A better way to regenerate a community

I’m writing this as we prepare to start our first permaculture weekend with refugees and migrants just outside Granada, Spain. If it’s a success we’ll facilitate a permaculture design course over six months where participants will gain tools and a certificate that will enable them to get a job, or join our project. It’s one of many small steps towards our bigger vision. Regeneration Project: Granada is made up of people from many countries and backgrounds who are working together to regenerate depopulated rural villages in the south of Spain, creating homes with and for a mix of migrant and local communities. Our hope is that we can develop diverse ecosystems and diverse communities, and more humane approaches to the resettlement of refugees. It’s a long-term project that aims to be positive, inspiring and replicable.

Zero waste

We have been drawing on permaculture principles as we develop the project – for example, applying ‘zero waste’ (valuing and making use of all resources) to people, as well as rubbish. In the future we want to grow organic crops by mixing traditional techniques with modern/renewable technologies. Before that, we hope to see local people, refugees and anyone who’s keen to move to the area setting up a network of small startups: a bakery, a vegetable box scheme, arts and cultural activities, creating viable, dignified and sustainable livelihoods. To lay the foundations of the project, we have begun a careful process of participation and dialogue between local communities, refugees, businesses, NGOs and local government. This involves creating opportunities for people to listen to one another’s needs and move forward with an understanding of the collective and ideas from us all. Through an ongoing process of action reflection, responding to feedback and adapting as new situations arise, we hope we can develop an approach that can be replicated in other parts of the world, where the current system is overwhelmed. I’ve been a part of Regeneration Project: Granada from the beginning. It began life during the Eroles Project’s ‘A Camp as if People Matter’ residency in August 2016. Over three weeks, working together in the hills of Spain, people with experience of migration and people who work with refugees and migrants shared perspectives on borders and belonging, and developed solutions. As has been well documented, refugees and migrants arriving in Europe are often penned into camps in inhumane conditions with few facilities. Even when people are granted leave to stay they are often isolated, placed in poor-quality housing without support networks or community. There has to be a better way.

Shared fight

I shared my knowledge of the migratory routes taken from my village in Gambia through northern Africa into Europe – a practice I have been actively working to reduce by promoting sustainable local employment in my area. I also shared our fight against degraded landscapes, anti-mining protests in November 2015 and writing letters to the former dictator president, demanding that he stop mining precious minerals in the coastal villages where I lived. In turn, I was very moved by a presentation from Safi and Habiba, now part of Regeneration Project: Granada, who shared their understanding of what’s happening in Syria. The bonds of radical friendship that grew between us during our time together are the foundations of the team’s spirit today. When I left the Eroles project, I was excited about working to support the team from Gambia, and about sharing new tools and practices with my colleagues. However, just after I left I received an arrest warrant from the Gambian government for my environmental activism. After being warned not to return I needed to seek asylum. In an instant, I had become one of the people I thought I’d be working to support. Now we’re looking at a number of villages near Granada where we hope to work with local people to bring them back to life. In one village, the former population of 3,000 has reduced to 50. By working together, not only can we create real homes for refugees and asylum seekers, we can bring life back to rural areas with local people. The process has been tough, but my involvement in Regeneration Project: Granada means that I can actively build a future I want. I don’t feel dependent on the official system because I am part of an amazing support network, but I know that’s not true for most people in my situation. That’s why our project wants to co-create a new model of shared community. We can achieve so much if we work together to improve the quality of life of local people and newcomers, while also regenerating the landscape. We know it’s not going to be easy, but for me, it’s the only way forward. Regeneration Project: Granada is looking for people from all walks of life to support, participate, partner and fund the project to enable it to create a new living model of community

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The role of Civic spaces within Democracy

In this blog Ruth Cross co-founder of Eroles Project shares her experience of attempting to sense the ‘Social Field’ of a civic space with two groups of political activists, academics, politicians, teachers, writers, arts graduates, coaches and facilitators, from various European countries. She explains how, by becoming more receptive to ourselves, each other and our surroundings, a clearer understanding can be gained of what is really happening in our everyday political lives. This awareness offers a more reliable place to discern what actions are needed and the ability to notice what repercussions our actions have.

 
  “When cities and neighbourhoods have thriving civic spaces, residents have a strong sense of community; conversely, when such spaces are lacking, people may feel less connected to each other.” * *Projects for Public Spaces
 

During the residencies we became interested in civic spaces as an opportunity to enact and practice democracy. These common areas in all towns and cities, although in many countries declining rapidly through privatisation, provide a space for cultural traditions, demonstrations and protests, inhabiting and relaxing, celebrations, social and economic exchange, guerilla gardening and engaging with public art. Activities where we as citizens can come together to meet, exchange and shape the fabric of our political lives (Our arrival to Politicking).

A question overlooked by people in democratic society whether they are aware of it or not, is who has responsibility for ensuring that the activities in civic spaces welcome all voices? We believe as citizens we all are. This question becomes more complex within POPOS’s, Privately Owned Public Open Spaces, and in situations where the closure of civic spaces is threatened, where then does the responsibility lie for keeping these spaces open for civic life?

Democracy and political freedom

Based on a discussion lead by residency participant Patricia Shaw, sharing her in depth reading of philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt, we came to understand democracy in the public realm as a collective willingness to accept our own and others plurality. We are different, and that is ok. Arendt suggests we experience political freedom in the moments we act amongst our peers, where ‘peers’ are the uniquely differing yet related others in which our own uniqueness is possible. Action takes up the freedom we always potentially have to respond spontaneously in word and deed to events that are happening and to accept in this way responsibility for our participation.

Why is this important on a personal and political level?

For many of us in private we feel comfortable to ‘be ourselves’ with others. In public spaces however, particularly in states and cultures where democracy is crumbling or never existed, censorship and control create a fear of difference, which conditions ‘normalised’ behaviours. Thus reducing the freedom we feel that we have to interact and express ourselves as “we are”.

Many of us are influenced by the increasing demagoguery (leaders in a democracy who gain popularity by exploiting prejudice and ignorance among the common people, ‘whipping up the passions of the crowd’ and shutting down reasoned deliberation). We find it difficult to distinguish between what is true and the swaying of mass opinion, and in our civic lives many of us don’t have the skills to express when we feel dissonance when we encounter a behaviour or action that we feel is unjust. Learning to be acute with our discernment can be challenging in current ‘post-truth’ era. It is these times of seeming democracy that require us to be sharper and more awake to keep our civic spaces, our civic freedom, our minds, from closing down and lazily slipping into numbness, othering and blame.

Oppression is easy to identify when political leaders tweet anti-Muslim videos, potentially inciting the graffiti I see when I look out my window in Madrid – No Islam (with thankfully a more recent addition – iphobia). But when it takes subtler forms, it is less easy to notice when a diversity of opinions, experience and behaviours are being closed down.

