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Ramu Iyer - 1 week 17 hours ago
Art of Hosting as container, practice and connector...
Submitted by Ria Baeck on April 7, 2008 - 20:18.
Email send out to the ArtofHosting emaillist by Tuesday, on April 7, '08.
Hi friends,
I wanted to share a conversation that started last week at an Art of Hosting for Public Health folks in Nova Scotia. The host team had a rich checkout after several days of deep work in our own constellation and with the participants.
Our checkout discussion flowed into the email exchange below that we wanted to share with the larger list to see what it might spark for other folks...
So...as we open up the discussion...you're invited to pick up the piece...
Take good care, Tuesday
(tip: start reading from the bottom up)
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an impression of a new Aoh-commonwealther
I was one of the more then 50 participants at the AoH in Belgium. It was an unique experience to me. With an happy end. I will write on it in another mail.
But as for now, if you want me to describe the AoH I was part of, I would explain it as a concept offering multiple playing fields to individulals who aspire to go beyond their ego and need the security of a circle of other commonwealthers to prospect and connect.
So: what is Aoh (or has to be)? : a commonwealth
Echo ...eco..eo.o
Lenore: inviting people to be in their own skin...
From the Art of Hosting in Essex, MA over the past few days, what I experienced within our small hosting team check-out, seems to describe what I hear being spoken in the middle here. That AoH is a vessel, container, if you will, as other practices might be- which invites people to be in their own skin, all sides, shadows included (where greatest learnings are- or have been for me). We spoke of how the process, structure (the words start to lose meaning after a while), gave us another level of opportunity to yet go deeper within ourselves - which was born out of the simple beauty of holding and caring for one another - our willingness to be 'human' together.
Always comes back to a simple question I asked a few years ago at a Cafe- What if all that was needed was for human-beings- to connect?
There may be other names for other forms, other practices, at some point which create the same rich nutrients within the soil. It is, as Tuesday said, not the name, but what occurs- what becomes possible, and how we all ulitmately feel within our own skin and soul. That's what we take into our communities, families and so want for the world.
Love,
Lenore
Tim: Art of Hosting is not content but space
I wonder if there is such a thing as a pure Art of Hosting practitioner? ... or whether Art of Hosting is one of many communities of practice and practitioners that help create my own practitionership ... what does it mean to become truly a practitioner of self, a host of self - for me that is how we earn the stripes to be able to host others ... by hosting my own multiplicity, shadow, questions, brilliance, sacredness and irreverance - I am in the training of hosting others ...
I feel that Art of Hosting is not content but space through which multiple realities, truths, humans can flow ... and find commonality together ...
Sitting here after a world cafe for 1300 people in Boston - beauty arose. No one owned it, or could label it - but everyone felt it. I trust that more than any theory, model or brand - that feeling of collective intelligence arising - that feeling of being in community with others - that feeling which reminds me how ancient I am, how ancient we all are together.
Love
Tim
Max: more on 'container'...
My experience of bringing people together to discuss, is that it is neccessary to create a space within which they can find and express the knowledge and dreams they already hold, allowing this to interweave with the knowledge, experience and wisdom of others, until somehow a reaction occurs within which the participants sink to a new level of understanding.
This space itself is a container, and the questions used to advance the process are smaller containers that subdivide this space (though often with fuller exploration, like a 'tardis', they could become larger than the original space within which they were nested!).
The 'art' I think is in making the 'containers' as big and provocative as possible, in order to allow the fullness and diversity of people's contributions, without becoming so broad that the sheer scale and abstractness of the container becomes daunting - the size of the container must therefore relate both to the richness of people's backgrounds, and to their, and their host's skills in exploring this space, and turning what happens into lessons that can be applied beyond that space.
So the question would be - can AOH be a large enough container to allow it's participants to fully express their knowledge and dreams, without losing the central focus that could be it's engine room and definition? What will be the culture of this space, and what will happen at the interface between learning and application?
I would like to see people's answers to these questions - but I would also like to see space for these questions to answer themselves over time.
Max
Holly: being 'enough'...
I sense this question is surfacing in many circles.
Last week, hosting a conversation on-line for Conversation Week, and later in a Gardeners of Peace virtual circle on the phone (a group which has emerged through some AoH meetings), there has been a cycling back towards finding a live balance between being and doing....and it seems to me impulses toward branding or sharing more broadly 'the good news' is part of the tangle of this question.
I would like to voice that I am aware that sometimes when my energy rises to want a more structured or more visible field for this work what I really want is both more personal security that I can find this kind of intimacy in the world, as well as meaning in my work and my life.
Mostly, I love and trust the organic emergence, and know there is a deep intelligence there; that doesn't keep me from also being afraid that it and I somehow will not be 'enough.'
Wondering if that is some of the shadow play here...in a good and real way.
Thank you for reflecting this for me today.
Holly
Wayne: Will it be normal some day...
Charlotte: AoH as next level of democracy
It's a beautiful morning here in Denmark... The sun is trying to get through the icy mist that's still in the air and the thin layer of crystals on the grass are twinkling.. beauuuuuutiful! :-))
This discussion comes very timely for me as I was just yesterday experimenting with the thought of how I would practice my art of hosting if I was the Mayor of this region in Denmark that I live in. It was an interesting experiment and I had some very good reflections in a conversation with my sweet husband afterwards...
