when you first approached me about it, that it’s different every time. That’s what it’s about, I think. It’s about discovery.

I built some strong connections with a lot of new and wonderful people, and I learned a great deal about myself.

Thanks to everyone for your faith and encouragement, and for discovering me, and letting me discover you. I look forward to more.

Beth Riley Response

My days have been so enriched by our time together. As I reflect on the three days it was miles deep…an experience of Chiros and deep contact. I arrived somewhat exhausted and disillusioned with my work in Middle and High School and left feeling full-hearted and stronger in the conviction that took me into teaching some 30 years ago.  I was so inspired by Peter Block’s clarity and precision in vision and speech, Angeles playful spirit, Chenes’s open-heartedness and your kind and caring presence through it all. The kids completely surprised and delighted me. Larry’s stories were totally absorbing and refreshing. So much laughter and love was in the air. All this and yet, the most amazing thing that happened, was seeing myself, hearing my story and holding my gifts in a completely fresh way that truly build the “Self as Agency” possibility in the world. All of my life converged into a confluence of meaning and, now, action as I was seen and valued in my passion for the preservation of life. Thank you a thousand times. I very much look forward to the next round. — Beth

Wallace Boss Response

Attending this Chautauqua was absolutely the highlight of my year. There were new kindred spirits to undoubtedly have further rapport with. It was especially a blessing to have time with Peter Block, who I know has been an inspiration to you. I plan to look deeper into his work.

The grace of both your and Vivian’s creating space for thought and growth is truly singular in my experience. To cite a ‘for-instance’ in contrast: the DMBA Fellows program I participated in last year at the California College of the Arts was often on my mind during the Chautauqua. For all the talk last year about ‘best practices’, last week it was manifested with you and the rest. So again, thank you for a wonderful first of many Chautauqua’s on my part.

Further conversations about if and how I might offer ‘salon’ curricula to your students actually seems quite beside the point at this moment. This years Chautauqua has already informed my thinking in an important way and will influence how I carry on. Creating curricula with your class in mind will be a valuable exercise for me, whether or not it will actually be implemented with your students. Nonetheless, I will be writing out such a curricula in the next few days and I look forward to your feedback on it!  A FYI on where my head is at can be characterized by two of my new post-its: “creating the negative space where genius can appear” and being “an expert only in modeling process”. But I plan on getting the exact timing and exercises down on paper, to be sure.  –  Wallace

Full Mural

Close-Up 1

Close-Up 2

Close-Up 3

Click here for the full-resolution mural. (16.9MB – Right click and “Save As…” to save).

Michael’s Story of Return

Michael Jones: I want to share a few reflections on my own experience of “return.” I don’t know as an artist that I can think about the return without also thinking about place. We just experienced, in my sense, “a place making.” This is the opportunity to capture, to document, to bring forth, the images of the place, the stories or narrative of place that we have gathered through our time here. As an artist, I’m always playing from somewhere. Music is not abstract. It doesn’t come out of nowhere. It comes from somewhere. Almost any piece I play has a narrative. It has a story line, that is connected to where the music has come from.

That became apparent to me once when I came back to Toronto from having been at University for four years, studying music. I was going on to do graduate work at the University of Toronto. I also wanted to find some opportunity for a place where I might play. I knew that there was a dance theater not far away from where I lived in downtown Toronto based on the Martha Graham School in New York. And so I was curious. I thought I might go over and see if they would hire me part time, so I could at least have a piano that I could play because I lived in a small apartment and had nothing to practice on. I went up these stairs overtop of an auto body shop in Cumberland Avenue in downtown Toronto and saw this marvelous nine-foot concert grand piano and knew I’d found home.

Place, I think, also speaks to home. It is place that just feels right and natural – where we feel that  we belong.  In a sense it is like a reunion  – a  sense  that we’ve returned.  And I thought maybe at that moment just seeing that beautiful piano and the natural light coming in through those floor to ceiling windows that I had come home. And so I said “My name is Michael, I’m looking for work,” I was talking to Patricia, who was the director of the school, and I said, “I’m doing some graduate work at the University but I’d like to find some part-time work playing the piano. Would you have some work here.” She said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, one of our regulars just left for Vancouver. We have an opening; Amelia’s class is in need of a pianist. Could you come by tomorrow morning? Let’s just try it out. Be curious to see how this might work out for you.”

I went back to my apartment and as I thought about what I’d just committed to I got very nervous.  I realized I didn’t know how to play for dance.  I didn’t quite know what I’d gotten myself into. And so I gathered up all the sheet music I could find around my apartment and put it into a box. The next morning at nine-thirty I carried the box of music under my arm heading off to my first dance class.  I walked up the stairs again, settled in, put the box down just beside the piano. And Amelia said, “Welcome, Michael its wonderful to have you here. There are thirty dancers all warming up on the stretch bar,” and she said, “ I would like to begin with just some improvisational work to warm up. Could you play some music for us, please, that has the feeling of rain in it?”  I thought about my years t the conservatory where I had performed Beethoven Bach and Chopin.  I realized in all my years there I don’t think anybody ever taught me how to play rain. So already there was a limitation.