Staying open to whether diversity of experience is welcomed or not within our workplace, community gardens and town halls requires us to be attentive. If our neighbourhoods are accepting of difference, it is harder for the state, political systems, corporations or any other form of control to corrupt and corrode community cohesion.

 

A constant practice

With a background in choreography and a freelance career working creatively with changemakers and activists I have been interested in these questions for some time. A few years ago I came across Social Presencing Theatre a methodology, developed by Arawana Hayashi. It combines many of my favorite things in one practice; body-awareness, movement, experiential learning, Shambhala teachings, individual, organisational and social change. It’s being used in business, government, and civil society settings, in Brazil, Indonesia, China, India, Europe and the United States.As well as a theory of practice, Social Presencing Theatre is a series of exercises which reveal patterns and relationships in a system to make visible both current reality, and the deeper – often invisible – leverage points for creating profound change.

Village in the Village

Village is a 20-minute exercise where participants move through a designated space choosing spontaneously to run, walk, lie, turn, stand, greet. Its aim is to expand awareness of patterns, by reducing language and limiting movement, in order to learn something about human relating within systems. Village, and Social Presencing Theatre in general, is not usually done in civic spaces, but as an attempt to practice the theory we had been discussing in the privacy of our Eroles Project residency, took it to the local town square in Tremp.

Patricia, an elegant woman in her 60’s, lying in the middle of square and walking on benches, introduced a surprisingly playful energy to the group. Later a woman from Tremp with a buggy and older kids, started running through the square following participants, and again the group imitated her. From then on there was more interest from Tremp citizens.

One participant’s feedback, “… very liberating, I always have an agenda in my head and therefore an absence of genuine observation, but now I was surprised by the amount I noticed, and how fun it was to just be present in a space.”

The patterns that emerged were defined by the big metal contemporary structures in the vast pedestrian zone. Shapes and rhythms formed. Patterns repeated.

How long do you have to know a space to contribute or enact in it? This was particularly pertinent for the second group who arrived in late August 2017 at the time of the Barcelona terror attacks. There was police presence on the way to the town. Thus, the energy of the group was more hesitant. Some felt a real a block about being in a public space. There was a larger fear of being seen as “strange”.

“I felt on edge because I didn’t understand what was allowed, and I didn’t want to offend the cultural norms.” This response is a great example of someone being attentive to their truth in relation to what is happening in the social field. This kind of awareness of oneself is essential in order to solve the inner dissonance that prevent us from making authentic and truthful decision of participation, ie, the decision not to participate just because everyone else is. Learning how to notice what fear, as well as other emotional responses, feels like in our bodies is an important part of reclaiming our power within public spaces.

Collective insights from this experience

Village increases our ability to pay attention. In 20 minutes we become a 4D model of an ecosystem in which we witness patterns of movement emerge, adapt and evolve. I find interesting the parallels between this 4D experience and how social movements grow and die. On a micro level, a pattern of movement, let’s say jumping off a bench, introduced in the town square and copied regularly by other participants, can be equated to the ripple effects that spread through our societies resulting in new cultural norms.

In this exercise through widening our awareness we are learning to understand the relationship between how we participate and the impact that has on the whole system. If our participation is alive, responsive, intune with our inner sensations whilst simultaneously being attentive to what is happening around us, we become more available in each moment, and better able to discern which actions, words and behaviours (our own and others) feel true and which ones don’t.

I have begun to use this as a tool for observing patterns of relating and co-creating cultures with migrants, refugees and local people in Regeneration Project Granada, Eroles’ new project in the south of Spain.

One Italian participant from The Apennines, expressed motivation to facilitate Village in earthquake impacted areas to sense the impact of the devastation in the body and to better understand the relationship between the ruined space and the potential of interacting anew, of creating new cultural responses.

In what other spaces can this practice be helpful? I believe that a way to find the answer might start with identifying the spaces in which we feel the most distance between our true selves and the place around us. Ultimately what we are talking about is ensuring public spaces are places for all voices and all bodies, regardless of race, ability, sexuality or religion. This self knowing process can contribute to the liberation of our spontaneous, creative selves from the repression and (self) censorship that tends to elicit within us and our bodies.

 

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Our Arrival to Politicking

This summer Eroles Project hosted two international residencies in Spain focusing on Deepening Citizenship and Emerging Politics. During the second residency 10 people gathered for 12 days in the rural village of Eroles to share their understanding, experience and practice of Emerging Politics. In this blog post they attempt to (re)define politicking, a word that they feel could be the beginnings of shaping a new philosophy towards doing politics consciously.

 

Les mots nous relient au monde mais, dans le même temps, définitions rigides nous enferment. Words connect us to the world but, at the same time, rigid definitions confine us.

Alors, plutôt que de créer une définition unique, il s’agissait plutôt de révéler au sein du groupe les différences d’appréciation, de les écouter, de les savourer, de les observer résonner en nous. So, rather than creating a single definition, we wanted to reveal the different perspectives within the group, to listen to them, to savour them, and to observe them resonating within ourselves.

“Politique” – Dès que le son du mot s’est déployé dans le silence attentif du groupe, nous en avons immédiatement ressenti la subtilité et la saveur. “Politicking” – As soon as the sound of the word unfolded in the attentive silence of the group, we immediately felt its subtlety and flavor.

Politicking semblait transporter avec lui toute la poésie que “politics” ne pourrait jamais incarner. Politicking seemed to carry with it all the poetry that “politics” could never embody.

Un mot libre du poids de l’histoire et (pour nous à ce stade) n’ayant aucun sens pré-établi. A word free from the weight of history and (for us at this stage) with no pre-established meaning.

Mais une excitation de l’idée de “faire” la politique de façon active et consciente. But bringing an excitement of the idea of “doing” politics actively and consciously.

 

Can re(defining) a word catalyse a new way to consider and engage with politics? During the residency we began a co-authored document, 10 of us thinking together, typing in our own language, attempting to (re)define the word politicking as a verb, in a way that was true for us – both during the residency and out in our civic and political lives.

We didn’t want to create a fixed manifesto, but rather a call to action/reflection, a call to co-create a living, contemporary definition, with the power to catalyse a new way to consider and engage with politics and being political.

Our aim is to add a definition to Wikipedia; to spark people around the world to engage in the conversation and contribute to the evolution and enlivening of the verb politicking. This blog is our first step to spreading this idea, and therefore we’d love to hear what you think. Please add comments, thoughts and suggested amendments at the bottom and get in touch!

So, what exactly do we think are the qualities of politicking?

