Is the chrysalis cracking? - Musing on the future in the time of Covid

As we mark a year of the world living with Covid-19 and all of it’s effects on how we live, and as Fern and I personally approach the launch of our latest projects, we look at what has happened to us, what the future holds and living into the new…

O Brave New World...

Phil: As the anniversary of the first lockdown rapidly approaches, and as the current ‘wave’ of the pandemic rolls on and ever on, Fern and I often sit down together of an evening and wonder about the future. 

It’s obviously too early to say what will come next or what we will learn from all of this. And the differing opinions on whether or not we will go back to ‘normal’, or what ‘normal’ even means anymore, are likewise infinite and only add to the exhaustion…

With all of that said, we feel a strong pull to chew over what this year of loss, change, insight, and fear has brought us, and how we can begin to step into the uncertain future when the road ahead seems so very, very unclear… We begin with an image… but first some context...

All this past year since our last blog post ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’, (where we found ourselves stopping, letting go of ‘doing’ and simply listening for what comes next), we have mused on how we feel these personal and global events rest on a spectrum of a rite of passage. After all, we are rites of passage guides (among the many other things we do) and if Covid-19 hasn’t been a rite of passage for humanity, then it’s hard to know what would be.

Lockdown in the UK in March 2020 felt like ‘severance’ or ‘separation’, the first phase of a rite of passage where, in the tradition in which we work - as taught by The School of Lost Borders - the initiate leaves behind the life they know and steps into the unknown. Everything we thought we knew about ourselves and the world was forcibly removed from us and we were left wondering what the future would hold and, most importantly, who we would be in that far off time…

As the weeks spread into months, we found ourselves accepting that we were in 'threshold' time, the dark, slow, painful, middle space of a rite of passage, where initiates face their darkest fears and spend four long days and nights alone in the wilderness with minimal shelter, crying for a vision. Threshold – literally named after ‘the threshing hold’ where wheat is separated from the chaff – is where we face ourselves in the clearest way possible, no illusions, just who we are in the face of adversity.

One thing is commonplace to all who pass through threshold initiation: we know we cannot return to the way life was before. That life is gone. As Leon Wieseltier says in his beautiful book ‘Kaddish’ – “The old life was a good life. But it is no longer available to you. It has been carried away irreversibly.” So, we must go forwards into the uncertain future.

With all of this in mind, and as we process the enormous changes that we have personally gone through, we find ourselves like the initiates packing up our makeshift camps, readying to depart from our ‘solo’ time and trudge back to the blessing circle and our community. We are exhausted, afraid, filled with trepidation and also exhilarated about stepping into the new unknown of ‘what comes next’…

Blessing circle - Emergence Vision Fast 2020

Now, as the world turns, ‘roadmaps’ out of lockdown are produced, and we come to realise that Covid (and all its various mutations) is most likely here to stay, we are contemplating emerging into what we refer to as ‘incorporation’. In this third and final phase, we tell, for the first time, the story of our own experiences and take on the hard-won lessons from our threshold time - and begin to try to live by what we have learned…

And so, the image we are sitting with is that of a chrysalis, the nascent butterfly within beginning to chafe against the strictures of its safe space and feeling the need to emerge. In order to reach this point, the original caterpillar has literally broken itself down to its DNA and reformed itself as an entirely different creature altogether. Now, in the most dangerous moment of all, it must face emerging into the new reality – soft, vulnerable, inexperienced… This is where we are now, collectively. How do we go forwards when things are so uncertain? Do we have the bravery to imagine what the future might look like? And are we strong enough to step into it? That’s what we’re here to work on…

Fern: It’s been a long time since we shared ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’! I thought we would have written a follow-up blog long before now. Phil and I had talked a little about perhaps writing ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ 2, but it always felt a bit presumptuous – like we already had a sense of where we were going and how long it might take to get there. Sometimes when the conditions are very specific, the cloud doesn’t shift, it just sits there.

I’d initially thought it would have shifted by the Summer of 2020, the Autumn, the Winter, surely by the New Year of 2021? A fresh start, a new beginning. But no, still the Cloud of Unknowing stuck around. The festival of Imbolc usually heralds the first signs of Spring in early February. But then arctic East Winds, sub-zero temperatures and floods hit many areas of the UK. Like a second Winter. Spring has been a long time coming.

Walking through the winter fields

We’ve spoken about writing an Emergence blog for some time now. We had spoken about this blog heralding the launch of a new season of work and offerings for 2021. But something told us to hold back. There was some preparatory work which needed doing first.

Through the dark Winter months, I’ve been waiting, hibernating, clearing, preparing and making ready for this time. Knowing that one day it would feel right to emerge.

During lock-down we found ourselves unexpectedly becoming custodians of a very large garden. We have taken on a loan to buy the beautiful place we’d been renting since the Summer of 2018. The work of ‘Pulling out the weeds, hands in the earth, planting seeds’ that I spoke about in the last blog has become increasingly significant as we daily tend and grow the garden and care for the surrounding woods.

