Kitchen Table Talk -- a renewed clinical supervision experience

 

The Emerging Compassionate World -- by Drew Moore

The following piece is part of a larger piece written by Drew Moore. This is a speech given by a character in a novel he is writing. I loved what he was saying and wanted to share it. He happily obliged.

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I should like to speak to you today on a concept that I like to call “The Emerging Compassionate World.” A world in which children are allowed to grow up in an atmosphere of love, dignity and respect, and are allowed a free range of expression of their humanity. Further that we who are charged with shepherding them are caught up with wonder and delight with our own existence.

I stand steadfast in my belief in this world, and believe beyond doubt that we, the collective humanity, are caught in the midst of that emergence. Think birth; at times ugly, even profane, yet powerful and unstoppable. We are not passive observers of this emergence, rather we are mid-wives, those who facilitate the very genesis of this world. So for today, and only for today, for that is all that I have, I stand in advocacy of something.

I am not advocating for the reduction or abolishment of anything. Absences lead to vacuums, and nature in his irreverence of us, tends to fill vacuums with that which we wanted eradicated in the first place. As well, to stand contrary to anything hinders the process by which The Emerging Compassionate World arrives.

I am calling for a filling in, a condensing, and compacting of qualities. Think saturation. Think of the experiments we did in our childhood where we created our own crystals. Double was our delight for not only did we experience the thrill of creating something out of nothing, that something was pretty and tasted good too. You remember, creating sugar crystals? It taught us about saturation.

We would take a pot, or a beaker, and after filling it with water we would heat it. As the water heated we would add sugar until the water was beginning to boil and the crystals no longer dissolved. Then we would allow the solution to cool, and add a catalyst, a thread, to which the sugar would solidify against.

I am talking a super-saturation, a saturation to the point where none else can exist. I am talking about a saturation of respect, love and dignity to the point where compassion crystallizes in spontaneous acts – no catalyst is required. These acts of compassion reverberate with acts of kindness and affection.

I believe that at this point in time, we stand at a precipice that allows us an opportunity to create such an environment. Never before, in all the annals of time, have we had the world so inter-related. Billions of people around the world have in their hand a device that transmits data in so many different ways that our commonality as one people has never been more realized than it is now. In other words, the environment required for supersaturating is ready, the water is heated.

What is required is the acceptance of three specific concepts. Rather, these concepts need to be embraced as if we were drowning people clasping our life saver; for we are. We need to embrace these concepts with much more vigour than we have grasped the concept that violence is an acceptable means to our ends.

These three concepts are easy to understand, the challenge is to live by them.

The first. There is no separation. We are not separate from each other, nor are we separate from our sisters the animals. You and I are the same being. When I look into your eyes, it is my own soul that I see. Any act towards you is an act towards myself, to heal one is to yourself and to heal all. In this concept lies the truth that there is no such thing as charity, to care for another is an act of self-nurturing.

Consider the poem “The Stream of Life” by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore:

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

We are where we are supposed to be, we stand in the middle of the presence of divinity, and she is all around us and in us and is infused in the very fibre of everything that is seen and unseen, felt and unfelt, known and unknown. There is no terrible rejection of us, there is no need to transcend to get back to being in her presence for we are already held comfortably in her lap. There is no favour to seek, no failure to overcome, no chasm to cross, there is no dread hereafter, there is only now.

The Second. You are insignificant. With the exception of a handful people no one waited with baited breath for your arrival. And with the exception of a different handful of people your passing will not be noted.

If you think significance is possible ask any child who Edward Jenner is? Or ask who Louis Pasteur? You might try, Galileo Galilei? Think Steve Jobs will be remember? Think again. Those who we do remember, we actually remember the person, maybe the accomplishment, but really we remember who they were for us.

You are no more significant, than the man down the street, the woman half way round the world, the child who plays. There is no attribute that makes one unique – regardless of age, race, religion, gender, weight, height, intelligence, and nationality we all fill the same role – the expression of her who created us.

The humour filled irony is, that when you embrace that you are insignificant you are then free to pursue the designs of your own heart. It is within this freedom that great accomplishments come to pass.

If you seek significance, seek it in the handful of people who surround you now. For it is the handfuls of people that we are truly known, loved and appreciated.

The third. Our morality, must be based on our being elicited to serve each other and to live in joy. This compelling is not through force or threat of punishment but is an irresistible response to the world around us; think salmon spawning; think of our bodies responding to the beat of music; think of our desire for sex. We are driven from within to action.

In embracing my responsibility, there are no lesser thans or greater thans. The role I play is no less or more important than yours, regardless of how many or few people can do each. At its core is the recognition that I can only be as content as we can be.