Empowerment

Politicking changes the passive and often disempowering noun of Politics into a verb, for the people and from the people. It involves a shift in ideology – and – the willingness for both reflexivity and enacting. It leaves the ‘us vs. them’ dichotomies and debates of far away partisan party politics and enters our daily lives. And it can show us that we live those lives through ‘sensemaking’, ‘decision making’ and ‘co-creating’ with those around us. And it is those interactions exactly, which are at the heart of everything political, regardless of whether they might happen in a national parliament or in our garden.

 

Response-able participation

Participation is happening all the time whether we are aware of it or not. We are all participating in the systems in which we live, we are all co-creating our world and lives with every step we take outside and every one we don’t. Politicking should be where our participation becomes conscious, intentional and “respons-able.”

 

Publicness

At the moment we often think of politics happening inside big buildings. But we found that, for us, politicking actually happens best in public spaces, as we discovered when we took an embodiment exercise to the streets in our local town. To inhabit and shape the public realm reminds us that it actually belongs to all of us and it can’t be built upon, closed down or privatised so easily. It is the realm where our interactions become open for everyone to join.

   
The more aspects of life that can be moved from private reign to public realm, the better it is for politics. P. J. O’Rourke
   

Politicking is neither about the collective nor the individual, but the I in the we and the we in the I. This inter-relationship and the extraordinary creativity, caring and capacity to self-organise that can emerge from it.

 

E se fosse in italiano, sarebbe politiCARE, una polis che CARE, si prende cura. And if it were in Italian, it would be poliCARING, a polis* that CARES, takes care. *an ancient Greek word that refers to a ‘city’ and the body of citizens within it.

 

Politicking is most alive when ‘being me and also us’ – as coined by Alison Stallibrass in her review of the Peckham Experiment (1926-1950), a pioneering exploration of wellness in community. One realisation we had during the residency, when tracking back over the projects/movements we’d been involved with, was how much more of a sense of belonging and deep change we had felt when our projects had been at least somewhat place based; rooted in relationship with place and people. We think politicking happens best locally whilst also sensing, exchanging and ‘net-weaving’ (as opposed to ‘networking’) transnationally.

Consciousness

 
To politick or not to politick? Shakespeare (interpreted)  

Politicking is available for free, for and with everyone, at all times. It has been forever and will keep evolving as our societies evolve.

 
In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. George Orwell  

We feel it’s time to make ‘politicking’ a more spoken about thing, so as to bring awareness and consciousness to the way in which we are doing it. You’re doing it right now in fact, as you read, reflect, comment on this blog. During the residency we found that when we questioned our comfortable ways of being together and reflected on what we were avoiding – rich and potent stuff came up. For example when we challenged the assumptions of power in the room, we were able to move to a more risky and truly co-creative space.

An invitation to change

So we came to the point that if all the above is part of it, politicking can open space for fascinating dialogue and action. A space for multiplicity, diversity and wisdom. It values listening with curiosity, with the intent to understand and not just to respond. A fantastic example is the Indignados movement in Spain that began in May 2011 (known as 15M). During this time millions of people gathered in assemblies on the streets and squares of Spain’s cities. Thousands of people learnt to ‘make politics’ through taking part in collective decision making processes about things that mattered to them. This in turn helped to create a ‘politicking’ culture which began to erode outdated structures of gender, race, wealth and status. 15M has been the catalyst for multiple collaborative political parties, like Marea Atlantica; a member of which, Diego Jiménez, also joined the residency.

Politics is repetition. It is not change. Change is something beyond what we call politics. Change is the essence politics is supposed to be the means to bring into being. Kate Millett  

Awareness of the whole system

Bringing our whole self into active being with others, understanding the need to ‘become with’ one another, our surroundings, our circumstance, the ecosystem, the terrain of everyday life.

 
…along with the other animals, the stones, the trees, and the clouds, we ourselves are characters within a huge story that is visibly unfolding all around us, participants within the vast imagination, or Dreaming, of the world. David Abram  

On a vision quest where we spent a night on the mountain by ourselves, listening, watching, and becoming with. Taking this idea outside of Eroles it evokes a relationality that invites us to consider ourselves and our politicking as more than our immediate identities, nations, lineages and even beyond ourselves as a species.

 
No decision should be made without consulting and taking into account the responses of those most affected, usually the poorest of people and the earth. Dalai Lama

Learning as we go

Both we as people and the world as a whole is, and will always be, changing. As such the way in which people politick is and will be in flow; learning and adapting as the conditions and contexts change over our lifetime and in the generations to come. Even though the goals may be transient, and the process emergent, we need to trust and fully commit to our ideas and projects. As it is in the doing and being that our life’s activities evoke change. And this chaos becomes a wonderful thing, because it opens the door for change in the first place. At least this is what we felt at the end of our residency, carrying our culture of politicking now out into the world and to the places where we are rooted, while having found new roots in our Eroles companions as well.

What dictionaries say on Politicking –

Cambridge Dictionary

Politicking noun UK ​ /ˈpɒl.ə.tɪ.kɪŋ/ US ​ /ˈpɑː.lə.tɪk.ɪŋ/ mainly disapproving The activity of trying to persuade or even force others to vote for a particular political party or candidate.

Online Urban Dictionary

Politicking Verb. The recounting of long tales, stories, or jokes while holding a lit bowl of marijuana, to the exasperation of those assembled. “He wasted half the bowl politicking!”

The Free Dictionary pol·i·tick (pŏl′ĭ-tĭk) intr.v. pol·i·ticked, pol·i·tick·ing, pol·i·ticks, pol′i·tick′er n. To engage in or discuss politics.

and currently on Wikipedia Noun – politicking (plural politickings) (often derogatory) The act of engaging in politics, or in political campaigning. Verb – Politicking present participle of politick

Please add your thoughts and responses in the comment section, we love the idea of more people exploring, discussing and defining what it is to politick!

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Deepening Citizenship

Casita de Colores is a beautiful expansive stone house in Eroles a tiny hamlet in Catalonia. It is where the Eroles Project was born, and it’s been the home of Eroles residencies over the last three summers. Change-makers from around the world have joined the residencies since 2015, exploring themes that feel relevant to our times. We gather together to reflect, exchange, and collaborate in designing projects, building networks and taking action.

During this month of writing blogs, as well as making a film and a podcast for Transition Network, we intend to share our experiences, approaches and learnings, hopefully sparking questions and important conversations. In this first blog, I will attempt to share some experiences with you from past residencies; with the hope that you will sense some sort of recognition when reading them, and create your own understanding of what it is that we do and why we do it.

What is the Eroles Project?

I could give several answers. It is a network of change-makers connected through a set of evolving principles, annual learning-for-action residencies, an online community platform and a library of resources. It is a threshold marked by a cobalt blue door. It is a small core team of organisers, a growing number of alumni and an advisory board. It is projects and workshops that root around the world. Mostly though, in whichever form, I feel it is an opportunity to inquire.

