Category: culture of love

From Control to Free Floating Reverie

Fresh Post! No Archive redraft!

Johnnie Moore pointed to a great LinkedIn post by Laurence Barrett that resonates with my current “fallow” project. It is no accident that Johnnie is an advocate of “unhurried!”

Laying fallow, I can reflect, observe and cross-pollinate ideas and experiences that surround me because I have the free time and head/heart space to do that. I am not fully confined by a large set of obligations. Yes, the grandkids are still #1 priority and that is a place for much of my energy, but the freedom from deliverables is quite intoxicating. I am available for reverie!

I’m pulling out two quotes, but it will make much more sense if you go and read the whole post! And don’t miss the P.S. at the bottom, which is fodder for even more reflection and blogging!

Mr. Barrett is talking in the context of coaching and the dynamic of “containment.” When I read it, I immediately thought about how a facilitator may try and contain human interaction in the well-intentioned service of the goal or purpose of a gathering. As group process folks, we have the opportunity (motive! means!) to create containers where people might do something different and more effective if engaged in something more free floating than overly structured.

The older I get, the more I sense that a lot of group process practices are about how we actually make a space less welcoming, “safe,” etc. Instead, Barrett reflects on another way that is less contained, and more “free floating.”

Here we may think of it as a dynamic, mutual and rather messy process of meaning making. Images and associations arise from the unconscious to be exchanged and evolved in what Wilfred Bion termed a ‘reverie’; a free-floating dialogue without defined goals and objectives.

In reverie both coach and client are ‘in’ and committed to the dialogue. Both can potentially be transformed.

And…

If our need to be ‘masterful’ or ‘powerful’ (words I see in some coach training) prevents us from entering a reverie we do not contain our clients, we just limit them.

A client is contained not by the coaches calm, rational, objectivity, but by our engagement and involvement, and both parties may be transformed by the encounter.

Pretending we are wisdom figures may fuel our narcissism or hide our anxiety, but it is definitely not containment.

I have worked hard through my professional life to show up not as some sort of wisdom figure and to engage in reciprocal work and learning. But there are old patterns in there that creep up in my head saying “I know what to do here.” Fully recognizing those moments, and choosing to let go, is something quite wonderful. And a door to reverie. (Using a “door” metaphor also reminds us there are many ways to think about space and containers. See this wonderful piece about other ways to think of space.

P.S. I love the four fundamental principles Mr. Barrett’s company espouses. I love them so much I took a screen shot. Mr. Barrett, if that is not OK, let me know and I’ll take the image down!

Image of four principles of Heresy Consulting. Each has an image, then the words underneath including: All change is a step into the unknown, Only through difference can we learn, Leadership is an expression of the soul, and We are made through our relationships.
The four principles of Heresy Consulting https://www.heresyconsulting.com/

Generosity and Making Space for Art

More from the drafts archive!

I went to college with a guy name Frank Konhaus. We both worked for the student workforce. One of our ongoing gigs was in the language lab, duplicating tapes for the language classes. It was dull, repetitive work. I could imitate the sound of the machines. What a skill. Frank could spin a good story and was always spanning across disciplines. We were both serious Joni Mitchell fans and he was generous with stories of being a helper in some of her recording sessions. That always blew me away. Later we worked on the tech crew that supported all the inhouse and road shows at Duke University where there were always adventures.

Image of a screenshot of the Cassilhause blog.

I was not surprised when years later he resurfaced in my social media stream with his project collaborating with his partner, Ellen Cassily: Cassilhaus, a space for art, architecture and community.

In their 2009 blog post they reflected on art and generosity. We need more of that. Take a read and enjoy. And check out their virtual artist exhibitions and events!