What I realized was that I see The Art of Hosting as the next level of democracy. In this world right now democracy is being discussed like never before; Is this or that real democracy or are "they" doing it the right way or can democracy also hold this or that religious approach and so forth... Democracy is - as I see it - not a thing that can be defined as a specific size or shape but a methodology based on some values and philosophies that change as we - humans - change, and as the technologies and knowledges that we develop and use changes. Is democracy a brand? I don't feel it is... even though some people/politicians speak of it as if it is... Maybe they themselves cannot hold/grasp/feel/sense/cope with the fact that that such a thing is under constant development. It would be so much more easy if we could all just agree that "This is it...now we got it!, Let's wrap it nicely, market it, sell it and get rich!" ;-)
Now for me it is exactly the same for AoH. I realized that if I was the Mayor my vision/mission for the region would be to create the next level of democracy by introducing the methodologies, philosophies and values of AoH in some way. It would be to change the system from being semi dynamic to dynamic, to change from political party orientation to an orientation of individual and collective need of all beings, to shift from the practice of humans adapting to the structures to a practice of the structures adapting to our needs. My vision/mission would not be to get a socialistic society or a liberal or anything else, but to get a Hosting society, where solution are found through open dialogue between humans beings that dare speak their real needs and wishes. And ideally I would never have to say: "The art of Hosting".
Well.... it all depends on how we define "Brand" I guess..... I see a Brand as a Concept and I find it difficult to see AoH as a brand/concept just as with democracy. Wanting either of them to be a brand/concept I would fear that it would bring us into the trap of thinking that we know the truth, and for me AoH is exactly about creating space for all the different truths to be present, collectively looking for the area where our truths are overlapping and finding there the minimum structure needed for us to be collectively safe and responsible towards the whole and individually as free as possible.
I'm getting more and more involved in working with development of rural districts in Denmark and I until now I have not used the term "Art of Hosting" when working with local or regional people, wether it is politicians, ngo's or business people. I tell them about my view and understanding of the shift of paradigms and sometimes even about the chaordic field if I believe that it can help us all get to a mutual place of understanding. And I realize that the reason for this is that I don't want to be perceived as a "religious" missionary. Instead I'm trying to be "hosting" in my way of being, working and living... to have the philosophies, values and methodologies integrated in my person, just as being born in a democracy is integrated in my understanding of myself and the world.
Love to all :-))
/Charlotte
Jeannel: as you host yourself, you host everything you touch
Personally, I've felt for a long time (since really immersing myself in this stuff with my thesis last year) that ultimately the Art of Hosting is the Art of Hosting one's Self. It is a personal practice, and anything else in terms of group dynamics or end products is gravy. The beauty of it is, as you Host yourself, you Host everything you touch, and that makes brings it to the realm of group practice. But this speaks to the issues arising from the disconnect between Hosting in a community of practice versus Hosting in a community. It's one thing for all of us to get together and have these amazing hosting experiences, and another to apply them within communities or organizations which may not be as familiar, comfortable, or fluent in these types of processes.
As for the Art of Hosting becoming a brand...I think it is. If it's going to develop legs, it needs to become a brand--something people can recognize and understand. Even if it's a brand for a very personal practice...like different forms of spiritual practice, for example. I remember a while ago people were talking about creating an Art of Hosting Field Book...but that seems to have disappeared from this forum. Perhaps that speaks to the branding issue as well: it's something we would like to have as a recognizable practice, but can't quite codify?
Hmm. Lots to think about before heading to Greece for the Art of Protection gathering...
Sending the San Diego sunshine to warm chilly hands and feet,
Jeannel
Helen: wrestling with our own shadow?
I'm wondering, though, as I sit in my gelid house (heating oil ran out yesterday...) with my gelid children (....:-(), is there anyone in this community striving to turn AoH into a brand? Sometimes I think we are wrestling with our own shadow - the all-too-human desire to fix and control, versus the letting go into collective chaord that we practice together with such joy, but which can be experienced as a risk every time.
I resonate with all you say, here, and wonder if it could ever be any other way?
Warmly (despite the surrounding cold)
Helen
Tuesday: How to make it a living, breathing, growing container?
Thanks for this, Tim. I also found our check out to be rich, as was the entire four days we were together. The echoes are still resonating for me...
So your questions sparked for me:
As we talk about AoH as a community of practitioners, what if the practice we were referencing was simply the practice of moving deeper and more fully into our essential selves?
And so we have figured out some wise ways to do this together (the methodologies, philosophies, or hosting practices), but it becomes less about the doing of these practices and more about the being together in a way that allows each individual to experience the authenticity, the ferocity, the courage, the gentleness, the depth, and the fire of moving further into who we each are.
Then the community becomes a collective of folks who are practicing the living out of their own unique essences...which would look quite different for all of us, I would guess.
Or even: If AoH is a (not the) container for this community, how do we make it a living, breathing, growing container that can hold all of these evolving individuals? How do we move through and beyond our need to quantify and "contain the container" into a brand while still responsibly stewarding the practices?
Good queries, I think. Feels like digging into these would open up lots of space for possibility - for all of us and the practice.
Much love on a Sunday evening,
Tues.
Tim Merry: Art of Hosting as container...
Written by Tim Merry:
Inspired by our check out today ... as AoH moves to the next level ...
What if the Art of Hosting was the container which allowed all of us to step into our own unique practice of the AoH?
What if the AoH was not one thing but multiple things ... how as we move to the next level of AoH can we be creating space for the interconnected uniqueness of practices and not be building blending and diluting of us all (into a brand)?
How could it be the place that through these connections within and beyond the AoH Community new practices continue to be born?
This is not about anyone becoming like Tim, Toke, Monica, Phil, Tuesday, Chris etc etc but about walking a path to truly being ourselves - whittled down by "the work" to living core.
Love
Tim