Eroles Project manifests itself primarily through annual gatherings in the village of Eroles, taking the form of co-created residencies. A different theme is chosen every year framing the work we do together here; Climate Justice in 2015, Borders 2016, and this year, Democracy. These are chosen according to what seems to be most alive, for us as organisers and also in the collective consciousness. Current events have been attracting huge amounts of attention around democracy; the rise of Podemos, Brexit, Trump… Yet these big P politics are not the only things going on. If we look at politics with a small p – how we are participating in the public realm individually and together, how we act and respond as citizens to events happening around us, how new networks are growing through the cracks of more rigid political structures – there is a lot of work being done here too. This latter frame is what we have been reflecting on, exploring and practicing in Eroles this summer during two residencies: ‘Deepening Citizenship’ and ‘Emerging Politics’.

Radical Friendship

One of the most significant outcomes of each residency is the ongoing friendships that are made. The conversations that happen at meal times, during breaks, cooking together, hanging out at the lake, in the (one and only) local pizza place, are the ones that seem to truly deepen the relationships within the group. After dinner, sitting in the garden with Jane and Lukas, participants from Deepening Citizenship, looking at the UNESCO-protected sky (yes it’s one of the clearest skies in Europe), and we’re all giggling out of fatigue, I know I am sitting with friends.  

Creating these bonds across movements is what has ended up being one of the clearest keys to fostering action and sustaining engagement – understanding fully that one is not alone, through spending time with each other in different ways. These relationships, or radical friendships (as we refer to them), are the foundations upon which we have been able to create projects and take action after each residency, and put our learnings into concrete practice.

Let me give some examples.

Eroles at United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21)

As a result of the first residency in 2015 for example, the Eroles community collaborated with a Parisian squatter crew, creative climate activists from India, Bolivia and South Africa, and other European collectives, to build and host a convergence hub in Paris during COP21. In November and December 2015 over 100 people from a huge diversity of places and backgrounds lived in this space in Paris; exchanging stories of resistance, co-creating actions and living a possible future in the midst of disempowering climate negotiations. It was an amazing experience of self organisation. The Eroles community hosted an opening party for internationals and locals engaging with climate activism and ran public events on reimagining activism. We also hosted The UN Canteen, a performance game which invited audiences to ‘bring a vegetable to the theatre’, sit at a table of eight strangers and collaborate to cook dinner together. On entering, depending on the weight of their vegetable, audience members were assigned a power card relating to a UN delegate and the qualities and powers of the country they represented. It was a simulation of the complexity of power, resources and relationship to climate change between countries in the official conference in Le Bourget. Audience members had varying resources, food and time for cooking, some had access to the spice corner, some became lobbyists and tried to convince the delegates to add salami to their a vegetarian meal. Taking place over dinner time – with 40 plus hungry audience members – people got really into the game. One of the surprising things while debriefing was how many people reported feelings of compassion (many for the first time) towards those inside Le Bourget trying to reach consensus on viable and realistic climate agreements.

Eroles without Borders

Our 2016 “A Camp as if People Matter” residency had the explicit focus of seeding a project with refugees and migrants which responded to migration in a positive way. After an intense three weeks together, along with some serendipity, the Regeneration Project: Granada, is now well underway to regenerate lives and land in the Alpujarras, Granada. The team who met during the residency have spent the year mapping the area and meeting with stakeholders to understand the context and what’s needed. They have set up an association with refugees and migrants who are now running permaculture, agroecology and social inclusion trainings in Granada, and over the next few years will be setting up ecological enterprises, cooperatives and sustainable livelihoods. The ultimate aim of this project is to contribute to re-populating a network of semi-abandoned villages with a new co-created governance, weaving traditional ways of doing things with a celebration of a plurality of cultures. Ruth Cross and Maria Llanos from the Eroles project have gained many insights and examples of ‘Emerging Politics’ from this summer’s residency to take back to the team in Granada.

Microsystem – Macrosystem

As each year goes by, it becomes clearer that every big theme we explore, be it Climate Justice or Democracy, is a different manifestation of the same root problems. In a complex system, issues such as power, privilege and the delusion of separation, reveal themselves in the social, political and ecological spheres. Although the participants each year hold slightly different questions—What is creative action? How are borders inhibiting us to meet each other as human to human? What does being an engaged citizen mean to me? The inquiry is still the same – at Eroles, we are trying to see what is blocking us from participation here, in these very residencies, by looking at how power and privilege is playing out in the group. From there we move out to how we each deal with power in the wider world, in order to notice our patterns in what we consent to by being passive or by the way we act. Only when we can meet these things in ourselves can we see how they play out more clearly in other contexts. With this learning we can practice how and when to step up, take a lead and take action in ways that consider the whole of the system; be that the Eroles residency group, a Transition Network project or an emerging political party.

“Thinking” Together

We experiment with using different levels of structure and decision-making models, various forms of knowing (play, intellectual, sensory, embodied, emotional) so as to create spaces that can engage and embrace diversity  

Although it is important to create smooth processes in groups, we believe even deeper learning lies in understanding how to act in periods of discomfort, confusion or uncertainty. Reality is not always safe or comfortable.

My experience is that social change gatherings, retreats and transformative education spaces often try to manage expectation by creating safe containers, having equal talking time, sustaining engagement through well developed group dynamics and minutely facilitated workshops. We believe that these well honed tools carry the great risk of actually dampening emergence and preventing people to “think” together. Inspired by our teacher Patricia Shaw, and the work of Hannah Arendt, this is how I’ve come to understand what it means to “think” together. It is not merely about co-creation or collaboration, it is not about people coming together and sharing what they each think they already know, but rather learning through the actual being together in our plurality of experiences, and carefully discerning our judgements and actions, to then reveal our careless patterns of thought and become more aware of how we are actually participating. This work requires attentiveness, to our full experience of what is actually happening. Of course, this work can be uncomfortable (as Madelanne Rust D’Eye recently shared about in The Roots of White Supremacy are in our Bodies), as we venture out of the safe container and really dare to challenge ourselves. I recall a moment during A Camp as if People Matter, the third residency in 2016 on the topic of Borders. We were a group of people from various parts of the world, including Africa, the Middle East and Europe. We were doing an activity around prejudices, role-playing as defenders of racist statements in the media concerning the refugee crisis. It was very uncomfortable, but as we tried to laugh away the situation, mocking the absurdity of the statements, I knew inside me that the discomfort I was feeling came from the fact that a part of me believed the statement I had pretended to defend. And I shared this in the group. The silence was deafening, until another participant also shared that he thought several people in the group actually believed their racist statements. Beyond the border of political correctness, there was a palpable sense of tightening. My feelings of shame, guilt, confusion and fear arose as, out loud to the group, I revealed some of my hidden beliefs. And yet, the way the group came back together, acknowledging that we all hold prejudices within us, felt like we had taken a step further and deeper in understanding what it means to meet each other as humans. Over a much needed cigarette afterwards together with two other participants, the bonds had become noticeably stronger.