Cassilhaus: WALTER

Happy Holiday Fudge

In my childhood, my mother, Dolores Wright, got a fudge recipe from her friend Nadine Seedall, who said it was the recipe from See’s Candy – then a small local chocolate company in California. It has been made year over year as a family tradition. Some years, multiple batches were made so packages and tins of fudge were given to EVERYONE. Now we make one batch – some to give, some to eat together. Today my grandpeople and I will make this year’s batch, passing the tradition down. The fourth generation in my lifetime so far…

Image of a dirty old recipe card of the fudge recipe. Link in article for the full recipe.
My copied over version of the famous fudge recipe

I’ve blogged the recipe multiple times (see here) and offer it as a sweet bit of gratitude to all of you. Happy Holidays!

Every Village Needs a Clown

A picture of Nancy White with a goofy face surrounded by her two grandchildren. Picture by Alex White.

(Note: This is a resurrected draft from 2009. The language I used in the draft I now know is wrong… a particular term. So I am trying a new term: clown. Please read this in the voice of Nancy White of 20098. And know I still have a challenge describing both what I used to do, and figuring out what I’m going to do next…)

This  morning I had coffee with two people I met online. I’m always struggling to describe what I do.  At one moment today I started to say I was an clown savant around  online stuff. But really, I’m  more on the clown side than the savant. And proud of it.

You see, I think every village needs its clownt. The person who will ask the dumb question out loud, who will utter something half baked, who is not afraid to fall flat on their face, with enough sense of humor to get up again. Better yet, if they can get up with grace. I aspire to that grace.

Remember, the village clown has permission to say the emperor has no clothes, that the sky is falling or that the strawberries are ripe, right as they have the juice dripping down their chin. The clown is not just for amusement or entertainment, but for sensing things, for voicing the unspoken and trying out the slightly outrageous. They have permission because they are, well, idiots. They can be loved and forgiven, tolerated and cared for.

What a delightful role. I think I have found my niche. Now, however, I have to define what village means when one lives a life both online and offline. Hmmmm…..

Uncertainty/Agreement Matrix

I have started going through the 419 draft blog posts sitting in my WordPress dashboard. Some are simply links of things I found interesting, and alas, many of those links (2006, 2015) are now dead and those drafts are deleted. There are a few nuggets.

I came upon this little doodle that emerged from/by people at the 2008 gathering of process practitioners, Nexus for Change. (Nexus continues to grow and thrive focusing on the domain of whole systems change. There are three videos which try and tell the story of its evolution.)

The image is of an agreement/certainty matrix based on the work of Ralph Stacey. I continue to use it as part of my Liberating Structures repertoire and it has infused and informed many other process approaches.

What attracted me to resurrect this image and post it is that there is still such resonance for me today. Much of my work of the past five years has been in this area of low certainty and low agreement – the stuff in the upper right hand side of the image. And of course the invitation into each piece of work has often been in the lower left – clients thinking they were working in higher agreement and certainty, only to discover they were not.

This shift of understanding where we place and understand our work (play, relationships, etc.) is both liberating, daunting and, sometimes, frustrating. It calls upon different skills and expertise. The lessons of the COVID era illustrate this. Just when we think we understand what is happening and how we might respond, things change. We have to find that space between “just do something useful today ” and live with the uncertainty and “unknowing.”

Photo of a hand drawing of an Agreement-Certainty matrix in various colors of pen.

From the Principles Chart on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

At the same time, this does not mean we ignore the lower left. There are things we can do with some amount of certainty. One that seems to have been somewhat abandoned is the choice to care about every person around us, and to act with kindness. Our uncertainty seems to have nudged many of us (USA I’m looking at you) towards self-preservation, or even outright selfishness, as if we deserve something. In uncertainty, all bets are off, including our past sense of entitlement.

What does this image tell me today? Keep ahold of the principles of our best selves and practice them together, with certainty and agreement. And let go of things that prevent us from seeing and experimenting with possibility in the areas of high uncertainty and disagreement. A classic wicked question and filled with potential dissonance. And possibility.

Part of a larger photo set from Nexus for Change in 2008 https://www.flickr.com/photos/choconancy/albums/72157604309184882