Compared to my post from yesterday, this certainly feels like a big shift, going from the sublime to the tactical. At a recent gathering that I facilitated, members of the steering committee of a food system change initiative, local and regional funders, and members of other organizational networks came together to discuss ideas for ensuring the long-term financial sustainability of the committee’s work around ensuring community food security. We came at this from a few different angles, including a conversation about actual and perceived constraints and challenges to supporting this kind of net work. Here is a taste of what came up, which resonates with what I am hearing in other networks as well: Read More
Last week, I had the privilege of spending a few hours with a delegation from Egypt—four young men who were involved in the April 6th revolution and continue to work for democracy in Egypt. They were at the end of a three week tour of the U.S. focused on the role of social media in politics and elections.They were frankly surprised that here, in the country that gave birth to Facebook, Twitter and Google, we not doing more with social media to advance our democracy. Their visit with IISC was to focus on some of the social technology that fuels social change work. Still, I thought to myself, “No pressure!”
“The New American Academy does a tremendous job of nurturing relationships. Since people learn from people they love, education is fundamentally about the relationship between a teacher and student.”
The following post is a commentary from Stowe Boyd – The New American Academy: Post-Industrial At Last. It called my attention because it makes a link between education and collaboration, learning and relationship. See what you all think!
The post below is a repost of a piece by Kathia Laszlo on the “Rethinking Complexity” blog from Saybrook University. It captures a lot of what I am exploring these days about systems thinking as an intellectual exercise to greater embodiment of doing systemically. Enjoy!
A system is a set of interconnected elements which form a whole and show properties which are properties of the whole rather than of the individual elements. This definition is valid for a cell, an organism, a society, or a galaxy. Joanna Macy says that a system is less a thing than a pattern—a pattern of organization. Read More
Last night we came together as IISC to bid farewell to the great Melinda Weekes; we are proud that she is moving on to be the Managing Director of the Applied Research Center. But today’s is not a post about Melinda. It is a post about community.
Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy PhD, is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. She is a respected voice in the movements for peace, justice, and ecology, and interweaves her scholarship with five decades of activism. As the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects, she has created a ground-breaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application. The Great Turning, to which she refers in this clip, is a name for the “adventure of our time: the shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization.”
|Photo by Phillip Chee|http://www.flickr.com/photos/pchee/521027252|
This post comes via our friend and colleague Danny Martin, with whom I have recently had the pleasure to present at the Bioneers by the Bay Conference. Another of Danny’s posts appeared here last fall on deep listening. As you will see, he is an old soul, a wise man in the best sense of the word, and his words a beacon for our collective future.
I am privileged to be one of four conveners of The Berry Forum for an Ecological Dialogue at Iona College, NY. Thomas Berry who died a couple of years ago was the prophet of a new era that he called ‘The Ecozoic’ which he described as an era founded on mutually enhancing human-earth relations. Read More
The issue of personal ecology is one of my biggest concerns in our ever accelerating world. It is the biggest pain point I find among leaders and organizations. It is a sense of being overwhelmed, of trying to do too much, of never having a break. And worst of all – it can be addictive.
I asked my colleagues for suggestions about grassroots leaders and organizations doing great things in the world. One suggestion was Boston-based Reflect & Strengthen, which turned ten in 2011.
As you can see from my new photo, I’ve decided to stop dyeing my hair. I am now officially a gray-haired woman. When I turned 55 last year, I made a deeper commitment to authenticity, and that included looking in the actual mirror (and not just the mirror of my conscience).
I am made greater by the sum of my connections, and so are my connections
– Stowe Boyd
Today, Curtis Odgen and I will be hosting an LLC Webinar on Collective Leadership. We are talking about a significant shift in how we organize our work for social transformation. Stowe Boyd, the net’s social anthropologist, recently posted what he calls the beginnings of an elevator pitch on “New Mutualism.” I found it resonant, relevant and tremendously exciting; here it goes:
This is the 26th official celebration of the national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I remember the struggle to establish the holiday and wonder what Dr. King himself might think of what it has become.