The garden at The Barn

We trusted that there would be a time to plant seeds, but it wasn’t during those dark days. There was a forest of bamboo to clear, to dig out the strong, dense mass of roots. There has been a mass of leaves and last year’s brown matter to clear and compost. There have been brambles to clear, revealing a wash of snowdrops down by the river. Clearing away, cutting back the deadwood so that one day in the future something new will grow and it will have the space it needs to grow into what it will become.

Preparation is a slow process not to be hurried. Patience needs cultivating. And trust. These past few months, I have increasingly been saying to myself (and others) ‘keep your nerve’.

Last week, the frogs were busy in the garden pond. There were maybe 40 of them. An increase in temperature and wet conditions made the conditions just right. Perfect for a riotous mating season which went on for five days and has just now abruptly stopped.

And today, I feel it. Today I saw my first bee foraging in a bunch of deep purple crocuses. Then, my first primrose and a couple of early lambs.

On a more profane note... We even had our septic tank emptied for the first time yesterday. That’s 750 gallons of old and inherited shit which has literally been sucked up and is now gone from the premises enormous thanks to Abba Drains. There couldn’t be a better metaphor for being primed and ready for what comes next.

The shitman cometh... and 700 gallons of shit goeth...

The caterpillar is emerging. The chrysalis is cracking. We are in the early phase of ‘incorporation’ ready to take on our new identity, role, venture.

And now to plant the first seed…

Phil and I are launching a new venture – a space, this house with its beautiful adjoining converted barn. This will be a place for making, for ceremony, for nature connection, for rest, writing, and residencies, for soul and spirit connection for individuals and small groups…

In this space carved out by the Pandemic – of stopping, of letting go of expectation and outcome, something has emerged – a new space. A Centre for Emergence – a dream many years in the incubation. 

The Barn - a new Centre for Emergence

We have been painting, decorating, cleaning, plastering, furnishing. A new space is coming into being out of this most improbable of years. This was the thing we secretly hoped for but hadn’t dared dream. We are emerging from the chrysalis. Newly shaped, skins still thin and vulnerable. Stepping into a new phase – we have been individually and collectively initiated into a new way of being. We are not who we were, we cannot do what we did though we might try and return to the old normal. We are not quite yet who we will become. But given time…

We are committed to being here in this not-quite, almost-there space. We hope to welcome ‘artists in residence’. We are planning to offer creative, nurturing and transformative experiences. Over the coming year, we are planning to offer a Summer and Autumn Vision Fast, A Space for Change and Bardsey Time as well as supporting solo or group, self-guided residencies and retreats.

The world and all of us will never be the same again. We are learning what it is to be fully human in this time of flux, change, fluidity. I think we all have thinner skins, we are all finding our form, our way, our shape… Perhaps this is the learning of this lifetime. How do we become fully human in these times in which we are living? How do we allow the disintegration of who we were, in order to become who we will be? Let the chrysalis crack and see what emerges…

Fern & Phil 

For more information about The Barn – The Emergence Centre for Making, Being & Doing click here

For more information on our two Vision Fasts for 2021 click here

For more information on Space for Change 2021 click here 

For more information on Bardsey Time 2021 click here

 

 

 

The Cloud of Unknowing - Reflections on the time of COVID-19

On 23^rd March, just 4 short weeks ago, the UK went into official lockdown as part of a nationwide response to controlling the spread of the Covid-19 virus. To mark this first month where life as we knew it changed beyond recognition, we were moved to write a very personal response through one of our semi-regular Emergence blogposts:

Machynlleth in lockdown

Fern: The new Emergence website launched on February 1^st  2020, a new vision for Emergence offering nature-based rites of passage, art projects and facilitation, all ready for early Spring and our fledgling ‘2020 Vision Festival’. Our offerings of ‘Space for Change’, ‘Summer Vision Fast’ and the ‘Bardsey Autumn Equinox Retreat’ were out in the world, ready and waiting to be filled. We spent time designing beautiful, eye-catching publicity, getting the word out, talking to potential participants and advising those already signed up on their next steps.

Five years ago, I had a kind of five-year plan, a dream of what I wanted to seed as an artist committed to ‘the art of living’. Since that time, I’ve been working steadily and emergently towards a sense of what I might want to be offering in 2020. For me, 2020 was to be the year for a new vision, for bold action and for ‘stepping into my work in the world’. My work as an artist, my work with Emergence. It was all meant finally to be falling into place…

We were looking forward with excitement and some trepidation to a busy and intense March, working with the Scottish and Welsh Governments as part of Margaret Wheatley’s team to offer ‘Warriors for the Human Spirit’, a residential retreat programme for self-appointed ‘change agents’ and leaders working in the public sector. One week was planned for Perth, Scotland and one week for Nant Gwrytheyrn in North Wales. Hot on the heels after finishing these, the final day of March was to be spent with those working in the Welsh environmental sector and Natural Resources Wales helping to develop a ‘community of practice’ to support ‘across the sector collaboration’.

Helen Williams, Simoon Fransen, Meg Wheatley with Phil & Fern in Perth, Scotland

On 1^st March, St David’s Day, we travelled to Perth in Scotland ready to meet the team and begin our contribution in support of Meg’s training programme. Phil spoke about the BBC Television documentary he wrote: ‘8 Days: To the Moon & Back’, looking at NASA’s Apollo program through the lens of ‘Warriorship for the Human Spirit’. I brought into the room two decades’ experience of theatre activities and shared the story of alchemical transformation in the Birth of Taliesin within the context of the Celtic tradition and the indigenous wisdom of Britain. We were looking at leadership on this retreat through a completely different lens. The invitation to our participants was to join with one another to help create ‘islands of sanity’ within uncertain and potentially overwhelming times.