Needing Solutions is a trap

We do not want to lull ourselves into a comfortable consensus that “we are the good people”.  Where would this lead us? To a huge political divide, each side equally dogmatic and blaming the other. This constant “othering” replicates the systems we are trying to shift, in that we are still acting with the delusion that we have the solution. As sculptor and activist Jens Galschiot said in a Skype to Eroles just a few days ago, “the idea that you need to have a solution is a trap.” I am reminded of my agency, by which I mean to say that my choice not to consent, is a valid enough place to start acting from, going forward, wherever that may take me, without the need to come to some neat conclusion.  

The nature of the public realm can be precisely that. A space that does not aim for people to agree with each other and reach conclusions, but to investigate, acknowledge, and appreciate the differences of our experiences, creating a space that more closely reflects the realities and pluralities of life and allows for something truly new to emerge. I want to live in a place where we are free to be me and also us.

The Eroles Project started as, and indeed still is, a collaborative experiment. We test different ways of gathering and organising in order to discern when change happens. How much structure is needed to foster collaboration? How does one remain fluid and thus adaptive to unpredictable changes? How professional or personal should we be, as organisers? As each residency finishes we gather our thoughts and reflect together on what happened – a process we are in as I’m writing this. One thing that’s clear from the past two years and this year’s residencies—Deepening Citizenship and Emerging Politics— is the importance of friendship; not just with those who we instantly identify with – but with those we initially consider (even if in our hidden beliefs) as other. This has had a huge affect on me and is why I love doing what I do together with the team of Eroles Project. It is what can catalyze action in me, during periods of passivity. If you were to reflect on how you are participating in your family, friendship circles, community or even nation, what blocks might there be? What could catalyse action in you?
 

Here are some concrete steps that can help bring some of these concepts into practice in your family, community, workplace or project:

BEING ME AND ALSO US
  • Create spaces to hear everyone’s voice within your team, family, project by starting the day or meetings with a ‘check-in’ to hear for a minute or two, one-by-one, how people are feeling.
  • Invite someone you don’t know who lives on your street to go for a walk. See what comes up in your conversation. Share the things that concern and inspire you both about your area.
  • On your own, with family or colleagues; go on a sensing journey in the public spaces in your city, town or neighbourhood. What do you see, feel, hear, smell, notice is happening? How are people inhabiting, moving through and using the public space?
DECISION MAKING
  • Before making decisions in your workplace or group, convene whole systems conversations where you get information on how this decision could impact all parts of the whole (people directly and indirectly involved, the environment, animals, the future…)
PARTICIPATION
  • During your next family, work or community meeting focus on the question: how and why I am participating and what motivates me to participate. After the meeting take a few minutes to write down what you noticed about your participation. Encourage others to do the same and take time to listen to each others notes.
BUILDING TRUST AND COMPASSION
  • Spend time together caring for collective project, work or community spaces for example sharing cooking, washing-up, cleaning and making the space beautiful.
  • Celebrate your family, team, project by sharing personal stories around a theme that feels relevant. ‘Tell me a personal story about… ’
Some questions we love:
  • The last time you did something for the first time.
  • When you disrupted the status quo.
  • Moments of perseverance or courage.
 

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Lush Spring Prize for Regeneration Project: Granada

The aim of this prize generated by Lush (the ethical high street cosmetics company), is to raise awareness of regeneration and its potential, and to explore how to best communicate the idea of regeneration. Regeneration Project: Granada received the 2017 intentional project award, alongside ten other projects receiving young, established and influential project awards.

 

The Spring Prize Event took place in Emerson College in Sussex, UK; a heartful place that provided a welcoming backdrop for this very inspiring and surprisingly unconventional event. Over two days the eleven winners from all over the world and the shortlisted projects from the UK had a chance to meet, exchange and learn from each other in a personal and informal atmosphere.

This was supported by innovative formats such as a basar, skillsharing times, workshops and open discussions, creating spaces for the different projects to meet and exchange experiences, knowledge and questions. Some topics approached in those sessions were for example how to communicate regenerative ideas, designing regenerative working environments, creating a platform that gives voice to marginalized communities…

On the first day, Ruth Cross one of the co founders of Eroles Project and team member of Regeneration Project: Granada led an embodied experience exercise where all participants could meet each other as ‘human to human’ and share in a non-verbal space. I noticed that after a little while some people sat down, assuming that something about this exercise was too much or somehow alienating for them, that they were escaping the intensity of the eye contact, or non-verbal encounters with others. Later on I talked to one of them; what he told me turned this moment into one of those moments that expands the box, confronting my personal beliefs and assumptions. He said that he could see that in our culture those kind of exercises were very much needed in order to get into our bodies and to become present. Yet, to him this seemed a bit strange as people in his culture had a naturally much more embodied way of meeting each other, and that where he comes from this exercise would not have been necessary.

He represented a project called the Timbaktu Collective, a project that works for sustainable development in drought areas in Andrah Pranesh in India, working with small farmers and especially focusing on the most marginalized, such as women, children, youth and dalits. They work collectively, cultivating common land. The thought of working hard the whole day for something that gives no private returns, without suspecting that your neighbour might be working less hard then you or getting more in return is probably quite a strange one for most people coming from western societies. I was deeply inspired by this trust in the collective, valuing your family and community before your individual needs. I imagine that this might be one of the major challenges that we will face with the Regeneration Project: Granada; the question of how to distribute ownership and yield. Especially as we aim to work with people from many different cultures, differing substantially in the relation between individual, family and society.

 

The ceremony itself was simple and heartful, the judges handing in the prize in the form of a green soap. Many project representants expressed that receiving this prize gave the people in their projects confidence that they were going in the right direction, that their work was worthwhile. The same is true for us; receiving this prize and being part of this network of wonderful and inspiring people gave me an enormous boost of trust, hope and energy to continue the work.

A massive thank you to Lush and Ethical Consumer for this beautiful event and the possibilities they provide with this prize, for creating a world where we give back more than we take!

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CONVERSATIONS FOR SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE MIDST OF COMPLEXITY

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We gathered in a circle in the beautiful central space at the Co-lab, the setting. The first invitation is to arrive and ground into the silence. Taking a minute to notice how you are, where are you.

We moved from sharing the silence to engaging in a quick fun round revealing the untold stories of ourselves, moving away from standard presentation to discover through improvisation new qualities of us.

