Full Circle Associates

Today I head over to do graphic recording in the Compassionate Listening Room at Seeds of Compassion. I have been cruising flickr to encourage people to put their events into the The Seeds of Compassion Pool. I have uploaded the graphic recording team’s work from Friday and Saturday there (limited access for the recorders at Qwest field, but they did small drawings on paper) on my Flickr stream. Just to be clear, the images are the amazing work of Keith McCandless, Patti Dobrowolski, Steven Wright and Timothy Corey. (The one to the right is from Steven Wright.)

If you are not in town, there is streaming video of many of the events on the Seeds website.

I awoke before dawn to many birds singing, then a beautiful sunrise. An auspicious start for Seeds of Compassion , a 5-Day Gathering in Seattle with his Holiness, the Dalai Lama and a huge community of people who care about the role of compassion in the lives of children. This morning I attended the session on the Science of Compassion, and am currently listening to the live stream of this afternoon’s second science day. Archived materials are being translated into 24 languages. That is a mind-blowing, bridge-building commitment. (The image to the right is a close up of Tim Corey’s work)

Experiencing the Dalai Lama
You hear about this remarkable human being — of his warmth, humility and compassion. Even from high in the stadium stands, I felt this. Such humor too… his twinkle twinkled across the stadium. He spoke without pretension, took his time and radiated calm. While I was intellectually engaged with the offering of the panelists (and they came across very compassionate themselves), I found myself just experiencing his Holiness. Sometimes I could not understand with the amplification and echoes, but that didn’t seem to matter. It mattered that I was able to just be there.

Graphic Facilitation at the Seeds of Compassion
I’m also a Seeds volunteer over the next 5 days, helping with the graphic recording of many of the events and welcoming people to put their mark on paper in the Conversation Cafe room where people can debrief and talk with each other about their experiences over the 5 days. Today Patti Dobrowolski and Timothy Corey recorded. You can see photos here. Our full team also includes Keith McCandless, and Steven Wright. I am thrilled to be able to watch and learn from them, as well as provide a contribution to the event WITH them.

Today after the morning event ended, I hung out while Tim and Patti completed their charts. It was wonderful to see people look at them, remark at how it helps them remember what they heard, and their amazement that “they drew this DURING the presentation!” For me as a newbie practitioner of this art, it was immensely useful to see their two different styles and watch their final additions.

I’m looking forward to five days of learning, community and compassion. It seems a fitting entry point to my 50th birthday on April 15th.

For years I have sponsored friends doing charity walk (like the March of Dimes’ Walk for Babies coming up soon.) That’s a no brainer. However, I’ve never sponsored an athlete-environmentalist. But now I have.

As of a few hours ago, I sponsored a bunch of temporary tattoos to help amazing beach volleyballista Colleen Smith, aka, 6footsix energize kids to help save our environment. You can read about it here.

Why Colleen? A couple of reasons. First of all, my pal Steve Crandall (another “imaginary friend who I met via my online network) told me about Colleen and her story grabbed me. He asked if I can help. NOTHING BEATS A PERSONAL ASK! So we started brainstorming. I strongly supported Steve’s impulse to set up a blog and I said to add a donation mechanism. I think Colleen’s story resonates and that people will respond.

I told my friend, freelance writer and yoga teacher, Erin Pursell (also a great editor) about Colleen. Erin eventually interviewed Colleen for an upcoming story in Sierra Magazine. Because, you know, getting the word out is important.

For Steve and I, it seemed fitting to activate our networks to support Colleen, not just in her work to become a winning beach volleyball player, but because she was interweaving her sport with a passion for the environment and, particularly, engaging kids in environmental issues. Why?

Backstory from Colleen’s blog:

I started thinking more about living in a greener world and thought about the beaches I play volleyball on. If global warming persists at the rate us earthlings are consuming, some predictions state that by 2100 the sea level will rise up to 6 meters! Just to put this into perspective, that is 3 Colleens! This made me realize that perhaps I could make a bigger difference than just making changes in my life; while on tour, I could encourage others to make changes in their own lives.

A friend of mine designed a temporary tattoo for me and I am going to wear it at one meter on my body which is just below where my bikini bottom meets my thigh. Crazywave_3This mark is going to represent where the sea level may rise to by the year 2060. This is during our lifetimes, people!

I really enjoy talking to kids and want to get their ideas on living greener. I am going to encourage them, their parents, and other adults to join my green team. In order to do so, they must promise me to change one aspect in their lives to contribute to a better greener world. Upon making this promise, they will be provided with a token to keep their word: a temporary tattoo, a re-usable shopping bag, or a 1-meter magnet to stick to their fridge. All kids will receive an extremely cool storyboard from Pixar artist, Nick Sung, just to give them some ideas how they and their friends can live greener lives. (THANK YOU NICK FOR YOUR GENEROUS VOLUNTEERMANSHIP!!!)