Fern - centre left in the purple dress - teaches on the Warriors for the Human Spirit program in Perth

As our week together progressed, Covid-19 increasingly entered our awareness. One of the team was from the Netherlands, one of the earliest epicentres of the virus. She was concerned about her family, one of whom had developed Corona-like symptoms. Attendees on our retreat were increasingly having intense work and family conversations in between learning how to ‘let go of outcome’, and ‘take nothing personally’. Each individual was being encouraged to ‘take their seat’ as a warrior for the human spirit, doing ‘what they can, with what they have, where they are’. For some, this was within the Scottish health service, for some, education, conservation, others planning and policing. It was a bold vision to be working with this group on this material. It felt radical and timely.

By Friday morning, participants were readying to leave and return to a world entirely different from the one they left when they arrived in Perth just five days earlier. Within the next two weeks throughout the UK we saw food queues and panic buying, social distancing measures put in place, infection rates increasing, the death toll beginning to mount up, an NHS stretched to the limit, schools closed, calls for a universal living wage, and a complete lockdown in place.

The Warriors for the Human Spirit training didn’t even get off the starting block in Wales. Meg returned to the US and the program was postponed until some uncertain date in the now vague and distant future. Our workshop with the Natural Resources Wales folk did happen online along with pretty much every other conference, meeting and Pilates class. The word ‘Zoom’ suddenly began to take its place as one of the most frequently uttered since the superhero comics of the 1970’s.

April 1^st came and went with a gamut of surreal ‘Fools Day’ Covid-19 offerings, online videos and celebrations. Activity for half the population ramped up with a transfer to online working, living, shopping and socialising. Activity for the other half dropped away in a matter of days to a trickle and then an absence. Emergence’s grand vision for 2020 fell away in the process…

My own Craniosacral Therapy Practice at my clinic in Machynlleth, mid Wales halted a month ago. No social proximity meant no practice, let alone hands on contact with the client’s body which holds the power and potential to transform and heal of Craniosacral work. No television writing work for Phil. Nothing currently being commissioned. Suddenly there is no point in advertising nature-based rites of passage, although there is much talk on social media about this pandemic, being a kind of ‘global rite of passage’. The momentum of activity, making stuff happen, visions, potential – everything comes to a dead stop…

As I write this, we’re in an April heatwave with empty roads. Easter has come and gone. Good Friday - the dying, Easter Sunday - the Resurrection. Easter Monday and beyond, school holidays are all happening without happening...

View from Cader Idris on the last day before lockdown

Phil: A key practice at the heart of the Warriors for the Human Spirit training is to become intimately familiar with one’s own mind. To become an observer and chronicler of one’s own thoughts and patterns so that one might be able to loosen the mind’s grip on the ‘self’ and simply be, not reacting but present. The idea being that this might enable one to better serve others and the times we live in by being a calm ‘island of sanity’ for others…

When the coronavirus hit and the lockdowns began, both Fern and I responded in a very similar way. Our initial reaction was that we should do something, anything… We talked of offering Way of Council sessions online, we talked of online retreats, spaces to meet, supportive practices to bring people together… and then, individually and together, we pulled back from that energy and we… stopped…

This is not to denigrate or devalue the amazing work that so many are doing right now to support and help each other across the literal distances between us. This is simply to share what happened to us and how we are reacting.

Wile E Coyote realising he's made a huge mistake...

That forward momentum, that energy to ‘do’, to ‘help’, to continue, to make ‘normal’ at all costs, was so strong and compelling that, like Wile E Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons, we very nearly ran straight off a cliff without realising that there is, in fact, no ground beneath our feet… But for some reason we pulled back at the last second and found ourselves standing on the edge of that cliff, our toes dangling into the cavernous space of the new reality, wondering what we should do…

Personally, I found myself collapsing inwards, falling into a very familiar pattern of dark and dangerous thoughts. My work had gone, my purpose had gone, my value as a human being had gone. I’m not a frontline worker in the NHS or the caring professions. I’m a storyteller, a maker of meaning. And, in this new reality, I find myself utterly reluctant to make any meaning at all. It feels too early… too raw… too disrespectful… to somehow leap to what this all means and where we might be going. Not yet, at least. If this truly is a rite of passage for mankind then, like all such rituals, it requires an enormous letting go of old ways and a stepping into a space of deep uncertainty without any clue where it all might lead. I can’t speak for anyone else but I know that is the space I’m currently living in.

So, after our grand plans ground to a halt and we screeched to a halt on the edge of the cliff, we found ourselves asking – what now? If we truly are in this liminal, threshold space, then how do we best live our days? How do we best serve? In short – what do we do?

The veg beds take shape...