The room was incredibly diverse, from government officials, social entrepreneurs, NGO workers, artists, activists, students…

Looking towards this quote from M. Wheatley that we just put up on the wall “All change, even very large and powerful change, begins when a few people start talking with one another about something they care about”, the first call opened the space to share our deep questions, our diverse knowledge. We allowed the colourful diversity of experience guide us through today’s enquiry.

The question that brought us together, our common ground “How does change happen? How do we create projects and organizations that can deeply transform society?” We began building a collective narrative rooted in each other’s views and enquiries.

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We shared the sense that something on the way we think is changing, a paradigm is shifting and a way of doing is coming to an end. We explored what is been beautifully said by many. The “entrenched ideas and values, among them the view of the universe as a mechanical system composed of elementary building blocks, the view of the human body as a machine, the view of life in society as a competitive struggle for existence, the belief in unlimited material progress to be achieved through economic and technological growth, and-last, but not least-the belief that a society in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male is one that follows a basic law of nature. All of these assumptions have been fatefully challenged by recent events. And, indeed, a radical revision of them is now occurring”. (F. Capra, The Web of life, 1996)

We shared how these mental models once born as the western scientific paradigm have shaped the way we create our systems today such as the economy, education, health, organizations, development… Linear thinking, the tendency to break apart reality to be able to understand it, the universal and quantifiable quality of knowledge and truth, this set of beliefs have visible applications amongst the mentioned disciplines.

We analysed how this beliefs manifest on our realities. For example the deepening tendency for specialization in our societies, the smokescreen for greater breaking apart the whole. Rampant specialization is an attempt to better understand the growing complexity using the old glasses and methods that are not fit for purpose today. Specialization on health for example, takes us away from understanding the complex interactions of the human body and mind, albeit understanding better the symptom but blindly overseeing the roots causes of the problem.

Reducing problems to symptoms, to its simplistic parts takes us away from understanding that education, nutrition, health, culture, politics, environment, are deeply interconnected issues that cannot be understood in isolation. Thus, we are not being able to truly respond and transform our realities.

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This worldview has shaped the way we create our organizations, manage our projects and expect results through simplistic causal narratives. A metaphor that fits perfect is the concept of Silver Bullets.

Some of the Silver Bullets we’ve shoot in development work for example, had an impact on the spread of malaria today. On the 60´s the DDT Silver Bullet (insecticide) to end Malaria have influenced the mosquito mutations and resistance which has kept malaria as great cause of death in many countries. Simple strategies such as this one, based on eradication and control of the event, focus on the symptom that we obverse, has no account of the complex evolutionary dynamics of the system in which it manifests. They do not contemplate, hence account for the patterns, structures, beliefs and mental models that have create the symptom in the first place.

Once stated our common ground and understood collectively some of the root causes as to why “we are winning some battles but losing the war”, we smoothly emerged from problem solving mentality to enquiring about the theories, beliefs, methodologies which will help us addressing the complexity of our world.

We explored the space for learning offered by nature as a contrast to mechanistic theory. We looked at how complex living systems work.

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This paradigm of thought talks about the importance of looking at the relations amongst issues. How they affect each other through the interaction and how that affects the nature of the whole system, creating emerging properties unique to the whole and so many times unpredictable. This frame focuses on understanding the co-evolving dynamics happening within the system. It makes us question, what is this influencing? What is this affected by? What is emerging new from this interaction? How can I better influence? It invites us to contextualise the knowledge and avoid the tendency to extrapolate magic pills from one place to another. It invites us to think about changing from silver bullets to multiple micro strategies.

Following from our previous example on Malaria, an integral systemic approach will zoom out to look at the social, cultural, economic, geographical, political dimensions that can be affecting the appearance of malaria. A case study in Kenya realised that several elements affected the prevalence of malaria; the predominance of rice paddies, a resistance from the farmers against a government law on irrigation which led to flooding, and how cattle can serve as tasty first bytes for mosquitos.

This systemic analysis led to designing a multi strategy intervention: controlling flooding through a better way of organising amongst farmers, alternating dry crops, introducing cattle, planting natural mosquito repellents, and larves in the fields of rice that eat the mosquito. Doing so they not only reduced the cases of malaria to an unprecedented minimum but increased their nutrition, hence their health which also affects mortality due to malaria.

We glimpsed in our short time together what we explored in more depth during the 8th &9th of April. The workshop Ways of Doing Development Differently (WDDD).

During our WDDD workshop we looked into other principles that together with complex and systems thinking help us on our quest towards innovative, impactful ways of working. Collaboration and locally led projects, how do we open spaces for authentic participation and co-creation. Create a culture for innovation and learning. To intervene in ever changing realities we need to create the culture and structures to do so and bring the methodologies for adaptive, creative project management.

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And last but most importantly, embrace and foster the skills, qualities and values to become the systemic, adaptive, collaborative leaders that the world needs. Leaders that stood down from Hero´s to serve the common good as hosts.

Coming up in a following blog, we will unfold how we: university members, social entrepreneurs and NGO´s workers present in the workshop, explored Ways of Doing Development Differently.

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We went with the flow, together

After a rich and stirring experience at Eroles during week 1 of the “Camp as if people mattered” residency, I felt the urge to put down some reflections. These emerged from the original aspiration that I formulated when we did a dragon-dreaming exercise on the first day: We went with the flow, together. And they are inspired by the mountain landscape and the sense I had of the emergence of a quality of resilience amongst the participants that holds the promise of a truly unique contribution to new paradigm thinking and doing.
Like tiny streams, sourced high in the mountains,
Eager to flow towards something bigger, stronger, deeper
We embarked together on our enquiry as a collective, at Eroles…
Tentatively, respectfully, we offered our aspirations and commitment
Like a gathering of waters, tracing a path towards each other
Coming together to form a small river…
Almost bursting with enthusiasm, dancing over stones baking in sunlight,
Then resting, under stars radiant in cool midnight blue skies, dreaming
Of a braver, kinder, more generous world
Sometimes gasping for air, running dry over the hot, parched soil,
When it got too heated, like the water, we sought cooler space
Seeping back down into cracks in the earth, under rocks, in small pools…
To seek shade, preserve energy and await the moment to emerge again
And to re-engage with the dynamics of the movement onwards
To bubble forth with ideas, new awareness, the pleasure of listening, querying,
connecting with others
Accepting to explore frustration, fear, anger at the multiple sources of pain in the world,
Hearing new takes, observing reactions, listening again and again,
Offering thoughts, experiences, stories, questions…
Pooling, then flowing along again, gently gathering momentum and depth,
Conscious that alone, we could easily drown in the vast complexity and pace of the many challenges,
Or dry up in the face of so many other external forces and seeming lack of resources.
Were it not for the love, trust, courage and compassion that we breathed into the dry, tight spaces
When our minds and bodies tired and faltered, our spirits wearied,
We could have built up barriers, borders, to halt the flow…
But rather, we pulled together, we laughed together, we made music together,
Exploring non-otherness, non-duality, in a delicate, vulnerable human movement
Seeking to find our way through tricky terrain, in all weathers, against all odds
To learn that we can grow our resilience, and inspire others to do so too,
To learn to feel empowered with – not over – and to truly go with the flow
Together.
Jill Mackechnie
Retired UN humanitarian aid worker
now seeking new ways of caring
for people, places and planet
jillmackechnie@gmail.com

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An interview with the facilitators of ‘Creating Resilience’.

