Hosting Humanness in Collective Inquiry

October 6, 2008

What can humanness be? Also be? What can we discover as we are in collective inquiry? What can we invoke? Create? Co-create?

These are all questions that feel central in my work. They are the kind of questions that are a couple of levels down deep. Beyond methods of participation. Beyond maps and models that support methods of participation. I feel in my heart an evolution of what being human is and can be. Some of it is me, a forty something trying to make sense of life and the shifting world that is personal. Some of it, I feel, is the ever-increasing rate of change in major systems -- healthcare, education, government, economics. It is as if these shifts are calling human beings, individually and collectively, to move into next levels. To be more artful and deliberate in our human being, again as individuals and as collectives trying to do something about the major shifts present in society now.

Maria Scordiolou and Sarah Whitely are friends working with much focus on these questions. They are taking these and other questions like them to new levels, particularly as they steward a land, Axladitsa Avatakia near Pelion, Greece. One of the things I see often with Sarah and Maria is their fierce commitment to presencing and letting a source come through them. A tuning fork is an image that comes to mind. Below are a few questions they harvested from a spring gathering of Axlatditsa Guardians. The complete harvest, with more description is here.

What we have sourced – what is at the heart?
Unless we engage our authentic selves, we cannot live the future now
Unless we engage our fullness, we cannot take the leap individually and call in collectively
Unless we tremble collectively, we cannot presence the new
Unless we take a leap together, we cannot access and live the next level of our humanity
Unless we are willing to hold the space open long enough for our collective clarity to emerge, we cannot shift our systems and behaviour for the better
Unless we fuse the streams of practice and inquiry, we cannot see what else is possible and be prepared to meet our chaos
Unless we acknowledge our collective identify, we cannot co-create our real work
Unless we unlearn our complicatedness, we cannot find the simplicity of the next elegant step
Unless we share our new insights immediately, we do not serve evolution
Unless we live through our collective identity, we cannot become whole