So I started sorting through the box, Looking for something, like maybe “raindrops falling on my head” or, something that I thought would get the spirit of what she was asking for. She could see I was in some difficulty, so she came over to the piano. It  turned out she was also a pianist, she came right up to the piano, sat down right beside me, and just very quickly, in the very upper notes,  played something very light and beautiful. And said, “Like this! ”  And then she went back to join the dancers, and I immediately put my hands, actually put my fingers in exactly the same note she had just played. And I started to do exactly what she had just done. I was really just trying to imitate something that she had  just shown me. And as I did that the dancers started moving out across the floor, doing these marvelous movements, like this, with the fluttering of hands, to give the impression of rain. And I was just, for a moment, just captured by what was beginning to happen around me.

I’d never had an experience before in my life where as I played – others were moving. And they through their movements, were beginning to suggest things that I might be able to do with my own hands as I began to move around the piano. It was a marvelous opening because I realized, one composer, whose music I love was Chopin. Chopin for me was a sense of home because when I entered into the feeling of touch, which was the language of Chopin’s music, it really opened up this whole language for me of touch, of the nuance, of how I could begin to shape and bend the notes rather than strike or force  them, so I could capture the subtle shadings of what it might be like to create this, kind of, whole, sound field of rain.  As I was doing that,  the dancers started to open up even more, feeling unto the  exploratory movements, and as they were doing that, I began to forget myself and move into these exploratory movements on the piano as well. I couldn’t tell; am I leading? Am I following? It was all happening all at one time. And, as I was becoming totally immersed in this and captured by the inspiration and the imagination of the moment, I heard Amelia call out and say, “Now play wind.”

In my own mind I’m saying, “I’m just getting good at rain.” But yet there was another stretch coming. So, she could see, once again, I was in difficulty, and to guide me  she began to demonstrate with her left arm something that conveyed the movement, the gesture of wind. And as I found that gesture in my playing I could imagine, I was feeling my own body captured in this. I realized to do what I was doing I really could not just play from my wrists or lower arms, which is commonly how you get trained as a pianist. I had to re-orient to play from my whole body. So the music was really coming, the sound of it, the sensation was coming from, really, the center of my back, through my shoulders. And  I took advantage of that to begin to get the movement of what wind might feel  like, in my left hand, creating a kind of ostinato l pattern that I thought might capture what she was suggesting. And as I did that the dancers started doing these marvelous grand movements across the whole floor, great leaps and so on. Well, of course, I just lost myself at that point, totally immersed in what they were doing. I was playing all eighty-eight keys, leaping from the base, to the treble and back to the base and doing these things as they were doing it and it was just a marvelous moment as this was happening not knowing if I was playing – or being played or leading or following when Amelia called out  to me  Thunder  -  Now, play  thunder.”

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And as soon as she said that, something just shifted in me. I realized this was not new. This was not a new experience for me entirely. I knew this world that she was speaking of, and she was drawing me back into it. For many of the formative years of my life I used to got to the YMCA camp in the Northern tip of Beusoleil Island, a windswept rock scape, which was in the near  wilderness of Central Ontario and the Georgian Bay wilderness waters.  These wonderful barren rockscapes, with jack pines bent to the winds offered a unique and marvelous interplay of light and water, and wind and rain, and I was totally captured by that world. That was really where I  really found, in a sense, what it felt like to ‘be played’ by the elements – to play not from the idea of rain but the feeling of it – and the feeling of wind and the light playing along the water’s surface.  I was there in a hot July afternoon, when the weather was really muggy and sticky, waiting and listening because those were the days that the storms would come. And, already, at some point in the afternoon, often around 3:30 or 4:00, I could actually hear the thunder, not as an auditory experience, but feel the vibration in the rock. It was like I could feel it underfoot before I could hear it. That was a signal for me. As soon as that sensation came, that first kind of very deep ominous rumble, that called me like a summons to the camp lodge, where they had this beautiful old upright piano. I’d open the screen wide so I could be there for the full unfolding of the storm.  I’d sit poised, ready for the storm to come. As the thunder amplified, I’d play to the thunder, and I’d play to the lightening, and I’d play to the rain. Now I’d be part of the whole enfoldment of the ferment that was happing  all around me. All the other campers would sit back in their cabins reading comic books and eating toffee but I’d be down there in the lodge. They’d go, “Jones, we’ve lost him,” but I was purely in my element. Somebody could have put me on a boat and sent me off to one of the other islands of Georgian bay, I would have been totally in bliss, I think, during those times.