Our response to the wrongs of others? A compassionate out pouring of support to come back to the innocence that we were born possessing us. An understanding that she who picks up weapons is inclined to cut only her own hand.

Rhizome and Gift Exchange -- Ideas that Recreate Worlds

This is a piece I wrote recently as a summary of a book chapter I am preparing. However, I like the way it stands on its own. I think it provides a quick and clean description of rhizome and gift-exchange.

***

Christopher Kinman introduces certain processes that he sees as providing new promise and possibility to all of our current social realms -- whether those might be family life, friendship, community, business, and the various political structures we have, such as cities, nations and international organizations. Christopher discusses two metaphors which he sees as offering great promise to all of these realms. These two metaphors are rhizome and gift-exchange.

Rhizome reminds us that everything good and enlivening that happens to us, no matter what social contexts we are connected to, happens within relationships, within vast networks of relationship. Rhizome includes all those connections that bind us in our present time, real-life engagements – no relation is considered unimportant. Rhizome also includes those connections that precede us, the relations that provide legacies for our current movements. Rhizome also includes those relations that are not yet, those that are still to come. And these rhizome networks are not limited to relations between people, but also include connections with animals, geographies and landscapes, technologies, ideas, histories, spiritual relations, etc.

The second metaphor is certainly connected to the idea of rhizome. It is the gift-exchange. Christopher sees gift-exchange as an idea that reminds us of how life-affirming things and actions move throughout our social realms. The goods we receive, the positive outcomes we welcome, the loves we cherish, all these things come to us through lines of innumerable gifts. The movements of gifts abound in all social realms, not just human realms, and these gifts are too numerous to list. Gifts are given and received through gestures, through words, through objects, through creative processes. All day and every day we are in the midst of gift-exchanges. Our sense of Aliveness is connected to such gift-exchanges.

Christopher suggests that understanding rhizome and gift-exchange sets the stage for the creation of many real and pragmatic possibilities within our worlds. He goes as far as to suggest that these ideas contain the seeds of possibility that can address our most challenging world difficulties.

Rhizome and Gift Exchange -- Ideas that Recreate Worlds

This is a piece I wrote recently as a summary of a book chapter I am preparing. However, I like the way it stands on its own. I think it provides a quick and clean description of rhizome and gift-exchange.

***

Christopher Kinman introduces certain processes that he sees as providing new promise and possibility to all of our current social realms -- whether those might be family life, friendship, community, business, and the various political structures we have, such as cities, nations and international organizations. Christopher discusses two metaphors which he sees as offering great

promise to all of these realms. These two metaphors are rhizome and gift-exchange.

Rhizome reminds us that everything good and enlivening that happens to us, no matter what social contexts we are connected to, happens within relationships, within vast networks of relationship. Rhizome includes all those connections that bind us in our present time, real-life engagements – no relation is considered unimportant. Rhizome also includes those connections that precede us, the relations that provide legacies for our current movements. Rhizome also includes those relations that are not yet, those that are still to come. And these rhizome networks are not limited to relations between people, but also include connections with animals, geographies and landscapes, technologies, ideas, histories, spiritual relations, etc.

The second metaphor is certainly connected to the idea of rhizome. It is the gift-exchange. Christopher sees gift-exchange as an idea that reminds us of how life-affirming things and actions move throughout our social realms. The goods we receive, the positive outcomes we welcome, the loves we cherish, all these things come to us through lines of innumerable gifts. The movements of gifts abound in all social realms, not just human realms, and these gifts are too numerous to list. Gifts are given and received through gestures, through words, through objects, through creative processes. All day and every day we are in the midst of gift-exchanges. Our sense of Aliveness is connected to such gift-exchanges.

Christopher suggests that understanding rhizome and gift-exchange sets the stage for the creation of many real and pragmatic possibilities within our worlds. He goes as far as to suggest that these ideas contain the seeds of possibility that can address our most challenging world difficulties.

Laura Calderon de la Barca -- Towards the Ordinary and the Overlooked

A Forward to the Book "Pilgrimages of the Gift" by Christopher Kinman

Book available at: http://rhizomeway.com/site/?page_id=687

I met Chris – a story teller of gifts of the Alive, and a weaver of life-honouring relationships. I met him, as he might say: once upon a rhizome. He welcomed me to his world within an open heart, a place for the exploration of all things human and alive. This welcoming began in 2007 at a small gathering, a conference he organized in Vancouver, focusing on the future of the helping professions.

