Being the Future: creativefacilitating.com Blog

fun and creativity

It looks like everyone enjoys surprising fun and the chance to be creative. I have to share this video about how some engineers encouraged people to take the stairs in a subway station. I love it. This is a subway station in Sweden, now with a piano stairway.

Add comment January 26th, 2011

On Civil Discourse

I am grateful to John McCain’s contribution to “The Washington Post” on Sunday, January 16, “After the Shootings, Obama Reminds the Nation of the Golden Rule.” I found it important to hear a voice “from the other side of the aisle”, and for it to be a senior senator from the state in which the tragedy occurred and a former fellow contender for the presidency made the statement all the stronger.

Sen. McCain allows for our human frailty in suggesting we might not always be able to refrain from some strong rhetoric, but avows we are all capable of avoiding character assassination. I would like to not let us off the hook too easily. Although we might occasionally fail, I would like us to strive for humility, for respect for others and self, and for an openness to real discourse in private and public arenas.

Peter Block, in “Community: The Structure of Belonging” (2008, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco), cites some concepts of Peter Koestenbaum. One of those is that “choosing freedom is also the source of our willingness to choose to be accountable. The insight is that freedom is what creates accountability.” I think this has profound meaning for public discourse. If I exercise my freedom to speak on a public issue do I also hold myself accountable to speak truly and to listen openly to the speech of others?

Add comment January 17th, 2011

from the heart

That’s a phrase I don’t hear much anymore, “from the heart”, or even “heartfelt.”

As it comes to mind and I’m realizing it’s rarity now I wonder how to turn that around. The heart as a symbolic seat of tender emotion and soulful connections has something to offer us who sometimes are disembodied brains or neighborhoods without community.

I just graduated from the coaching program of Newfield Network, where hearfelt expressions are the norm, not the exception. I saw on the faces of my colleagues the joy of connection and community and emotional and spiritual support that can only come with heart to heart communications. Communications in all the ways that people communicate, many of them unspoken. Of course openness to one’s own emotions and self are important to being able to make an open and heartfelt communication.

I am moved to write this having just watched President Barack Obama’s speech in Tuscon recognizing those whose lives were just taken and those whose lives are endangered by the shocking event on Saturday. I went through the emotions with him as he spoke honoring all those lives; I rose to his uplifting request for humility and honesty in our public discourse; and I said ‘wow’. A speech from the heart in a public place. I yearn for more.

Add comment January 13th, 2011