I realized that, in a lot of ways, my return to music was also a return to Georgian Bay. At midlife, as I came back to music, when I was trying to find what is the music that really speaks to me? What is the music that most inspires and brings me to the center core of my being? It was the music of Georgian Bay, to capture all of the fullness of the impressions of wind and rain and thunder and the interplay of light the wind whispering through the pines – the stillness of the echoes of the loon calls at night  It was such a marvelous language to work from and it was such a marvelous place to play from.  Poet William Stafford once wrote, “I’m an alien in an alien world making myself a home.”  J.M. Coetzee, a wonderful South African writer, writes, “Where is home and how do we find our way there?” William Butler Yeats, when he was in London used to, when his friends would go back to Dublin, say, “Would you go out to this Sligo shore? Would you go out to the Sligo shore and would you bow sown and kiss the earth  and would  you go out there and get some mud and put the mud in a bottle and bring it home to me please? So I could taste the mud again of Sligo”

I think, in that sense, the return is never abstract. The return really, in a sense, is a reunion and coming home to oneself and to the world – is coming back to the place that we can think of as where we most belong not only as a place to return  but  also to grow out from – to discover Georgian Bay in other places later on – And so in that context  we can’t often return to home. Georgian Bay, if I went there now, is very different than it was then. So home is also, I think, a place from which we learn to love other places later on, so we can create other places perhaps in the world that we can also return to as a part of that experience of place.

Rilke wrote a beautiful poem, I think, that speaks to me about the nature of return. And he says, “This clumsy living that moves lumbering as if in ropes through what is not done,” he writes, “This clumsy living that moves lumbering as if in ropes through what is not done reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks. And to die, which is a letting go of the ground we stand on and cling to each day, is like the swan when he nervously lets himself down into the water, which receives him gaily and which flows joyfully under and after him, wave after wave, while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm, is pleased to be carried, each minute more fully grown, more like a king, composed, farther and farther on.”

To die, which is a letting go of the ground we stand on and cling to each day, is like the swan when he nervously lets himself down into the water, which receives him gaily and which flows joyfully under and after him, wave after wave, while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm, is pleased to be carried, each minute more fully grown, more like a king, composed, farther and farther on.”

I thought I’d share some music that was inspired by Georgian Bay and as I do you might listen for the wind and for the rain and for the thunder. And you may also imagine for yourself, what is for you Georgian Bay? What is the place that you return to in your imagination or in your memories, a place that for you is home, a place to which you can also return, a place that you can grow out from, in the sense that when you do return there’s a place to which you can, put your feet in the ground that feels like home…As Ward says, we go through these cycles repeatedly, and each return home is also a call to a new possibility. So I’ll let you just go to that place of possibility that  is your imagining as I play…

Michael Begins to play ‘After the Rain’

Peter kindly allowed me to post this article of his on the Chautauqua site. If you are interested you can see more of Peter’s latest work at the Abundant Community website.

Art in Community or The Democratization of Art
by Peter Block

I just spent two days at a conference on education reform. While the agenda was to discuss schools and the ways students learn, what was unique about this gathering was the role that art played in building connection in the room and moving the agenda of the gathering forward.

Each day began with Michael playing piano to bring the sunrise into the room, awakening us with soft and gentle sounds of improvised music.

Mariah, Avril and Mary captured the group’s ideas on large white pieces of paper on the wall. They spent much of their time graphically displaying what was going on in the gathering. They are graphic artists making beautiful images as the conversation unfolds.

Barbara played the piano and sang touching songs which were a reflection of our lives. Songs mostly of her own creation that said yes to what we were up to and pushed us to be more present.

The center of the room was a collage of sacred objects. We had a circle with candles, flowers, artifacts of where we were meeting. Plus poetry scattered around for us to look at. Ken told stories as from the Arabian Nights. Skip read poetry as he truly knows how to do.

All this made the gathering unique from the start. There was more art present than in most. It would have been natural for the participants to sit back and enjoy the talent surrounding them and stay in the role of audience. Satisfied audience, but still audience.

What got my attention was that something shifted early in the gathering. The artists were not satisfied to keep performing, they chose to engage us in the arts. The singing, moving, drawing and speaking moved from being in the hands of the “artists,” professional and serious amateurs, to being in the hands of every person in the room.

Over the course of the days, every person was given the opportunity –– urged is more accurate –– to sing together, move together, draw together, speak poetry together, play instruments together. This was not the point of the gathering. The point was about sharing and learning about education. But after the content, the lectures and discussion about education, we assembled in groups of four around a piece of paper and drew what meaning we took from what had just occurred in the room. The large sheets of white paper on the wall became community property and each person filled the space with their own images.