I made my way to this event through unexpected connections that arose between us. I heard about the event through Harlene Anderson (Houston, Texas). I had personally witnessed Harlene’s capacity to discover ways of being with others that welcomed inspiration, authenticity and openness. I suspected I might find some of this same inspiration at the gathering Chris was organizing. I was not disappointed. At the time, I was waiting for the examiners of my PhD thesis to submit their report. The rather unusual theme of the thesis, a therapeutic session for a pretty complex client, Mexico, my country of origin, won me a place in the meeting. Chris contacted me and we arranged for my attendance. So it was that during those beautiful sunny days in November, overlooking the breath-taking, snow-capped mountains and Vancouver skyline from the Vancouver Rowing Club’s Trophy Room, I heard him speak -- inspired by Gregory Bateson and his understanding of the Creatura -- about the world of the Alive.

The ideas he spoke of that day, and that he shares with us in this book are not bare abstractions. They come in flesh and blood as we experience the moments of the Alive inexorably associated with them. I have been moved not only by these ideas and their possibilities, but by the actual connections that were brought to life in conversations first with Chris and then with his book.

It is in this sense that Chris seems to me a story-teller. The things he talks about have names, have occurred in specific contexts, in particular times. These things can only be grasped through their embodiment in the material world. And yet, there is something in the way they are animate that inspires reverence, and that seems somehow to paradoxically transcend time precisely by being grounded in it -- from the rushed atmospheric dynamics that create sounds of wind in the trees to the time-worn crustacean shells that create a beach.

As can be seen throughout the book, Chris sees, with Christopher Alexander, ‘the Alive’ as connected to both nature and creative actions: we are part of the creative creatura, us humans; but we don’t own creation. As we become present to our relatedness to the rest of creation, a certain intensity comes to life, ‘a thickening of feeling’, as Chris would say, through which the Alive enters, opens up, opening us up. And through this we can find ourselves in ‘joint creations in cooperation with the moments of a living world’.

As I follow the book, it becomes clear to me that these creations occupy us as music occupies notes. Each of us is, in this game of creation, a note; singular and beautiful, but insufficient to make music, as Chris wisely points out (p. 89). The music of creation is only available if we surrender to something larger than our individual selves. And in the book, Chris beautifully demonstrates how to be a part of this music: by truly being with others; that is, by offering ourselves as witnesses to the becomings of the world, allowing ourselves to respond to them and making our response known.

In that sense, Chris’ story-telling of the Alive doesn’t just happen through narrative. Story-telling often requires a conclusion, a point to be made, a lesson, an evaluation. Chris’ stories are not like that. As the abundance he writes about, he has little interest in judgment. His stories do not offer to take you anywhere better, or to go and change anything. And it is precisely in letting go of that attempt that they move you, they change you. For these stories are sharings, a bringing-back of moments when he was present to something Alive, something that touched him and made him Alive. His words take us with him, to become witnesses of the Alive in the becomings of the world, to be found in the most apparently random locations: in a little boy’s combusting squiggle, in economies riding on the wing of a gull, in the visual beauty of a swarm of gnats, in the fragile companionship of a generous rabbit, or in the ephemeral touch of a child’s hand, his own child. And, regarding this touch, in the awareness of the possibility of the absence of this touch’s, its barest grazing unleashes in him ‘that roar which lies on the other side of silence’, as George Elliot would say, moving him, and myself with him, to tears as I become aware of the Alive in me, as I, childless, feel the loss nevertheless... or maybe because of it.

The Alive is not made present in Chris’s words alone, it also comes forth in his images. The knack he has for catching life unaware is evident in his pictures, in the gentleness apparent in the lick of the puma, the purple beauty of a partially crushed oyster, slowly becoming a beach, or the easy companionship of Pessoa’s friends in the café in Lisbon. He has tenderly intimated with the Alive, offering it his openness and sensitivity, and finding in return that it reveals itself to him in the overlooked and the ordinary. Sharing his findings with us, Chris offers us in passing a glimpse of what we might find if we cross our own doorway to the other side of silence. Enjoy the roar.

Laura Calderón de la Barca

Vancouver, BC; Mexico City

An Aphorism -- On Thought

Thought is not generated inside a skull, it cherishes no friendship with the emptiness of interiority.

Thought emerges in the midst of engagement with a world -- with innumerable worlds.

Thought is that which oozes between the abundances of bodies, that which squeezes between complexities of relations.

On Becomings

Deleuze, following Nietzsche, talks of becomings. I wish to continue in that flow.

I wish to talk of becomings rather than change. I wish to talk of becomings rather than established truths or determined states.

No beginnings, no endings -- just flows, perpetual movements.

No beginnings, no endings -- always in the middle of things.

In the middle -- between times more than at a point in time; never concerned with providing firm resolution to difference; never in a central and fixed location.