Fern: The weather has been kind. We have a garden. We live surrounded by fields and hills on the outskirts of Machynlleth. The local community has been amazing. We now have a WhatsApp group in our local village. In our little community at home, we have spent time digging, pulling out the weeds, raking out the stones, preparing the ground. Like many lucky enough to have access to outdoor space, we have been planting and tending. We have dug a big vegetable bed, we have created a fruit bed, we have even made a rock garden with all the stones we have heaved out of the earth in the process of tilling the soil. There feels something good about this. Pulling out the weeds, hands in the earth, planting seeds, watering them; pulling out the weeds, hands in the earth, planting seeds, watering them…There is much birdlife in the garden. The primroses are in full bloom. The leaves of the foxgloves are getting fatter ready for anchoring the great pink wands of May.

Primroses in bloom

I am reading a 14^th Century Gnostic text called ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ written anonymously during the time of The Black Death and the Hundred Years War. I was drawn to the title and felt it prescient for the times. In it the author writes about what he calls the ‘Actives’ and the ‘Contemplatives’...

“Actives, Actives! Be as busy as you can…But don’t interfere with my contemplatives. You don’t know what is happening to them. Leave them to their ‘sitting’ and ‘resting’…”

The author seems to be implying that something important is going on beneath the surface with those who do not or who are not necessarily able to be outwardly active. If you can carry on your work and livelihood online, fine. If you are called to the front-line to serve, I thank you. If you are minding and looking after the needs of those in your care, this is important work. And if you are called to, or are able to do ‘nothing’, then this too is important work which needs doing on behalf of all of us during these times. Watch, witness, plan nothing, be with uncertainty, welcome the Cloud of Unknowing.

I have been meditating on what it means to have a productive day in these times. We are advised by many psychologists to put structures in place to support mental health and well-being. I also feel it is important to honour the broken shards of a life which had or held meaning. If we are in a rite of passage, this is the Severance not the Incorporation. If we are in a Descent Myth, we are in the dark.

I do not know what will happen with my ‘2020 Vision’. I anticipated that this would be a successful and productive year for Emergence of being in service at these transitional times. I imagined that ‘Space for Change’ would be sold-out with a small group of participants having a ‘transformative experience’; our ‘Summer Vision Fast’ would be likewise full to capacity; the ‘Autumn Equinox Retreat’ on Bardsey Island would be filling up nicely. None of this is happening. I am instead, simply with my ‘Cloud of Unknowing’. I tell myself: ‘Do what you can, with what you have, where you are’ even if this just means slowing down, contemplating and digging up the roots with your hands…

Spring lambs in mid-Wales

Phil: And so we go on, learning to become ever more comfortable with uncertainty. Trusting that, as each day unfolds, we will do what we can, we will be available to what is needed of us, and we will be present to each other. Before all this happened, I had mused to Fern about how a populous living ever more of its life online needs to learn how to be together again. After weeks, or potentially months, of forced social distancing, that need will be even more acute. And if, as seems likely, Covid-19 will be a part of all our lives going forwards and that repeated outbreaks will call for repeated lockdowns, then our ability to do what humans are defined by – being together – will become a rare and precious skill and ever more vital and necessary.

At this moment, we don’t know what we will be offering in the future. We don’t know what it will look like. And we don’t yet know who it will be for. It feels vitally important to us to wait and to listen for what is needed before offering what we think might serve. If this truly is a rite of passage, then we are being forced to pass through the ‘threshold’, in which every molecule of our beings is dismantled and put back together in a new, unfamiliar way. We will need to learn to do many things afresh. We will need to learn to do many things we’ve never done before and never imagined we would.

The uncertain road to the future...

Truly embracing the uncertainty of this time, for us, means letting go of everything we dreamed of doing and being, and opening ourselves to whatever might come next. It’s painful. It’s sad. And yet… isn’t it life? Isn’t this what life is? Change? Constant and unceasing change?

So. We’re still here. We’re still committed to our ‘2020 Vision’. And we’re still open to offering spaces for people to come together. We know that one day we will be together again. We look forward to seeing you there.

Keep safe. Be well. Stay connected.

Fern & Phil 

A new day dawns

Flying to the Moon via Gregynog...

Fern Smith and Phil Ralph, directors of Emergence, share a conversational blog about their experiences devising and facilitating change workshops for Welsh Government... 

Fern: Six months ago, Phil and I were ready to begin the first of our workshops at Gregynog House, commissioned by the Welsh Government and Natural Resources Wales – called ‘To the Moon and Back’. 

We’ve been meaning to write something about this whole process since then but somehow it never happened. In the aftermath we were so relieved that the workshops went well - we survived and the feedback was overwhelmingly good – that the last thing we really wanted to do was to revisit the whole process of preparation, planning and production. We moved on after a bit of celebration to preparing, planning and producing the next thing, and then the next and then the next… Sound familiar?  I am feeling a sense of unfinished business and a need to return. To look back in order to move forward. To remember and to harvest the learning…

It was in May 2019, in the fresh green budding Spring, that we spent two lots of two days at Gregynog House in mid Wales with two large groups of Welsh and Wales-based land managers, policy makers, educators, community organisers and growers. We’re planning a meet-up with our commissioners at Welsh Government and Natural Resources Wales in the next few weeks but before that I wanted to sit with and remember what called us to act, to accept the invitation and to put months of preparation time into offering ‘To the Moon and Back’. It’s six months on and I’m asking why did we go, how did we get there and what did we do that it felt like we had spent all our combined lifetimes preparing for it…

Phil: Fern had been telling me about her meetings with Welsh Government for a while. It seems that there was a real concern about how responding to the climate and nature emergencies we face will mean different sectors - sometimes with very different world views - coming together to find new solutions. Building trust and enabling a real sense of community and collaboration will be absolutely vital. This is an increasingly common occurrence as our personal and professional worlds become ever more siloed and specific. 