At one point, each person was asked to think of a word that held meaning for them at that moment. Then Mariah called on people to speak out their word. One after another, and another, until a string of words of meaning emerged, which of course was poetry. And we discovered what was on the mind of the community.

In this way art became democratized. It moved from the hands of the expert, the artists, into the hands of the citizen, the participants.

During this experience, I realized that even though we value art, we too often relegate art to the professionals or the serious amateurs. Every community and neighborhood has people who are known for their ability to sing. We acknowledge those who can paint something or sculpt something. We know and enjoy those who “really know how to dance.” Or draw or recite poetry.

In most neighborhoods we can hear music in entertainment places and concerts in front of the library or neighborhood center on public grounds.  Churches are places where the choir and talented voices sing for us.

In communities beyond neighborhoods, there are concerts, festivals, performance venues. There are the high-end fine arts and the grass roots programs for youth and marginal adults. All good but still held in the hands of experts. Still held as performance.

Art is a Necessity, Not Just Nice

Here is where this takes us. First, this gathering paid more attention to the role of art in learning and transformation that most any I have attended in North America (nothing compares to Africa). It made art a core part of the design and provided a living demonstration that art has a function beyond touching us and entertaining us.

Art has an essential function, which is to engage us in our humanity and bring us together. It is what gives form to culture. It is a powerful means for us to engage with each other. In this way it is essential to learning and creating any alternative future we have in mind. Especially if are talking about our children or any other human project. How can we raise a child if their voice, hands, body, and creativity are not valued? How can we expect this of them, if doing this is not central to how we, as adults, come together?

The arts have a job to do no matter what the purpose of our gathering. The most businesslike, intellectual or problem solving gathering needs an open mind, an open heart and a trusting network of relationships to achieve its purpose. Participating in art does this.

Let Me Entertain You

Regardless of whether the artists decide to engage us, making art more central to our lives faces some challenges. Most of us are imprisoned by the idea that art is a specialist’s domain. That it is for exceptional and certain occasions. We have sadly de-emphasized the arts in our schools and it is now relegated to special performances. We still have talent shows and plays, but producing art is not considered part of a core curriculum in most schools, especially in the higher grades. It disappears in the drumbeat of math, reading and science.

Even where the arts are thriving, we still think of the arts as entertainment and serious participation only for the few. We do not consider music, poetry, movement and drawing as central means to raise children and create the village to support them. Or central to understanding science, or literature or engineering.

I Can’t Sing

This view is sustained by the story we each hold about our ability to participate in the arts. We claim we cannot sing, or play an instrument, or keep time, or do poetry or draw. This “problem” story, which is just a story, is our rationalization for outsourcing the arts to the professional or expert, just as we have outsourced education to the school, safety to the police, health to the physician. Our doubtful relationship to our own artistic creativity is another casualty of the consumer society.

No matter what the purpose of the gathering, its’ success is always dependent on the micro culture created in the room. If we are there to plan, learn or decide something, the context of that gathering is decisive. Art or its absence, is decisive in producing context.

On a larger scale, if the purpose of a community is to raise a child and live a satisfying life, then we have to reclaim our own humanity and imagination. This is what engaging in the arts does best. Yet we have so forgotten this.

In this conference last week, the operating assumption was the belief that

If we can speak, we can sing

If we can walk, we can dance

If we can hold an object, we can draw and paint

If we can make sentences, we can produce poetry

This produced a unique community, it engaged people in a way they did not ask for or expect, and it worked. Believing and acting on this may have more to do with sustaining democracy, building community, restoring our humanity and caring for the next generation than all the voting, small group dialogue, programs, schooling and planning in the world.

I would love to hear about ways you are bringing art in to the mainstream of your being in the world.

2010 CHAUTAUQUA: REFLECTIONS ON ART/GRAPHIC FACILITATION

My (Avril) scribbled notes from what Peter said on Day 2, and my thoughts thereon: with notes from Mary Corrigan, and Mariah Howard and Peter Block

• Reframing the feelings of anxiety over our performance: perhaps what we interpret as anxiety is just a misidentified feeling of heightened aliveness!
• Making art in public is a way of inviting others into that aliveness. So really, what we offer is not a performance but an invitation to a gift.
• Creating art in public gives us permission to see each other’s work and show our own. This kind of art-making makes sense only in community, and is what’s needed here and now.
• Peter Block – “drawing takes us places we can’t get to any other way.”
• Typically art (of all kinds) is commodified. We’re judged on our performance, which scares most of us from making our mark because we think it’s all about skill and don’t want to be judged lacking. But commodification of art in the name of performance steals our uniqueness and our humanity and makes us afraid.

-      My thoughts on the above: If art is a personal expression of our humanity, then turning it into a commodity repackages that expression into something deemed ‘acceptable’ by the marketplace. This in turns flattens out our uniqueness by pushing us to strive to fit a predetermined mold (à la American Idol, etc.) – and if we don’t fit, we’re out.

