Archive for the 'culture of love' Category

May 20 2009

My Spring Online Reading

Published by Nancy White under community indicators, culture of love

CC image on flickr by seenyarita This spring I decided to try and get back into a regular blogging practice. You may have noticed this in February, March and part of April. Then I fell back off the wagon when sunny spring weather lured me outdoors for garden projects. I have no regrets.

There are still tons of interesting things I have read and “intended” to blog about. But the river flows on and it is silly to think I’ll get around to it, so here is a little link love to all the links I saved in April and May (so far) that, if time and priorities were different, I’d point to and write about. Pick one link. Maybe you’ll hit a gold mine! Later I’ll share some of the books I’ve read. Yes, shocking, BOOK! On PAPER!

Photo by SeenyaRita

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May 09 2009

Thanks Rebekah and Mom

Published by Nancy White under culture of love

Alert - personal post!
mom

I love my mom and I love food. So as mother’s day approaches here in the US, one of my food blog reads caught my eye - from Seattle’s own Rebekah Denn:  Beard dinner. Ticket giveaway. Mom.

So, I’m making that the theme of a ticket giveaway to a James Beard dinner coming to Seattle on May 14. It’s a “Celebrity Chef Tour” meant to recreate a bit of the experience of dining at the James Beard House, “featuring the greatest culinary artists in major markets across the United States.” Ethan Stowell will cook at the $175-a-plate fundraiser at at the Columbia Tower Club along with the club’s James Hassell, with organizers promising ”an innovative, one-of-a-kind dinner” and wine pairings.

Want to win? Just leave a comment on this post telling us how your own mother influenced the way you eat and cook. I’ll pick two names, using a random number generator, at midnight Seattle time on Friday, May 8, and give each qualifying winner (that is, someone who answered the question, however briefly) a pair of tickets, courtesy of the event organizers.

In my 51 years, my contest winning streak has been fairly brief. I won a jelly bean counting contest at a school fair in 7th grade. The prize? The mason jar of jelly beans and this weird, green squishy baby toy. Or maybe it was a dog toy. I treasured that toy for years. It is great to feel like a winner. Even if only for an educated guess.

This morning I got up at 5am because I have two work calls I am unprepared for, it is Saturday, it is going to be a sunny day in Seattle and I want to work in my garden. So the work has to be done early. I open my email.

I WON!

I bless Rebekah and the random number generator that picked me to win two tickets. I will look forward to and savor the meal. But I also get to take a moment to thank my mom (Dolores Wright) for inspiring me to care about food - where it comes from, how it is prepared and the importance of sharing it with the people I love. And the people I barely know. And everyone in between. (Yes, there is a dinner for an out of town friend tonight. If you are in Seattle and are interested in international development, contact me. There’s still room at the table.)

Mom, here is what I wrote about you. Thank you. Happy Mothers Day. And I’m so thrilled you are moving to Seattle in 3 weeks. Wow. Finally, we can have more little, unplanned moments together in the kitchen, over food or a drink.

My mother was the daughter of an amazing Italian cook, my Gramma B. A little bit intimidating, to say the least. But that didn’t stop her. She knew about fresh food when frozen dinners and canned veggies became the stable of a 60’s household. She figured out what to do with all those zucchini my dad grew. She kept us knitted together via family dinners. But most importantly, she encouraged me to experiment, to cook. She gave me a subscription to Gourmet magazine when I was something like 11 or 12. She let me cater her friends’ dinner parties. She made me the cook I am.

To every other mom, Happy Mother’s Day - a day early. I’m not blogging tomorrow!!!

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Apr 07 2009

The Many Meanings of Our Words

Published by Nancy White under culture of love, language, love

Heartbeat - by Nancy White

You may find this an odd post from me, but bear with me. There is a point. But it takes a bit of a twisty path.

My friend Susan Partnow (of “Compassionate Listening” fame) passed along a note in an email list  about a translation of the Christian “Lords Prayer” that struck me in a number of ways. First, the translation from the  original Aramaic had echos of holy lines from other religions. It had for me, personally, a more universal feel and I could recognize its power in an open and less dogmatic way.  For example, it resonated with the end of yoga-class greating of Namaste, “may the light in me greet the light in you.”

Second, it led me to reading a number of translations of the prayer that reminded me of the ease with which we both fall into our own ruts and the difficulty with which we can come to a shared understanding of a set of words. In the online world, this is our ongoing challenge with misinterpretation and frequent lack of shared meaning. In the world of multilingual people, this is an everyday practice - figuring out what is really meant be a word, and not relying on direct translation. But most of us don’t question the words we read or hear that carefully, nor are we attuned to such nuance.