The upshot of these meetings was that Fern had been commissioned to deliver some pilot workshops bringing together some individuals and groups, in order to look at ways that we might begin to see and hear each other in deeper, more practical ways, with the hope that strong connections and collaborations might result. All of which makes perfect sense when you think about it – the very definition of sustainability stems from systems thinking: the idea that no part of a system is discrete or separate from any other and all parts combine to co-create the world together. Wales, being an unique place with a long history of environmental activism and concern, is arguably an ideal place to look at these issues. 

Fern and I had been looking for projects to work on together, putting our growing skill base of facilitation, systems thinking, group processes and personal transformation together. So, when she asked me if I would work on the pilot workshops with her, it seemed an obvious – if very daunting choice...


Fern: The invitation to work with the Welsh Government came as a result of having been invited by Kelli Rose Pearson, a PhD researcher at SUSPLACE in Cardiff University, to work with her on a couple of previous workshops whilst she was on a placement with Welsh Government. We’d shared an interest in Theory U, a deep individual/group/organisational change process which was developed out of years of research by many leading figures working at MIT in the U.S.

Theory U offers a model, a map and a methodology for anyone wanting to launch an inquiry into what supports and blocks innovation. I’m interested in processes of change. There are a huge amount of theories with their various strengths and idiosyncrasies. I engage with them as they see change as a process rather than just something which happens overnight. Theory U speaks about leading from the emerging future. This means we need to let go of pre-conceptions and fixed expectations, focus on listening rather than speaking, relationship building, and fully and consciously enter into a phase of ‘uncertainty’ or ‘unknowing’ to create a new field of possibilities from which new ideas, projects, and processes emerge.

I’d done a couple of one-day workshops with Kelli in 2018, we’d had good feedback, and one of the commissioners, Usha Ladwa Thomas from Welsh Government, was an active participant in these workshops. She’d been involved with working with Emily Finney from Welsh Government to support a process working with land managers and policy teams across Wales in line with the Natural Resources Policy in the Environment Act. Natural Resources Wales and their responsibility under the WFGA (Wellbeing of Future Generations Act) and the Environment Act enable a crucial part of this new policy – the Area Statements which determine how each particular area, body, and community are going to support the delivery of the Natural Resources Policy and deliver actions which take into account each area’s unique opportunities and challenges.

Emergence Land Journey - The Walk That Reconnects 2014

I was invited to speak to a team from Welsh Government and Natural Resources Wales in early 2019 and come up with some ideas as to how we could encourage more cross sectoral working, and not get lost down rabbit holes involving old frustrations or allegiances. Could we really create an environment of trust, listening, possibility and participation? I spoke to the team about my particular approach as an artist and the kinds of things I’d developed or delivered before: a major arts and sustainability conference at Centre for Alternative Technology; a consultative document for the Arts Council of Wales mapping sustainable arts practice in Wales; leading and facilitating creative walks involving dialogue on the move; producing a landmark DVD series about a major peace activist and spiritual teacher. They were intrigued, excited, committed to doing things differently… they said ‘yes’. The brief was essentially to get the people in the room to talk to one another and perhaps some way down the line to work together on collaborative projects.

Theory U was very much in the air at the time of the invitation. Phil and I were facilitating a small group in our home town of Machynlleth where we travelled ‘through the U’ with a small group made up of educators, a community organiser, town counsellor, artist and an engineer. I knew there was an interest from Welsh Government in the whole Theory U process too as Diana Reynolds is actively working to promote its use through her work supporting learning, innovation and relationship building across sectors internally. So, working with U Theory felt like a no-brainer. However, as Phil said, there was something else very much in the air – both inside our house and across the universe… the 50^th anniversary of the moon landing. I always listen to and trust what is emerging in the ‘spirit of the times’ as well as connecting to what I like to call ‘the spirit of place’. The creative process that began to emerge through our conversations brought the Apollo Mission front and centre. Back to Phil…

Phil: Alongside the burgeoning practice that Fern and I have together, I still have my ‘day job’. After training and working as an actor, I segued into writing about 15 years ago, first for the stage, then television and film. As the energy to create these workshops for Welsh Government was building, I was spending most of my time a quarter of a million miles away from Earth...

2019 marked the 50^th anniversary of the first manned landing on the Moon by the American astronauts of NASA – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, ably (and vitally) assisted by Michael Collins. I’d been approached by the BBC Science team in July 2018 and asked if I would write a script for a new and unique form of documentary, telling the story of Apollo 11 from blast off to splash down. The producers had access to previously classified audio recordings from the mission, detailing the astronaut’s communications between the spacecraft and Mission Control in Houston and, crucially, between themselves when no-one else could hear them. I’ve always been a lifelong space nut and so it was a heavenly experience for me to work on such an unique project. As I immersed myself in the minutiae and human experience of the mission, I shared my revelations and learnings with Fern. Little did I know that the gleam in her eye would lead to more adventures for the two of us…

Buzz Aldrin emerges from the Lunar Module about to become the 2nd man on the Moon...