-      The fear: of stepping outside the lines/going beyond the bounds of acceptability, of making “bad” art, of exposing ourselves in public, of going “splat”.

-      Peter Block: “How do I bring my unformed self into the public space?”

-      Mary C.: “How does this affect/effect how we show up as recorder/graphic facilitator and constrict us from experimentation and our own learning.  What are the contractual agreements we need to make with clients up front and how open are they to emergence?”

• Peter reminded us that when we’re inviting people into these activities, it’s important to always set the context.
• My question: What do we need to tell our clients to move them toward a fuller recognition of what we really offer when we collaborate with them, and how do we explain how we want to work with them? For me, the following things are becoming increasingly important:

a)    To be involved in the design from start to finish so that the art is integrated into the whole process.

b)   This means working intimately and collaboratively with conveners and facilitators, and playing an active rather than a passive role. No more “silent partner”!

c)    A shift from graphic recorder to graphic facilitator (without precluding the possibility that at some points recording is just what I need to be doing). By “graphic facilitator” I don’t mean simply facilitating using visuals (where I still do most of the drawing myself), but where appropriate, facilitating a fully participatory process that involves everyone in creating art, both individually and collaboratively. Yes!

d)   Whenever possible, working together with fellow graphic facilitators. It was such a joy to work with Mariah and Mary. I want to be able to do that more often! Putting our heads and hands and heart together multiplies the value exponentially (in addition to just being way more fun!)

e)    Introducing other art forms into the mix: music, improv, movement, collage, etc. We had music and visual art at the Chautauqua, but they were separate. What would happen if we also worked together with the musicians, and so on?

What I loved about how Mariah, Mary and I worked together:

• There was a level of honesty and transparency that really moved me – and also grounded me, because it made me feel very safe. I didn’t have to worry about any hidden agendas: it was all there, right out in the open.  Specifically, we intentionally huddled in the morning and talked about what forms the shadow can take when collaborating (competition, comparison, insufficiency), what we each needed/desired in this relationship and how we wanted to work together.
• It was intensely collaborative:

-      Among the 3 of us – I didn’t feel any sense of ‘proprietorship’ over what any of us drew or wrote. It was truly a group effort, and mutually supportive.

-      Between us and the facilitators – we were involved in all phases of the design as much (or as little) as we wanted to be. Our opinions were solicited, considered and respected.

-      Between us and the rest of the group – people participated in making the art! They drew, painted, collaged, individually, in pairs, in small groups – and they got to places they wouldn’t have gotten to without making art themselves. It was a revelation to see the creativity that blossomed in the room and what it opened up in people.

-      We were full participants in the process and all activities – members of the community and not outside of it.

• I like Mariah’s description of how we worked as “a new kind of dance between 3 people skipping back and forth over the line of recording, guiding the group and participating…a circle of 3 dancing inside another circle of facilitators who were dancing inside the circle of the whole…”. Wonderful image! The only thing I might add is to turn the circles into an cascading series of figure 8’s, weaving back and forth, back and forth in a potentially infinite progression.

What we did at Chautauqua 2010 – artistic processes:

• Collage:

-      Great for people who lack confidence to draw

-      Using ‘found’ art lets people quickly juxtapose elements to come up with unexpected combinations and see what meaning they can make from the whole

-      We had people do individual collage – can’t remember if we had them do collage in small groups as well or just intended to do so? No small groups this time (that I recall) though that is powerful as well

• Music accompanied this process
• Group drawing:

Day 1:  3 large groups, each facilitated by one of Mary, Mariah and myself. What I did:

-      Asked people in my group to respond to the question, “What themes came up for you around The Call?”

-      When someone spoke up, I asked for a second person to say what they heard the first person say and to visually represent it on the chart.

-      While the second person was drawing, a third person would respond to the question and a fourth would say what they heard and draw it on the chart, and so on. There were always 2-3 people drawing on the board at a time, which kept things moving.

-      Periodically I asked people to comment on larger themes/patterns that they saw emerging.

-      Later on I added colour, borders, etc. to tie the whole thing together visually. Could have participants join in this for what you are doing here is caring for the whole, seeing the whole, acting for the sake of the commons. The job of every citizen.

-      I think the original plan was to have 3-4 people from each of our groups report back to the whole group at the end: “What is important for people to know from the conversation you just had?” But we didn’t have time to do that.

-      Mary – My approach started out more traditionally with me recording the themes they heard.  I quickly turned the markers over to them and asked others to draw things I admittedly don’t know how to do.  I also “encouraged” everyone to at least make a mark on the group drawing.  We reviewed it together at the end and I invited everyone to sign it.  I did add some additional color and borders before we came back into the room.  Peter’s point is well taken.