Who are you and what have you been doing here?

L: My name is Lex I work with gardens, permaculture and theatre. I made a set of masks to bring to Eroles to look at deep ecology (connecting ourselves to nature) and Theatre of the Oppressed, in particular to work with refugees. I have been here for a week and it’s been amazing.
G: My name is George, I am a descendant of displaced people from Poland after World War II. I work with Theatre of the Oppressed and before I came here I was extremely burn out from other projects, but having been facilitating here this week I’m feeling fully charged and ready to go.
M: My name is Miranda, I came to Eroles Project last year to create a climate change action for COP21. I was invited to come back this year to work with George and Lex as a facilitator. This week I have really enjoyed working with resilience and sharing some of my work in this field from back home in Oxford. I am really inspired by how these collaboration will continue in the future.

Why do you think this work is important?

G: We live in a culture where the sense of urgency and crisis means that despite our best intentions and wanting to give as much as we can of our self to try to help other people, we neglect the self care that is essential to make resilience possible.
L: It is very important to come here to Eroles, in the beautiful Pyrenees mountains, with our busy lives, especially if we are working in any ‘crisis’ circumstances. It gives us a chance to step back and have a look at our patterns, to be effective with how we are with ourselves for long term sustainability within our actions and life as a whole.
M: And within that for me is flexibility. To be able to learn from our mistakes – to be able to keep shifting and changing, learning and adapting from our experiences. To design new ways of working and to keep developing as the situation around us changes.

What are you taking with you from this programme?

G: I am taking away the realisation that you can leave a residential programme, powered up, recharged, resilient and ready to face the world and its challenges; as opposed to thinking it was an ordeal.
L: I am taking away from this process a deeper sense of resilience, deeper understanding that the more I care for myself the more I can truly care for the planet. I’m deeply fired up with inspiration from connecting with people all over the world doing similar projects, it gives me an amazing sense of the future. This has been beyond words, just wow!
M: A deeper sense of trust in my intuition. Fire to continue to sense what is needed and to respond in a non urgent way, and to take this into my projects back home.

How can this type of experience inform people working in the refugee / humanitarian crisis?

L: I think this work hugely informs how to care for yourself and for the group your are working in. I think it is quite a profound thing to know how to look after yourself. I also think if you are going to work in a camp context it is best to go in full so that you do not need to get your energy from there. One of the ways we can do this is by connecting to the present without plans of where we might expect to get to; and to share this presence with others as fully as possible. When we are relaxed internally we become more aware of what’s happening externally, this enables us to focus on the things that connect rather than separate us.
M: The exploration I brought with me; “to turn judgement into curiosity” was something that has become more of a solid thing during the week, so I want to go everywhere with that intention. When we celebrate our differences and our gifts rather than arriving already with the answers, we can develop solutions from who is there and what is emerging in the moment from the collective intelligence of the group.
G: Figuratively and literally to shut up and listen. Not allowing the language differences to create more barriers between each other. We modeled this this week by focusing on nonverbal communication and the power of being physically together rather than verbalizing everything. Also listening deeply to what is needed in these spaces as opposed to coming with our own presuppositions to what we think ‘they’ need.

If you have to choose a moment that you really struck you from this week what would it be?

M: The collective ritual when we arrived at the cherry tree. Sometimes rituals can feel ingenuine, but this was a beautiful spontaneous expression of everyone’s individual gratitude for life, each one in their own style and tradition. It was very special.
L: Connecting with the birds. Working with the body. Being inspired. One moment in particular, a few of us were up in the open window playing music, but we were all discordant. I suggested we looked out at the sky, instantly we came into accordance through watching the birds as we played; watching their patterns, being inspired by the freedom that is in the skies. Another time at night in the moonshine, our cross cultural musical collaboration felt like beyond the mind, beyond the cords, beyond the planning – letting go so something beautiful can come though.
G: My favourite moment was when we all danced around in a circle connecting our past, our present and our future and it seemed like anything is possible.

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The limitless untold stories in you.