You see, the dominant thing that emerged for me from all of my research was that the extraordinary nature of the achievement of landing men on the Moon was only possible because of some quite remarkable teamwork on the part of NASA. The Apollo missions were kicked off by President John F Kennedy in the early 1960s when he blithely announced to the world that the USA would “by the end of this decade land a manon the Moon and return him safely to Earth.” The only problem was, at the time that he said this, no-one had the faintest idea how to do it… Over the course of the next several years, driven by ingenuity, teamwork, a burning desire to “beat the Russians”, and the combined efforts of hundreds of thousands of people, they managed to do the impossible. But history – as it so often does – paints an overly simplified picture of how this feat was achieved.

Success always seems to come as an inevitability. But at every point in the process, failure was only moments away. In fact, failure – one could argue – was what enabled the success to happen. Without making millions of failures (including the tragic death of three astronauts in a launchpad fire on Apollo 1 in 1967 - a mere two years before Apollo 11’s successful mission) and being able to learn from them and adapt accordingly, the Apollo program would never have achieved its goal. Iterative learning was key. Prototyping, failing, learning, changing and prototyping again were the order of the day. Combine this with the remarkable ability of different departments across NASA to listen to one another and to work together towards a common goal and you have a recipe for success that is almost unparalleled and arguably largely absent in much of the modern world.

As I told Fern these tales of failure, learning, teamwork and success, she began to realise – long before I did – that the story of Apollo 11 offered a distinctive, exciting and unique lens through which to view the task we were being given by Welsh Government. In the place of landing on the Moon, substitute the seemingly impossible challenge of man-made climate change. In the place of NASA, substitute those people who work within the environment sector of Wales. All of them siloed in their own particular organisation or department, all of them striving towards a common goal, and all of them fighting to be heard amongst an increasingly loud landscape of change and fear for the future. The lessons of Apollo 11 were not just to be celebrated for the anniversary. They could offer real insight and have practical use today…

And so another element was added to our plans. The workshops now had a title, borrowed from the documentary – ‘To the Moon and Back…’ Combining our new lens with Theory U, we felt we had something of great value to share.

The documentary itself aired this summer on BBC2. 
If you didn’t catch it, it’s still available on BBC iPlayer in the UK 
And on PBS in the United States. 

Our planning began in earnest. We asked Welsh Government for two 2-day residential workshops to enable us to immerse our participants away from their normal, day-to-day lives to really try out our ‘prototype’ and learn by doing (and possibly failing). We had our source materials. Next thing we needed was a venue and a special guest or two… Over to you, Fern…  

Fern: We decided in consultation with our commissioning team to hold the event at Gregynog House in mid Wales. This venue has a vibrant history and connection with innovation, education, Welsh culture and international relations. It also has breath-taking grounds and a nearby train link. Gregynog gave us the chance of working in one venue in the heart of Wales which itself was undergoing a significant transition in terms of its own relationship to sustainability. At the time it was moving from being a part of the University of Wales to setting itself up as an independent trust. Gregynog, like so many other institutions is needing to change the way it operates and in a context of increasing unpredictability and uncertainty. The new CEO, Janet Wallwork Clarke, was really interested in looking at how we create lasting change in ourselves, our teams and our institutions. It felt like a great match.

Fern grapples with Theory U...

In the month or so before delivering the event we spent time mapping how we might get to the moon and back onto the famous ‘U’ of Theory U. Meanwhile the team at Welsh Government and Natural Resources Wales were busy sending out invites. Who did they want in the room? Who might be the change-makers, innovators and collaborators who might be an active and willing part of this pilot process?

Theory U has come from the stable of MIT though it does acknowledge its debt to research and models involving transformation and change. It’s something you can spend a lifetime on or something you can explain and ‘prototype’ in a minute. At the heart of the U – and yes, it is the shape of the letter U which gives this beautiful theory its name – are three main steps. These are ‘letting go’, ‘presencing’ and ‘letting come’. 

‘Letting go’ involves a process of listening, collecting information from as many sources as possible and ‘sensing’ into the feeling of an issue, a dilemma, a challenge. The second step, ‘presencing’ is perhaps the hardest, but the most important. Waiting, suspending activity, connecting to a deeper ‘source’ and not jumping immediately to solution. Only when we have hung out in this uncomfortable territory do we begin to move towards ‘the right-hand side of the U’ and ‘letting come’, which involves ‘Crystallizing’, ‘Prototyping’ and then ‘Performing’. Each phase is an important step in the process. Dialogue and listening are at the heart of the process as is suspending habitual ways of doing things, noticing difference, establishing emotional or empathic connection with self or others, and ultimately listening closely to ‘the future that wants to emerge’. The theory of this is mapped out and backed up in the Theory U research by many examples from all over the world at different operating scales. In practice, it is different every time and involves establishing a connection to the specific issue, specific location and specific culture, history and players involved. This is not about finding a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution.