Susan’s note had two other resonate pieces. The first was her picking out of this particular bit of translation that seems well worth reproducing in whole:

From a direct translation of the Lord’s prayer:

“Untangle the knots within so that we can mend our hearts’ simple ties to each other.”

translated (note - site auto plays music) by Neil Douglas Klotz

These lines are most well known as “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Referring back to the Aramaic, which is a language in which each word has multivalent meanings, the complexity of a deeper level of causation is illuminated.

If we take up the work of untangling the knots within as the basis for forgiveness then we are empowered to develop a courageous heart. A courageous heart is helpful for the world is bound together by long lines of causation which are often modified by grief and pain that has not been processed through the collective body of mankind. Facing the ancient wells of deep pain takes courage…

The tangled web of grievance lives as a energetic structure in the subtler bodies of our being. It can be most pervasive and colors our interactions by creating a field of demand that is a form of displaced power. As long as hurt is a nest of our most common return then we approach our human family with a disempowered heart. This weakened state binds us into an attentive scanning of “other” in order to either protect ourselves or draw towards us the unfulfilled part of our own heart.

These knots tend to bind relationships into the expectation of the diminished heart. A view of ourselves and others from this state of being has difficulty releasing into the interconnected truth of our existence. In fact i have seen the diminished heart actively fight the  implications of a more expansive connection.

“Our hearts simple ties to each other” is an elegant invitation to rest in the truth of our human family. We are here to love. In loving we find the power to comb out the tangles of our own
grievance and affirm the cradling of existence by its own capacity to nourish.

This idea  of entangled hearts popped out at me. I see it in organizations struggling with their own dysfunction and amplified in challenging times. I see it on email lists, blogs and online forums. I see the power of heart disentangling when I watch people who are deeply skilled at conversation, listening and facilitation, both of themselves and with others. Both matter.

The second was her interpretation of the prayer in terms of both Compassionate Listening and Non Violent Communication. Susan wrote:

It seems to directly address what we work for in Compassionate Listening (and I think provides an interesting way to differentiate from NVC (non violent communication), which focuses on needs and thus may be dwelling on the unfulfilled tangles)

For those of you reading who are facilitators… a little food for thought. And here is Klotz’s translation. Enjoy…

The Lords Prayer
Oh Thou, from whom the breath of life comes, who fills all realms of sound, light and vibration.
May Your light be experienced in my utmost holiest.
Your Heavenly Domain approaches.
Let Your will come true - in the universe (all that vibrates) just as on earth (that is material and dense).
Give us wisdom (understanding, assistance) for our daily need, detach the fetters of faults that bind us, (karma) like we let go the guilt of others.
Let us not be lost in superficial things (materialism, common temptations), but let us be freed from that what keeps us from our true purpose.
From You comes the all-working will, the lively strength to act, the song that beautifies all and renews itself from age to age.

Sealed in trust, faith and truth.
(I confirm with my entire being)

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Mar 20 2009

DavidSibbet: Power And Love

Published by Nancy White under culture of love

As a follow up to my post on leadership in challenging times, I wanted to point to David Sibbet’s post, Power And Love: Is it Time for Bi-Lingual Leaders?

David shares some ideas of Adam Kahane about what he has seen as needed beyond the wonderful work he has been doing with scenario planning (which has also captured my attention recently about how it helps us generate innovation and possibiity.) David describes scenario planning as being “fundamentally about surfacing and refreshing the core stories that people tell about what is plausible and possible.”
 
David wrote: 

Adam reported that he’s working on what he found was missing from his initial work with scenarios, which is addressing the issues of power. Scenario work, as Adam experiences it, is really about bringing people back to sense of connection with each other and the larger whole – at core about releasing love into a system. But he has discovered, in spite of having extraordinary experiences of breakthrough in understanding and connection between people, that when the questions of power and resources then needed to be addressed the processes broke down. “It was as though the strong feelings of love and connection actually made the issue of power un-discussable.”

“My new book is basically unpacking a sentence that Martin Luther King wrote that points directly at this issue,” Adam said. King wrote:

“Power without love is reckless and abusive.
    Love without power is sentimental and anemic.”

loving car

“My thesis is that if we want to address complex social challenges we need to be be bi-lingual about both power and love,” Adam said.

Now that’s a lot of quoting people, quoting people, quoting a person. But the resonance across these three people reminds me that this is a powerful pattern. Love and power are a yin and yang of each other, and if we have learned anything about the world, is that there are always forces that both pull apart and complement each other at the same time. This is not only a core of leadership, but of facilitation, and collaboration. 

So how do we get it right?

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Mar 03 2009

Five for Water - Social Media for Change

Published by Nancy White under collaboration, culture of love, international development, social media

When someone asks how ordinary people can use social media to make a change in the world, point them to this collaborative blog of how 5 girls and 4 dads went on a mission to help families in Ethiopia have access to clean water. Five for Water. A very simple blog to hold videos from their trip. This is my favorite quote. “Mom, say hi to mars and tell him to eat his food but not socks.” (Ah, dogs.) You can read the backstory here.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States