Second reason? Because I can. My contribution is tiny. But tiny contributions add up. And people’s lives can be changed. Not just Colleens, but the kids she will reach. That is power.

So, can you help? Bob (or spike) over to Colleen’s blog and click the paypal button. Maybe you too, can become a sponsor!

photo credit: Dizzy Girl
I blogged about an experience last month. I had to send my “note to Meg” via blog post due to no comments or email on her blog. Today, the message in a blog-ttle came back with an answer… the blogosphere can be magical. Official Meg Tilly Web Site | Meg’s Blog | A Northern Conference afternote. Hmm…is afternote one word or two? Maybe it’s hypenated?

Nancy, if you are reading this, you did not abuse me in anyway. Your drawing exercise unexpectedly touched on a memory, a wound that I didn’t even know I was carrying anymore. I cannot have you carrying this in any way. If anything, it shows that your drawing stuff idea, really works and it is a great way to get in touch with what is hidden from ones conscious mind. As well as all the great things that it seems to do for people. Everyone seemed to really be having a great time, laughing and joking and sharing pictures.

Please don’t carry my hurt in your heart. It doesn’t belong there. And in acknowledging it, hopefully, I release it as well. It is not for either one of us to carry. It’s a memory is all. And if it should settle anywhere it should rest in the laps of people who do not protect and abuse small children.

Much love, Meg

Meg, I hear ya and I’m carrying only love, not hurt in my heart, from our chance intersection. And deeply I value the learning that happened in the intersection. I’m VERY glad you got the message. It is interesting to trust in this thing we call the internet.

Love back at you,
Nancy

P.S. I totally commiserate with the hot flashes.

It has been a long week and I’ve posted a bunch so I am going to make this short. If you’ve asked yourself about what it means to be a blogger, about how to connect with others who care/blog about the things you do, about worrying if you are at the end of the long tail and what you write doesn’t matter, that only the A listers matter, read this post: Let’s meet them at the door « Educational Discourse where Kelly responds to the question…

How does the network open up for new people as most of the people mentioned refer to one another in their writing and their own network includes one another?

Then make sure you click in and read all the comments. This is what generosity, reciprocity and inclusiveness can look like. There are many gems of practices, especially for those blogging in the education world (a lot of teachers’ voices.) It is a great example of the Culture of Love. Thanks for writing it, Kelly Christopherson.

photo credit: Globetoppers

I mentioned yesterday that I led a session on drawing at Northern Voice yesterday. I invited people to be fearless, to draw and to share their drawings. But I forgot how that can trigger deep things in us. My friend Julie Leung pointed me a blog post about an experience of a person in that session, and I am shaken. The blogger has no comments on her blog so I am going to try this. First here’s a link to the post. Read it if you care about people. (and context) NorthernVoice.

Dear Meg

Meg, Meg, Meg

I want to both apologize to you and to thank you. First, apologize because I made light of something important and, as I understand it from your blog post, difficult for you. Second, to thank you for your bravery and what you helped me learn. I feel absolutely torn that we did not get a chance to talk about this and I invite that opportunity if you’d like to.

I learned two very important things as I took my flying leap into this experiment - and one was the reinforcement of the power that drawing can unlock things within us. The second was I need to be more gentle and loving when I offer the invitation to unlock whatever it is we have locked within us.

I feel like I have abused you. I deeply apologize. And I thank you so much for blogging about it and allowing me to learn this.

Nancy

(I found an email and sent the above to Meg)

As I read Meg’s post, I recalled the day I unlocked my inner artist as an adult. I was attending a weekend-long introduction to painting workshop at a local community college. “Beginners welcome.” We explored black and white. We mixed colors from the three primary colors. We painted with blindfolds and, important for me, with our fingers.

There I was in an old shirt, fingers swirling with acrylic paint feeling the roughness of the primed canvas. Our teacher invited us to think about our lives. I can still recall how my arms and fingers started pulling on their own, dipping into more and more red paint. The angry colors flooded the canvas. I did not know how angry I was, how I was holding all that anger inside of me. I was a nice young mom. I had a great job but I was working for a hurt, damaged man who did all he could to hurt and damage us, especially the women who worked for him. I used to come home and in the shower, curse his name. I wrote his name on the bottom of my shoes. And here all this anger and even hate was coming out of my fingers, channeled through the paint.

On Sunday morning, we were invited to show our paintings and, god help me, talk about them. And there I was, like Meg, with my guts on the canvas and having to talk about it in front of all these people. I started crying. And all that anger that I felt, as a “good girl” came flooding out. Like a gashed artery.

All for a bit of paint, or a marker on a paper, and an invitation to express what is truly inside of us. From an ice cream, to our pain.