    I started writing this blog in a sunny cafe in Oostende on the North coast of Belgium at the beginning of August 2016. I was about to show the premier of a new short film at Theater Aan Zee (TAZ), a dynamic city wide arts festival. The film’s title, Post Present Future, is named after the letter project I’ve been working on for the past seven years of my life. The project is centred around a simple task where people sit at a beautiful old bureau to write a letter to their future self. The instructions are simple too – ‘Take some time to reflect on the narrative of your life and what stories surround you? What are your hopes, concerns and dreams, now and for the future?’ My commitment to each of the people who write is to keep the letters for five years and then to post their letter back to them.
For TAZ 2016 we did a special edition of Post Present Future; we hand delivered the letters. For the first time this meant that I could experience people’s responses as they opened their letter and in their own handwriting read the advice, questions, doubts and promises they’d written as their younger selves. The film captures these tender and delicate moments.
Bearing witness to the fragility of daily life and the grief, the loss, the joys that mark the passing of time has provided an apt backdrop to be thinking about what resilience means in preparation for Creating Resilience, the next programme at Eroles Project, in the Catalan Pyrenees, Spain.
I hope to find a way to hold on to the sense of the strength that I witnessed arising from people’s vulnerability. Many of us have had challenging moments in our lives, many of us have overcome these challenges and moved forward, moved on, moved up. One of my reflections from witnessing people of all ages reading their letter is the self acknowledgement that emerges from hearing their own words from the past. Many of the readers spoke of how the insights had given them more confidence in their ability to live well. For why wait until your death bed to reflect on the way you’ve lived your life? This experience offered the perspective that life is constantly changing, and that all along we have the resources to adapt. Bringing consciousness to the ways we do that, for me, is the art of developing resilience.
The second part of this blog I wrote during the windows of time that facilitating on a residential programme allow, refining these words in my bedroom, looking out over the mountains, fired up after sessions. It has enabled within me a deeper reflection on the collective process and I’m glad to be able to share it with you.
Maria, Ally and myself are facilitating week one of Creating Resilience here at Eroles. Our shared background and connection stems from Schumacher College, a transformative learning centre for sustainable living based in Devon, UK. We bring different qualities and ways into this work but each hold an inquiry into the spaces inbetween, the process of self transformation and how to consciously move from self to collective. During the preparation sessions before the course begins we identify that we are more up for creating the container for a ‘live’ exploration of resilience than to be seen as slick professionals teaching the techniques.
We design the week using key principles of resilience: flexibility, fluidity and diversity, moving from order to the fertile space at edge of chaos where ecosystems thrive. This, along with some guiding values of acceptance, letting go, self responsibility, adaptability, compassion and authenticity shape the overarching exploration and form the main areas of practice.
Between the three of us there are tensions before and during the week as we model moving from order to the edge of chaos. Transitioning is a tricky business. The main points of friction occur as we balance tendencies to pre-define the shape and purpose of the week (through tried and tested methodologies) with courageously going off-script and trusting that by inviting magic, it will come.
On Monday participants from Spain, Hungary and the UK arrive. I am struck by how immediate the connection is, how trusting and warm the culture is that we co-create.
Before the first morning check-in we listen to John O’Donohue, the late Irish poet, who in his soft lyrical voice calls our attention to the distinction between our biography and our identity.
“There is a place in the soul — there is a place in the soul that neither time, nor space, nor no created thing can touch… what it means is, that in — that your identity is not equivalent to your biography. And that there is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there’s still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary. Time again I look at a pretty face telling me their well rehearsed story and I think that doesn’t even touch the surface of all that you are.”
Following on from this we sit in a circle and are invited to share our story of how we come to be here. Then comes the repeated question – if that is not your story what is? We answer until we begin to shake free of the habitual response, the story we have told so many times over the years that it has shaped our behaviour and thoughts, and becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
If we can be attentive to the moments when we get caught in our habitual story whilst cultivating nourishing patterns, we can change our thoughts and behaviour. That in itself is powerful, and quite a revelation when put into practice.
Our actions in every moment, and our words in every conversation, change the story. By living our life by this principle we have the power to decide if we want to perpetuate a cultural pattern or not. How do we choose to respond when working in an organisation with time pressure and hierarchies, face injustice, experience police violence; when power is taken by another or urgency becomes the dominant narrative. By stepping into the shoes of another, we can feel how far have they walked.
Many times this week I have thought about how to put all of this into practice in the ‘real’ world. Maria reminds us that there is no separation between the world ‘in here’ and the world ‘out there’. This false dichotomy implies that change happens out there in some other moment or place rather than right now in the dynamics of this group, in Eroles, as in a Syrian village or in a refugee camp. Let’s not get caught in hierarchies, but know that positive change happens in the now with people making conscious choices.
“Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
Rainer Maria Rilke

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Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

I feel called to ask myself in response to these first two weeks of Eroles residency, what does it mean and require of me, as human, to fully meet another human?
David Whyte says in moments of difficulty the best thing you can do is ask beautiful questions, and for me, this is a beautiful question. What do I need in order to meet others in the way I would most like to?
This was the first question we posed the group in these two weeks, what do they need? Such an important beginning, to establish our basic needs in order to feel free and open to participate fully. Of course the responses were simple; honest and transparent communication, support, time alone, care, being listened to attentively, not interrupted, being referred to respectfully…these seem pretty universal to me. From here, and with a group commitment to adhere as best we could to these needs, we launched into a challenging and exposing few weeks, where we own all of the ways that we don’t meet other humans as equals – all the ways in which we use power and privilege to have power “over” others, to get what we want, even when that inhibits another. Eek, yucky stuff – owning the ways we all do that. And yet, being with a group for a week, and with some for even two, and being able to stay…stay in the yuk…stay as it gets icky and tense…stay as we each take our positions…as we watch others power over and be powered over…stay as we confront and explore this tendency… as we challenge and recede…as we feel the discomfort and breakthrough. Such a privilege to “work live” in this way. In these courses, I think we are really able to hold to our shared belief that the personal is political. Acknowledging that, as activists, we cannot talk about “those out there” creating problems, without acknowledging that those very problems manifest in the microcosm of this group.
Exploring some of the many layers that stop one human relating to another we talked about language and its role in creating narratives, labelling, isolating or uniting people; and we saw it play out in our group too. Those who flow easily with English and those who don’t. Of course these differences are natural – don’t we tend to group according to shared experience or familiarity? But, to ask another beautiful question, what do we do when this grouping leads to a majority and minority and how do we consider the experience of those in the minority? And use our power to re-balance and empower others, to truly care and consider the needs of others?
One of the things I notice in my life is that quite often as I occupy myself with the detail in front of me – convinced I know what I’m doing and where I’m going, there is a subtle but rich story unfolding off-centre, unbeknown to me. The learning from which, creeps up on me, as if from behind and never fails to surprise. These weeks that story line has something to do with unconditional love. I realised that at Eroles I have witnessed many examples of unconditional love and it became a theme of conversation that wasn’t intended, and yet repeated itself.
Unconditional love. It strikes me that this may be one of the key ingredients of what we are, or at least I am here, learning about. Maria asked a question that resonated in me as a clear pluck on a well-tuned guitar, “what if you are repeatedly aware of having “power-over” and you don’t do anything about it?” I went to bed that night this question swimming in my mind.
Goethe is quoted as saying “knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” So I have become interested in what is required to love unconditionally. Willing, how do I do? Looking this up on good old google, I came across an article speaking of the essential premise to love another beyond what you might get from them. Hmm, sounds simple! To listen attentively and with willing to change if it doesn’t compromise your basic boundaries, the article says. Well, ok, but that means you’ve got to know your own boundaries, requiring self-esteem and respect. Next…forgiveness; another tricky one. Embracing differences and clear and open communication. As I read on, I realise this is what, I think, we are partly doing here at Eroles.
Giving the ground for people to forge enough self-confidence to be able to recognise and articulate their boundaries. Living together, each morning sharing how we are in our “check-ins” gives us each a chance to have an insight into another’s inner world, which helps cultivate compassion and understanding for them, when later they inconsiderately eat the last piece of bread…or whatever pet peeve they trigger. We have to forgive and move through those difficult moments. The time that we spend here in the mountain, developing our sense of belonging in a wider ecosophy helps to clear out the dregs and re-orientate to our essence; our shared experience on this Earth as beings, belonging just as the trees, the birds and the spikey plants that litter the ground here do.
I know for me, what stands in the way of being fully myself with another, is typically where I am not able to stand in love. Moments in which, indeed the little voice in my mind is aware that I have “power-over”, and I ignore it, greedily taking what I can. Sadly, I know this makes me unhappy in the longer term. When I love, I feel such joy for just loving’s sake. So, I am here, at least, soaking up those moments of love – where in true community style my beloved friends embrace my crying baby and help him to sleep. I know I need love in order to be with others fully. I hope that we each take the love cultivated here and shine in a world that always could do with more.

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