-      Additionally on Day 1 we intentionally did very minimal public recording before people participated in the group mural process.  The “welcome” recording that one of us typically does was actually collaged – a different approach.  There was also a space created on the journey mural for the community to add its own questions – this provides a safe place for entry.  We can think about more ways to do this.

-      Mariah: I began this process with some improvised movement as a form of warm up. Participants wove around each other guided by their arms, then elbows, then head & neck.  They moved through the space, not touching one another, while stretching and getting as tall as they could, imagining their fingertips touching the ceiling, then they tried moving as close to the ground as possible – snake like. After the movement practice we stood in a circle, looking at the blank canvass together. I wanted make it clear that I didn’t have a sense of where this art process needed to go; I didn’t come in with a preconceived idea of what should happen; I wanted the impulse to come from the group. All I gave structure wise was my hope that we would create an image together in response to The Call stage, then I asked for ideas. After some silence, someone suggested creating a background image of a mountain range that we could all draw on. So I drew this light outline of mountains, and then someone else felt encouraged, one of the students, to draw an image of her own. Once she did, others joined in. We danced around each other and once everyone who wanted to participate drew something, including me, we stepped back to reflect on our art. I asked what they noticed and what that process was like for them. One woman expressed some regret about her drawing; it seemed out of place to her, too large and not connected to the other images. I asked if it was okay if I shared why I thought her drawing was essential. To me, her drawing was a legend or key to the mountain-scape image we all created – her image showed not only where this mountain territory existed, it also showed other territories that were connected to our drawing. She drew the macrocosom while we drew the microcosom. It felt like a great moment because we were able to support her image and the rightness of her contribution to the group map. Truly, there is nothing you can draw that doesn’t work, there are just interpretations that don’t work well.

Day 3:  Small group collaborative drawing (unfacilitated):

-      The plan:

• Ask people to walk around the room, look at all the collages and charts on the wall, think about conversations they had.
• Ask them to think about what they most want to remember about this journey and our time together. How would they represent this? Invite them to express it in a way that is meaningful for them.
• Find a partner to share with.
• Come back into circle.

-      What actually happened:

• We asked people to gather in groups of 4-5 and draw collaboratively, focusing on the above question. One person to make a mark, another to add to it, and so on. Talk about what is emerging and what it means to them.
• At the end we all came back into circle and invited 4-5 people to say what struck them about this process. I believe this was at the end of Day 2.  These sheets were then placed around the center – rather than on the walls.  (I remember replacing them the next morning after the session with Gary and the tubes)
• Mariah: When the small groups had a chance to reflect on the process of making art together we heard some truly beautiful comments. One man said that in this process he truly felt and understood the idea of Ubuntu – I am because of you. This art making gave him an experience of being in community in a deep way. I thought it was a beautiful moment that needed to be remembered.
• On the final day, we (Mariah, Mary, me) spoke about the gift it was to us to see everyone make art, and to make art with them and to collaborate.
• At the end, Mariah invited people to create a symbol, icon or image that represents The Return for them when they have time – something they can share as they move back into their community. Did not have time for this. I thought we did though it was truncated?
• Mariah also invited poetry into the room by each person thinking of a word. Then coaxed them by randomly or intuitively calling on people for their word. She then declared that poetry.  We could have recorded on the wall those words and would then have the artifact of a communal poem.

Note Bene Ward: The collage and the collective art allowed access to the creative unconscious which is where we hoped the participants (us, we) would go to discover the fire of the known but un-manifest. This kind of discovery is essence of the call. If we create a context where people can quiet self-judgment and criticality especially in the realm of art, we can then move into creativity.

Additional Mariah thoughts on art as inspired by the Chautauqua experience:

What we’re talking about here is no less than creating a paradigmatic shift around art: moving from art as an experience or practice of the few to art as the commons, art as another expression of community.  Instead of holding art as something created by those who suffer on the fringes and go to school or teach themselves over years and years art making becomes a practice/experience that anyone can access. In fact, this experience of community showed us that everyone has to make art – through the act of making and then reflecting on our art we’re tapping into a wellspring of color, image, symbol and icons that can help us connect in a way that words and conversation cannot. We all, as individuals and communities have a (often unspoken) need to create art. It’s there –the art within all of us – and it’s been waiting for a chance to be made and considered. Let’s make art for ourselves, and let’s art for our communities. Just like dialog, every voice needs to be heard, all of us need to a chance to speak through art about what lives in the common space between us. Art gives us a bridge to come into the middle. We’re talking about moving away from art as made by the blessed and gifted to art as a gift and blessing we give ourselves and the community around us.

