MUSINGS
On Facilitation
There are tensions in a created space.
Between poetry and clarity.
Between the individual and the collective.
These dialects are sort of the whole point. When we value both, what comes to pass?
Picture by Leigh, Eagle Lake, Mount Desert Island, Maine. Ice piling up along the shore and clinking with each wave.
One interplay is between what we intend for a gathering and what arises in the moment.
It interweaves the wisdom and perspective we held before the meeting with insight, connections, new questions, and understanding gained in our time together.
I view our preparation for the meeting as vital in grounding us as clearly as possible in this existing wisdom.
Picture by Leigh, Harrimon Point, Brooklin Maine, a ski to the water’s edge
We make sure what we craft is informed by many viewpoints and is understood and digested by participants prior to our meeting.
Then in our time together, we have this footing, this sense of place…we have our bearings so that we can lean in together and be present to what happens from there.
Facilitation involves holding and engaging with just such tensions.
So that we honor what has been while holding great curiosity about what we are learning of ourselves, each other, and all we do not know yet (or will ever know).
And in this way together we experience the development of new wisdom and new shifts in understanding that may come to be our truths in time and impact what unfolds from here. But we are also grounded in wisdom that came before.
Picture by Leigh, Morse Mountain. Path to the sea, looking out over the estuary in fall just before a surf session.
How we hold and value these sometimes opposing intentions, how we hold and value one another while sometimes bringing opposing wants and views, how we hold our common and differing values as well as our shared humanity…
…these dynamics are what shape facilitation, what give a meeting form.
Facilitation offers our gatherings form. A form we cannot necessarily see but one we can definitely feel.