This message was sent through the Art of Hosting email list, asking the AoH Stewards to respond.
"Toke, Tim, Sera and Marianne have been meeting around the Art of Hosting Boulder (Nov.'06) and would like to invite you and your questions in. There is an electric feel to this for us about this AoH, with many practitioners from many fields coming together...
Before hosting this holographic gathering we would like to tune into the heart of the Art of Hosting network ...
How to go even deeper
How to have an understanding at all levels of the organization at all times
that this is an operating process
How to help senior organizational leaders release control
” Sensing into what is next, into how we ultimately "throw this work in the river" and live through into another interation of the pattern together (not that there is any urgency...but still)
” Wrapping the gift of the AoH approach in languages that communicate and active its deepest essences with anyone.
” The challenge of the finger pointing at the moon. How does one talk about the practice of hosting that underlies and generates the art of the practitioner without the practice seeming like yet another tool? ANd so how do we communicate the embodiment of hosting practice?
” Letting go in general, both into the AoH community and then away from it, as I oscillate back and forth. How to do this without getting hooked.
It is easier for me to see how a meeting might be designed than a project managed over the longer term using AoH principles and processes. More than once I have seen the excitement in an AoH room around the emerging vision, only to be followed by inaction, lack of follow-through, or dispersement. I honestly don’t know why this is. Maybe designing high-point events is easier that the day-to-day toil of getting things done. Maybe processes and principles for one or two or five people are not as clear to me (and others) as for large groups. Maybe AoH is still reliant on its stars. Maybe there is more work to do in the area of conflict. Maybe there needs to be an up-front commitment by the clients for longer-term attention, i.e. that hosts need to be more discriminating about the gigs they undertake. Maybe AoH is inherently good at the down side of the U, and more hierarchy and control is needed on the upside?
My questions:
What separates AoH events with long-term outcomes versus those that generate momentary benefit?
How can one use collective wisdom practices within hierarchical situations (and not get run over)?
The AoH as an organizational culture is an emerging process and requires some level of tending and watering. However, I do think that there is a treshold that once crossed feels more like watering and tending than pushing a rock up a hill. We seem to be in this watering, tending and discovering phase. It is hard to articulate to others who came in and out of our organization. It is also the case that our Boards have been working with this as well but are still a bit in the pushing the rock up a hill phase. So learning how to work with these variations of development that are part of the same organization is a challenge. Also I fundamentally don't like the feeling of pushing the rock up the hill. The paradox is that the more I personally let go the less I feel like I am pushing and the more things move forward. However, there is a certain amount of initiating energy that seems to be required to get to that threshold. So I do have questions about initiating a cultural AoH movement?
Brenda Schroeder
The deep question I feel has been under all my life path and that I am now stating explicitly is "How do we find/see the barriers that exist in us that do not allow us to shift to more inspiring, sustainable ways of being? And once we witness these barriers - how can we support each other in removing, knocking down, climbing over those barriers?"
Helen Titchen Beeth
I, too, am intensely curious about how to bring AoH into large, hierarchical organisations. My target is the European Commission - challenged with an immense diversity of cultures as well as some pretty heavy command and control structures, on the one hand and yet stirring and calling for something more flexible, agile and humane... Thankfully we're not alone - the guiding hands of George and Toke have already helped us take the first steps.
Susan Szpakowski
Are meditation and the Art of Hosting mirrors of each other, in that they
are each holding open a space of possibility/emergence, one individual and
the other collective? If so, what can the one learn from the other? What
happens if they are introduced as two expressions of the same deep
principles of openness/boundary?
If we open a space of emergence, do we have some responsibility to keep
holding it open until others can hold it for themselves (to support what
we have begun, as long as the invitation is there)?
Is there a collective journey that is catalyzed/awakened through the AoH
that can be mapped, with guideposts (just as there is for meditation)?
What would it be like to host a province (as in Nova Scotia)?
Toke Moeller
What is the minimum that makes hosting the Art of Hosting ?
How do I host myself ?
Whom do the Art of Hosting serve ?
Who do I serve ?
What could the Art of hosting also be ?
When and Where will we meet as a Fellowship ?
what could be good purposes for such Gatherings ?