The process is completely emergent in that it is predicated on what happens in the room with and between those people who are actually present. It is an entirely democratic process. We as facilitators are not determining the outcome, nor are those who commission the process. Herein lies the challenge and the excitement. We were encouraged by Welsh Government and NRW to create a process where the outcome was not known beforehand. This needed trust and great commitment from us as facilitators, the commissioning team and those who responded to the invitation to participate.

Phil prepares to meet the participants...

And so, on the 2/3 and the 15/16 of May this year, we did get ‘To the Moon and Back’ during those warm days at Gregynog. We were blessed with fantastic weather. In total 55 people participated including representatives of local government, NRW, Farming Union Wales, National Trust, RSPB, and many community organisers. We asked ourselves many questions and opened ourselves to hear the answers from the emerging future: How do we create a Wales that works for all? How do we ensure the ‘Wellbeing of Future Generations’? How do we put our histories or differences aside and commit to listening rather than telling others what we think they need to do? This was a live experiment, active place and people-based research.  

Greta Thunberg

We brought the ‘future generations into the room’ in the form of 18-year-old Jasmine Jones from Newtown, a straight-talking young woman who had been inspired to organise a school strike in her town by the extraordinary climate activist, Greta Thunberg. The future generations were also brought into the room by a particularly powerful ‘Council’ where each participant talked about their fears and challenges when they think about the future, especially in terms of their children, grandchildren and those yet unborn.

People spoke about their love and knowledge of soil – the soil of a specific place significant to each participant. We walked together outside in nature, practicing forms of what Theory U calls the 4 levels of listening. We underwent a deep and challenging process of questioning to find a new intention for our work, which then crystallised into a proposed prototype project which then led to conversations about collaboration throughout our participants.

The days were long, intense and challenging. There was listening, trust, and deep and significant connections were made. New projects and processes were seeded, and new collaborations envisioned. Many reported back that they had been hungry for conversation, connection, space to think, and to connect to individual and shared visions. Here are just a few of the comments we collected detailing what people took away with them…

Space and time for people to let themselves out of their boxes

Sharing experience, new ways of working, support network

Sense of community – you managed to create it!

Having the time to step back and deconstruct both personally and professionally

Brilliant group of people

Going out for walks!

Using walking exercises with questions

17 Questions

Learning deep listening

Opening up

Understanding different perspectives

Loads of time to reflect and share

Having time and space to be in the moment

Making connections

The sense of shared journey

Meeting others in a wonderful setting

And now, months later, the first frost has settled, and the darker nights are here. What impact has this event had? Has there been change of any significance? What has been put in place, has emerged or evolved six months on? Later this month we meet again with our colleagues at Welsh Government and Natural Resources Wales in Cardiff to take stock and see how we might take this forward. From this pilot event, what have we learned? What might we want to do together in future?

We are both deeply grateful for the opportunity to work in this way at this time of great change and turmoil. More than ever, it feels vitally important that we learn again the skills of listening, community, and collaboration. We need to see each other better. We need to learn how to fail better. We need to learn how to learn better. It’s work we feel called to dedicate ourselves to and we hope to do much more of it in the years to come.

We leave the final words to the ecologist and systems thinker, CS Holling -   

“The only way to approach such a period in which uncertainty is high and one cannot predict what the future holds is not to predict but to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living”…

Copyright © 2019 Emergence CIC Ltd.

For more details on what we do - www.emergence-uk.org 

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It’s about time… by Phil Ralph

This year, in September, my partner Fern and I will be teaching a week-long residential course at the Centre for Alternative Technology. Entitled ‘Practicing the Art of Living’, the course will lead up to 12 participants through a cycle of change and transformation, exploring how they might live, work and create differently in this rapidly changing time.

Simply the mere act of writing that paragraph has given me the shivers… of anticipation, of delight, of shock and, above all, of fear. My mind and my ego are now bouncing around inside my head like two competing pinballs, utterly terrified at the prospect of what I am proposing to do. Rising above the cacophony of these two clacking balls is a repeating refrain. A single question, repeated over and over and over and over again –

Who do I think I am?

I never expected to be doing this. To be clear, I never even imagined I would be doing this. I have spent my life assuring myself and anyone who will listen to me that “I’m not a teacher, could never be a teacher, don’t know enough to teach anyone, am superstitious about the whole notion of teaching and what kind of an egotist would I need to be to presume that I had any knowledge that would be valuable enough to others for me to teach it?”

And yet here I am. The course runs from Monday 24th to Saturday 29th September at CAT near Machynlleth in mid-Wales. Bookings are now open.

So, the questions I find myself asking are: why now? And what has changed?

And the answers are: It’s about time. And – everything.

Fern and I have now been together as partners for twenty years. In that time, my life has changed beyond all recognition. When we met in 1998, I was living in London and I was an actor. Today, we are living in the wilds of Wales (well, Llandeilo…) and I am a writer, performer, producer, facilitator and – yes – teacher. How the hell did that happen?

The full answer to that question would undoubtedly exhaust your generous attention span (thank you for reading this, by the way…) so let me give you a brief, two-word precis:

Breakdown. Breakthrough.