We do not have any surety of where becomings will lead us, but we can, from within our rhizome connections, create imaginations regarding how these becomings might be transforming us and others. Such imaginations are powerful creative forces (though not concerned with accuracy or predictability) and must never be trivialized.

Becomings – Nature and People

Becomings are not about a person/organism manipulating life and surroundings for the purpose of ensuring a determined outcome.

No, instead it is more likely we find ourselves carried by, even living out the desires of... becomings.

Particular becomings.

Becomings are best understood not as abstract generalities (i.e. becoming generous, becoming strong, becoming responsible) but as becoming a specificity, an image, a name (becoming animal, becoming woman, becoming river, becoming sea, becoming child, becoming eagle, becoming Buddha, becoming Christ, becoming godless, becoming... ).

I wish to talk of the becomings we are connected to as intimately associated with the becomings of nature. I wish to see our human worlds as indistinct from nature. I wish to see our becomings as sharing much in common with the constant becomings emerging within the grass, the rivers, the trees, amidst the lives of birds, fish, insects...

We know, of course, that the language we give to nature often invites separations – nature/culture; natural/artificial; natural/human -- dualisms that can set the stage for numerous violations and violences.

Yet, we still wish to talk of nature. We wish to see ourselves connected to those vast becomings wherein all life moves.

Rhizome Becomings

Becomings are always rhizome events, can be nothing but communal.

Individuals never determine and construct their own becomings. While we can easily delude ourselves with language, we can never truly be separate from the diversities of life.

As individual organisms we can give creative energy to our becomings, but that which is created is never simply the product of our own actions, it is never something over which we can individually claim ownership.

The initiation of becomings is also never an act of individual powers. Life initiates incessant becomings; they can go unnoticed, they can be purposely ignored, but they also can grasp us, even sweep us off our feet.

Becomings connect us to new worlds. They create repeated innovations, including new and renewed rhizome community.

Becomings and Negation

These becomings which we experience do not emerge from negation processes.

Now, clearly, negations surround us. Out of force of habit, we repeatedly participate in them. Negations are all too often engrained in our thought. They appear integral to the very structure of our lives.

We are led to believe that change only emerge by means of bravely coming face-to-face with negations. We are told that if we discover what is wrong with us, if we acknowledge what is wrong with us and if we then make changes based on such learnings we will accomplish our required redemption.

However, in life I see very little of this. Negations are far more likely to create reactive negations in response -- negations triggering further rounds of negations. Or they are likely to create a depressive paralysis, an immobility that breeds further depressive negations, that leads toward a sense of falling-backwards.

There seems to be a significant tie between those experiences we see as depression and worlds dominated by varied and incessant negations. Reactive and negative forces tend to glorify depression. These forces inform us that it is necessary to bear the burdens of one's errors, to repeatedly be reminded of the pain of one's sins – this is often thought of as a requisite for the journey towards a healed life.

Negation is part of the age–old tradition of sin/redemption. In this tradition our connections to the natural world swarming around us are condemned. Such connections were historically considered "pagan" and undesirable. In the dominions of fall/redemption we are informed of our sinfulness, of our transgressions against, not imminent forces around us in our lived world, but forces transcendent to life, forces far beyond everything that is nature. We are also informed of the requisite transcendent mechanisms which are able to redeem us. People are thereby pulled away from nature, from the forces of life, and become dependent upon the transcendent worlds of redemption. Such ideas of transcendent redemption become firmly established and ordained within modern religious and secular institutions.

A further note on the idea of redemption: as Deleuze aptly suggested, we must learn to live life and not save it.

Entering the Becomings

While we as individuals are not the architects of our own becomings there are actions that we can engage in.

However, as tempting as it might be, I refrain from detailing here such responses. Detailed suggestions coming from outside the specificity of the flows of a rhizome life are likely to fall somewhere between useless and damaging.

We all bring to life creative powers in abundance. Responses will appear to all of us who:

· affirm the creativity that life has bestowed upon us;

· resist the influences of negation which repeatedly attempt to keep us from creativity and action;

· appreciate and affirm the rhizome relations in which our lives are embedded.

The challenge for us is to learn how to determine which response to give, not to determine if there is a response.

What can we do, beyond providing detailed instruction?

· We can dare to put aside the influences of negation.

· We can affirm and respond to life, immanent life; affirm and respond to life as it moves amongst bodies (human and otherwise); respond to the endless complexities that life produces.

· We can create things, with others, with nature as a partner and leader.

· We can create rhizome words that engender relations with many and diverse bodies and, therein, many powerful becomings.

· We can enter with the grass and the trees, the grasshopper and the crow, those unmanaged and joyful realms of becoming.