I want to share an email written after Chautauqua. Of course I asked Blythe if I could share what she wrote, and she was happy to consent. I think her email illustrates a key aspect of what emerged through our artmaking at Chatuauqa = Art = giving us access to living in a new way, access to parts of ourselves we didn’t know existed until the art was made & reflected on. Blythe’s email brought tears to my eyes, and has been working on me in a deep way since I read it.

Mariah,

Hi, it’s Blythe from Chautauqua. We didn’t get as much a chance to talk as much as I would have liked, but I did want to thank you for something you said. You told us all to go home and do something artistic that represents Chautauqua for us. Something that we can share with those who weren’t there. I got home and, after a few days of letting the journey soak in, my fingers started to itch for art. This doesn’t normally happen. I love art, but so often life get’s in the way and i will repress any urge to actually do it. This time, because of the art experience at Chautauqua and what you said, I didn’t repress it. Instead I started cutting out images of people and things that inspire me. It turned into an inspiration collage, instead of just Chautauqua, but in a way that’s what Chautauqua was for me. At the end I had such an inspiration to go home and live me life. Really live it, trying new things and such, instead of just doing the things I need to or am used to. So I was inspired to do a collage that evolved into an inspiration collage. I put up pictures of artists I admire, people I know who admire I look up to, places that inspire me, a picture of everyone at Chautauqua in a circle, and several quotes. Without any intent, sections began to come up. Sections that I didn’t even know were a part of me, or if I did I didn’t think they were as big as they became. There was a Gardening section, I never knew that was a corner of me. There was a music section. There was a “be yourself” section. There was a section about the path, the call, the journey and the return. I didn’t plan any of these, they just popped up. And now, everyday, I get to look at my wall and see these corners of me. These corners that inspire me to really live my life. I need to thank you because you are one of the reasons I felt free to do this. I never knew how much I could discover by doing art. That’s always why I write, to discover. It turns out that art works in a way that writing can’t. They are both great. But very useful in very different ways. This collage is going to keep changing, as I keep changing and continue to feel the need to add to my “inspiration wall.” I need to thank you over and over, for being one of those who inspired me to put this wall up. It’s so important to me now.

Thank you for that gift.

Blythe

Mariah continues:

Individuals who make art give themselves the gift of symbol, image, color, shape, line and form. By creating art, they have access to their boundless imagination and limitlessly creative self.

Many people have encountered experiences where their creative self has been wounded by the critique of others or the desire for perfection; if we draw a cat that doesn’t look like a cat, instead of delighting in creation of a never before seen new cat-like creature, so many of us decide that we can’t draw. Instead of delighting in a new creation we sideline or marginalize the artist within and move on develop other talents or skills. However, if we reconnect with our art and capacity for creating outside of the need for perfection, we once again align with the part of ourselves that has the freedom to draw, paint, collage or sculpt. What awaits us if we watercolor without the need to critique ourselves? What if we muse on our current life-questions with a crayon in hand instead of a keyboard at our fingertips? What if the process of making and reflecting on art could help us get in touch with that which has yet to emerge – that place that isn’t available to us through words, conversation, writing or thinking? What if art could scratch a part of our back we could only reach with a paintbrush?

Said another way:

So often the artist that resides within all of us has been in exile; once we decided we ‘couldn’t draw’ or ‘didn’t like to dance’ the artist as ourselves was marginalized and put away/put down. Through my work I’ve met hundreds of people who tell me that they can’t draw; they often try to convince me there’s no way they could even learn to draw. When we talk further, people find they want to share the painful stories they’ve carried around for decades – stories about a grade school teacher or playground friend who harshly judged their artwork, or singing or dancing – they want me to know the moment they un/consciously shut out their natural ability to make art. That moment when the artist was no longer welcome to play with markers, or finger-paint or collage was a moment of exile – but like all exiles – there is always the possibility of return. What might happen if we chose to open the door and welcome home in the artist within each of us? What if we shared those painful stories with the aim of freeing ourselves to create art again? If we allowed ourselves to create again, to take back that title of artist, what other aspects of ourselves might ask to come back home? Certainly there must be other roles and voices that have been waiting to guide and encourage us? I believe that allowing ourselves to once again create art could provide us with the process for reunifying not only the marginalized voices within as well as the exiled or unwelcomed voices all around us.

Community Art

What might happen if we all had access to a community space where creating art was safe and encouraged? What could be possible for us as individuals and communities of people who made art together? Individuals who create art in a non-competitive, non-judgmental way, both alone and as a group, could reflect on their art as a source of wisdom and insight. What critical insight might be waiting in a group collage or painting?

