Gateway: Moments of arriving
Some podcast themes
Preparing to host: Taking time and care to anticipate the arrival of guests, form an intention, and prepare the space and oneself
Senses as gateway: Dropping momentum and distractions, opening to sights and sounds, and entering with an open curiosity
Greeting at the threshold: Ushering people into unfamiliar situations
Nature as co-host: Changing the conversation by meeting outdoors
Humility: Remembering our place and responsibilities as part of this earth
Acknowledgement
Thank you to shalan for sharing her spoken word piece in this episode: “For Those Who Have Forgotten Humility,” from Conversations with Mulgrave Road Theatre, written and read by shalan joudry.
Related Resources
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Book: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2018)
Excerpt:
No one would doubt that I love my children, and even a quantitative social psychologist would find no fault with my list of loving behaviors:
nurturing health and well-being
protection from harm
encouraging individual growth and development
desire to be be together
generous sharing of resources
working together for a common goal
celebration of shared values
interdependence
sacrifice by one for the other
creation of beauty
If we observed these behaviors between humans, we would say, ‘She loves that person.’ You might also observe these actions between a person and a bit of carefully tended ground and say, ‘She loves that garden.’ Why then, seeing this list, would you not make the leap to say that the garden loves her back?…
Something essential happens in a vegetable garden. It’s a place where if you can’t say ‘I love you’ out loud, you can say it in seeds. And the land will reciprocate, in beans.”
Priya Parker
Book: The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (2018)
Excerpt:
But here is the great paradox of gathering: There are so many good reasons for coming together that often we don’t know precisely why we are doing so. You are not alone if you skip the first step in convening people meaningfully: committing to a bold, sharp purpose….
In short, our thinking about gathering—when we gather and why—has become muddled. When we do gather, we too often use a template of gathering (what we assume a gathering should look like) to substitute for our thinking. …
The purpose of your gathering is more than an inspiring concept. It is a tool, a filter that helps you determine all the details, grand and trivial. To gather is to make choice after choice: place, time, food, forks, agenda, topics, speakers. Virtually every choice will be easier to make when you know why you’re gathering, and especially when that why is particular, interesting and even provocative.
More from Priya Parker:
Summary of the book (pdf)
adrienne marie brown
Book: Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy, Facilitation and Mediation (2021)
Excerpt:
Help people set intentions for how they want to be, how their children’s children will feel, what the relationships will look like, how power will be shared, how governance will work, how justice will play out.
This may be controversial, but I actually think it’s ok for a group to move without clearly articulated intentions for a little while, to move based on feeling the unspoken, perhaps unspeakable, patter. It’s ok to be drawn towards each other, drawn into connection and motion. It’s ok to take some actions, learn how and who each other are. Pay attention to what the group chooses to do and how they do it. I used to always start with vision, but with reflection I’ve seen that the intentions, vision, and values can sometimes emerge more clearly inside the work and relationships. Longings are intimate. They shouldn’t be thrown at each other as gauntlets, tests, or escalators we have to keep moving up in order to earn our place in the group.’That said, in order to grow, in order to have impact, people do eventually need to articular what they long for. As a facilitator, you need to make sure, above all else, that the deepest longings within the group align.
Our intentions and longings should be the center of our lives and work. Our collective intentions and longings should be the center of our movements.
Personal practices
Senses as gateway
As hosts we use our intuition to tune into the group—where it’s at, what it needs, where it’s ready to go. It’s difficult to do this if we are caught up in the momentum of preparations or still worrying about something that happened earlier in the day. As we hear in Episode 1, dropping into the body and tuning into the senses can help us get out of our head and into the present moment, so we can truly arrive. Feeling the earth beneath our feet, noticing the breeze coming through a window, the sound of people chatting as they arrive…
Creative process
Talk by Jerry Granelli: Art in Everyday Life: The Creative Process (2021)
In this talk given in Halifax as part of the Jazz Festival’s Creative Music Workshop, drummer Jerry Granelli talks about bringing the presence and awareness training of the improv artist into everyday life. Jerry co-founded the CMW in 1996. He was also an integral part of the Authentic Leadership in Action (ALIA) Institute in Halifax (2001-14), bringing creative process into all aspects of systems leadership. Jerry passed away two days after giving this talk, on July 21, 2021, his 80th birthday.