How simple can it be ?
Tim Merry
- the incredible and sometimes terrifying speed that things (life) want to self-organise - learning to hold onto my hat and also my centre
Seeing possibility
Sense of connection
Sense of depth - people go where they have not gone before and there is a
sense they could still go deeper
Energy
New eyes
Perspective
Feeling of threads and that whatever work I do is part of a larger and
global thread
Things come up in the AoH processes that would not have space anywhere else
- sometimes risky things
The gifts for me:
” mates and a fellowship in the work
” a generative set of relationships that helps me to see and understand the patterns of work in my world.
” a practice ground of design and facilitation that is animated by love. AoH is the first truly love-based organization I have been a part of.
As a beginner, the Art of Hosting promises a way for people to ride their collective undertakings, rather than have their collective undertakings ride them. AoH is particularly strong – and transferable – at the large group facilitation level and for gatherings that are at the stage of visioning. They also work well when there is a critical mass of shared language, experience or talent. There is a clarity and confidence about how to achieve collective intentions that I greatly appreciate and admire.
Increasingly AoH is who I am and how I work and also a set of technologies.
The circle as a metaphor for community is becoming an archetype that I find myself carrying around. The circle, I believe, is literally in our DNA (it is how our optics work), it is how we both operate and prefer to operate when we strip away all of the other stuff. As such it becomes a barometer for me to measure the emerging health of our organization. The more the circle is operative the more creative and effective the organization and its capacity to accomplish its purpose and mission. When we add "principles of cooperation" to the circle (community) it then becomes a healthy and creative culture. We are becoming a circle not just operating in a circle. We are just really exploring what are and what it means to have principles of cooperation and exploring how they become real in our organization. This all really is happening in our organization.
For me personally it is very fulfilling. I think I have believed for a very long time that if an organization could operate in this way it would be operating from a very high order and could be its most effective at what it is trying to accomplish. By replicating and being this deep pattern it could not help but be a force for sanity and a humaness in our community and in the world.
Brenda Schroeder
The Art of Hosting has given me space, tools, an approach that puts what matters in the centre in a way that we can talk about what is real and matters with respect, safety, trust... and we can find deep, meaningful steps that are possible to take. Rather than seeing the barrier more clearly and feeling more overwhelmed and frozen, hosting gives the space and energy that allows us to face the barriers and walk through.
Susan Szpakowski
For me the people are the greatest gifts--the hosts I have met, their
quality of presence and loyalty to each other and their work, their
ability to hold stresses and strains and real questions without getting
frozen or stuck, the twinkle in the eye and genuine curiosity. Toke,
Marianne to start with, then Tim, Monica, Isabelle, Phil and others have
all been great gifts in my work.
And then too the people that show up in the hosting space, who soften and
open, each one shining as the gift they are, becoming a gentle reminder to
relax into my work, let my guard down.
Also the return to simplicity, echoes of humanity linking us through time.
The circle, the square, the young and the elder, the sacred space of
commun-ity, a campfire site for global villages. A place where
complexities resolve into simplicity without being dumbed down.
Toke Moeller
To me the gifts of the Art of hosting in my life and my work are many, but in essence
- AoH is a way to connect and experience collectively the vibration of life - and the feeling of love and being in our humanity
- it is a pattern that allows us as collectives to meet in the innocent part of us - an to be in conversation that matters to us now
- it is a practice and a discipline that invites and opens a space for the Nowness and real questions to surface
- it is an entrance to our WEness
- it is a field in which wise actions and good steps that create healing are born...
- it is a practice of peace and joy - an approach to deal with the fragmentation and problems in our world
- it is an operating system that can shift the way we think, behave and work together in new, inspiring and powerful ways that actually work
- it is a way we can co create solutions that may not otherwise happen
- it is an Art to be enjoyed, explore and challenged - and held by
- it is a a day to day path
- it is a fellowship of people who I trust deeper
- it offers a different meeting
- it is action and reflection in one
- it is a mystery
AoH is One
a gift
and fun
Tim Merry
- Not being needed anymore - people just knowing it working it and then flying without me
- the incredible feeling of letting go into trust and seeing the sun rise in organisations, communities, schools, governments, myself, people