What really struck me was, though we were all staying in one place, Chautauqua, in itself, was a huge journey. While we were learning about and discussing the concept of the Call, the Journey and the Return, we were experiencing the same thing in our experience of Chautauqua. It was so moving to me that we could all take this journey together. Sometimes I tend to feel like I’m alone in my quest to discover my call and it was so great to learn that everyone else in the room felt the same way. The people who were on the journey of Chautauqua, were the journey for me. For me, the journey was about exchanging stories, learning from each other, and discovering that nobody is alone. - Blythe Collier

I was struck by the power that drawing our own images of each others contributions had to building much greater understanding and sense of connection – moving from understanding to experiencing UBUNTU!
Charles Holmes

Goodness, a one-liner is difficult when I had to struggle to avoid astonishment at almost every moment. However, there was one golden thread that wove its way through the mosaic of this experience and that was the open-hearted generosity of everyone. ”This time was good. Next time will be better.”
I, you, he, she, we…In the garden of mystic lovers, these are not true distinctions. Rumi   – Sri Gyan

The work done here is urgently required. The call comes from a place I do not know. There is hope for our future for extraordinary children are being called to be extraordinary adults. - Mary Berry

“The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.” ~ Sri Nisargadatta
What a wonderful experience - Gary Petersen

The essential experience of ‘ubuntu’ through working in small groups and seeing who I am is affirmed, enriched and developed through the community of learners and seekers who I am privileged to work and live with. Ralph Wolf

I was most struck by Peter’s comment regarding how being overly ‘helpful’ is the behavior of paternalism, and ultimately empire-building. It was very powerful for me, and certainly highlights the huge importance of how we determine what others* actually need, and how we help (or don’t help!) them to get there. *‘others’ being students, our own children and people in general. - Rod Caborn

I was filled with a sense of belonging, immersed in a community, which honored every gift that was named or felt. Bob Caplan

The strength and positive reinforcement that comes from community is available to us if we do our part to remain open and seek it out - Tom Honig

The 2010 Chautauqua: overflowing gifts, talent in abundance and warm acceptance seeping in from every crack of the room. - Hannah Meade

Conversations alive with sparks of connection. Multiple
networks converging and amplifying.Bathed in music,
transcending through the collective breath of song. Nourished by
friends and colleagues courageously open to loveand beauty as pathways for social change. Cyd Jenefsky

What struck me was how we focused on humanity, both its messiness and its beauty.
Louise Yarnall

Waking up together, i look around tenderly. - Kranti Mailliard

What really moved me was the enthusiasm with which people participated in the art-making when we turned it over to them, and the joy on their faces when it touched places in them that they couldn’t have reached by any other means. Especially moving were people’s responses to the collaborative drawing on the final day: Mara’s discovery that it wasn’t about artistic “talent” or making pretty pictures; Ralph’s transcendent “ubuntu” moment; the many moments of “Yes!” as people completed each other’s thoughts by adding something critical to the collective image and suddenly understood what they were talking about. WOW!  - Avril Orlof

Our Chautauqua is our learning community’s Ubuntu. It is because of my experience and relationship with each person sitting in that beautiful space, created by our yearly Chautauqua, that allows me to enter my classroom as me. I am deeply grateful for my relationship with all of you. It is an experience of being that I do not have elsewhere in my professional life! - Jill Madden

THE CALL – I intended to use the Chautauqua time exploring possibilities and solutions to new challenges in my work life.
THE JOURNEY – I was surprised to find myself doing none of it, at least not directly. Instead I quenched my thirst for meaningful connection with others and began the process of naming what is regenerative for me.
THE RETURN – The return has extended beyond the Chautauqua’s close. Awash in metaphor, imagery and sensation I am rewriting my story and rearranging the boulders in the creek-bed. It seems that although I am still competent and able to rise to challenges, challenge alone no longer moves me. The call of ambition and accomplishment is silenced by the rush of deep water breaking through the dams built by previous stories. This is neither comfortable nor convenient and yet it is the most authentic sound in the room.

I was delighted, surprised and soothed to open Angeles’ book, the Second Half of Life and find this, “When transition takes place during our later years, a fundamental and primal shift from ambition to meaning occurs.” I am not on schedule; however it seems I am on time. Again inconvenient, I would have preferred next year, in the fall.

Entering the MMS Community Room I saw a basket with a sign,” If your head is not connected to your heart-bone, vocal cords or feet please leave it at the door.” I did as instructed and when I retrieved it on Thursday I found these vignettes playing on the projector.

HEAD SHOTS
• Under the weight of an engorged head I attempt to cross the room with a gait graceful enough not to let slip the true imbalance of my condition.
• Bandersnatch: At the head of a long table, set with the accoutrement of self-importance, my voracious head devours ideas, completely missing the intention of the potlatch.
• Kodak Moment…. I am captured in an inarguable reflection of depth and insight, back lit in the parallel light of the late afternoon, looking much younger than my years. (Gary, thank you for the real postcards, although they were not convenient either) - Clare Wesley

What struck me is: I am honored to be in the presence of committed educators, parents, students, and community are to creating learningful environments. - Bill Sommers