Meg, again, I both thank you and ask for your forgiveness.

Well, it isn’t Monday (for Monday Video!) but this one is worth sharing. YouTube - You Walk, the Country Walks

Alert: Ramble post coming up…

I wake up this morning at 5am, knowing I have to cram two day’s worth of stuff into today. Tomorrow I head up to Northern Voice in Vancouver, B.C. and today I play hooky for 5 hours to to indulge my love of gardens at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show. I worked/played late last night to experiment with being an in-world graphic recorder in Second Life, stepping away from the computer only after 9pm and having eaten dinner while at the computer. (I RARELY do that.) Oh, and I stayed up too late last night, hooked in to the movie, Michael Clayton.

So there I am, standing at my tiny kitchen counter waiting for the tea water to boil, realizing I had not even looked at yesterday’s paper. I scan the front page of each section and stop when I see this article: Entertainment | Hope Wechkin — physician, violinist, singer, actor in the Seattle Times. A violin playing soprano, actor, physician and head of a pallative care unit?

Integration.

There is something drawing me these days to people and practices that cross traditional boundaries to help us be in, see and experience our work and our worlds in new light. Thus my recent obsession with visual thinking, and graphic facilitation. Why I am leading a session at Northern Voice on “Why I slowed down blogging and started drawing on walls.” Why I think I write more clearly after I practice yoga. I know that brain research has show how we can access more in our brains by having strong connections between the various parts of our brain. But I’m fascinated by how it feels and operates in daily life. I want to explore the impacts of integrating things into my work with online and F2F groups. I want to know how to do it, how to talk about it - with diverse groups so it has meaning to the agricultural researchers and those worrying about building a more compassionate world.

First, a bit about Hope Wechkin, who, as the paper headline says “physician, violinist, singer, actor - doesn’t approach anything halfheartedly.” Hope (I feel compelled to speak of her intimately, not as Dr. Wechkin, for some reason) is currently performing a self written, one woman show here in Seattle, “Charisma.”

A great believer in the power of music, Wechkin says it can “reach beyond words and beyond medicine.” She sometimes brings her violin into the hospice (Evergreen, in Kirkland, is the only inpatient hospice in the region) and plays for patients, watching the effect of music on the body’s different systems and seeing the pleasure the patients feel in what they hear.

In the piece, Hope plays 12 characters. The set is apparently a hospital bed and the costumes a hospital gown and a different pair of shoes for each character. There is a song for each. The play is about the advice others give to a terminally ill patient. Here is what Hope said in the article.

I want musicians to know about this,” she says. “You can get so battered down by the music profession. But I feel the real work is playing not where it is a competition or a job, but where it is transformative, and you can see how it transforms lives.”

Music transforms lives. We can nurture the different parts of ourselves. A picture paints a thousand words. A poem opens up new worlds. A doctor can bring her art into her profession of tending to the end of people’s lives, a time in medicine where she says “I think I have stumbled on a gem in health care. Then end of life puts everything in focus and the important things rise to the surface.”

In this online world of text, the explosion of video and photography has changed the landscape. But our forms are still fairly segmented, separate. What should we be paying attention to in our diverse practices that brings the parts of the brain together, our intellect and our hearts entwined, drawing upon different modalities?

What sort of integration should we be paying attention to?

Photo is link to the Seattle Times by BETTY UDESEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES
If this is improperly linked, folks at Seattle Times, please, let me know. It was such a great photo I wanted to draw people’s attention to it!

I tend to avoid political commentary in my blog. (Lots of reasons - I’ll not bother you with that at the moment.) But today I was pointed to a video about Barack Obama’s US presidential campaign that appears right now on Dipdive.com that is worth sharing. Oddly, it is not (yet?) embeddable video. It should be. (The http://www.yeswecan.com website itself is down for me a the moment.)

EDIT: 9:09 AM - here is the embeddable YouTube Version

What this video does is emotional motivation. It uses words and music - two very emotionally rich media - to convey a simple point of hope. The emotional state it can engender - if it resonates with you - prepares you for taking action.

When we think about facilitating change, we often focus on our logic. Our goals. Our tactics. What this video reminds me that we also need to attend to the emotional and emotive context of our change methods and plans. Read the note of will.i.am (of the Black Eyed Peas) the creator of the video, just below the video (also here on his blog). Read about why and how he acted. Who acted with him.

I think one reason I have been so captivated lately by graphic recording and facilitation is that images carry more than “the facts.” They trigger more than the logical and important “next step.” So does the music in this video.

will.i.am, thanks for the reminder. Yes, we can.

And, on a side note. I sense this video could be a sea change for the Obama campaign. “We are not divided as our politics suggests.” Oh, I hope so, regardless of the outcome.

yes, we can