There you go. That’s 20 years of change in a nutshell. Simples…

Yeah, you guessed it -  it wasn’t really that easy. I mean, it was that pattern but… it didn’t happen just the once. Nor twice. Nor three times. It happened again. And again. And again. And again. And that was just in the last two minutes.

My (extremely belaboured) point is that change is not easy, it is not painless, and it isn’t simply a one-time thing. It is a seemingly endless process of challenge, loss, grief, depression, disassociation, denial, bargaining and ultimately acceptance that goes on throughout life, day in, day out. It’s a process of reimagining who and what I can be in this lifetime – and then doing it again, and again, and…

Wherever you look in the world, you can find aphorisms and sayings that encourage us to accept that life IS change. And that’s easy to accept when it’s just words. But living it – truly going through the process of having your dreams and expectations churned and chopped and discarded and rejected time and time again – is so much harder to do. In fact, it’s a lifetime’s practice… it’s an art…

One of the key things that enabled me to follow the path of change I have been living through in the past 20 years – apart from sharing my life with the most joyously questing human being it has ever been my privilege to know – has been a gradually burgeoning spiritual practice.

(****** SPIRITUALITY KLAXON ******** HE’S JUST MENTIONED THE ‘S’ WORD!!! EVERYBODY HEAD FOR THE EXITS!!!! WOOP!!! WOOP!!!!)

As you can tell, I’m something of a recovering cynic – as well as being a recovering actor and addict – and my take on spirituality from the cradle was pretty much encapsulated with a sneery shrug and some combination of the words – what, load, a, of, and knackers. But I discovered to my eternal gratitude that cynicism and a closed mind will only get you so far in life and in my case, it got me just as far as a nervous breakdown, physical illness and severe depression. Opening myself up to the notion that there might be “more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” has brought me endless riches – as well as endless challenges and opportunities to learn and grow.

One of the first things I did that began to open my mind was go on a silent meditation retreat at Gaia House in Devon. When I say I went “on a silent meditation retreat” what that actually looked like in practice was booking a place to go on a retreat FOR THREE YEARS RUNNING AND BOTTLING OUT EVERY SINGLE TIME BECAUSE I WAS ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED before finally managing to pluck up the courage to spend a week in silence with other human beings, sitting on a cushion and letting my mind shout at me day and night. And once I finally got there, how was it? Well… 

When you see images of people meditating, they always look so blissful and calm, don’t they? And that is part of it, sure. For maybe one minute every five hours, if you’re lucky… The rest of the time the images should arguably look like the people are in a war zone, assailed from every side by thought after thought after thought… 

But, eventually, after time had slowed to a crawl and my senses had become refined and retuned and I began to watch my thoughts as one might watch the clouds passing across the sky – eventually, by the end of the week I had discovered something truly revolutionary. Ready?

I am not my mind.

God, what a relief, eh? From that point on there was no stopping me. Change and transformation here I come!!! Toot toot!!!

No, not really… At every stage of change, when I could possibly have resisted, you can be damn sure I resisted. I fought and kicked and screamed against letting go of any of the assumptions and desires I had in place for what I thought my life should be. I insisted that I would change no more. But life, as it so often does, had other plans. And, like it or lump it, change I would and change I must.

Now, some seven years after my first retreat, the list of things I do and have done that I could never possibly have imagined seems endless: I have a daily practice of sitting meditation; I have sat in more circles of total strangers undergoing profound spiritual and psychological distress than I could ever have imagined; I have undertaken a vision quest where I went alone into the wilds of north wales with nothing but minimal shelter and water to sustain me;  I have assisted others who have undertaken the same process; I have facilitated transformative gatherings, workshops, and walks; I have co-produced and directed with Fern a documentary series about the unique and wonderful spiritual activist, Satish Kumar; and I have trained as a Warrior for the Human Spirit with my teacher, Margaret Wheatley, and this year I will be stepping up to assist her in training others.

So, as you can see, when I say that everything has changed, I’m not even vaguely exaggerating.

So, why now? Why is it ‘about time’?

I’m 46 years old as I write this at the end of January 2018. I will be 47 in about eight weeks. On a personal level, I’m running out of time. Now, I know that the voice in your head that insists that you won’t ever die has balked at what I just wrote, but the absolute, ineluctable truth of it is I have less time ahead of me than there is behind me. Someday soon – terrifyingly soon – I will die. And I am absolutely certain that I want to be of service while I’m still here and offer some of the hard-won wisdom I have learnt to others.

I could spend the rest of my life asking the question ‘who do I think I am?’ I suspect we all could. Who do I think I am to teach, to guide, to speak, to stand up, to lead, to be generous, to think I have something to offer, to imagine I am talented, valuable, can be of service….? And the only answer to that I can offer is simple –

Who do I think I am? No-one. Just a human being. Alive for now, able and willing to serve for now. Curious, passionate, questing, failing, falling, laughing, crying. A human being. 

Time to get past that question then… That’s the personal level. So, why is it ‘about time’ on the global level?

I don’t really need to tell you, do I? You’re alive too. You know what’s going on, even if you do everything you can to protect yourself from it. None of us know what the future holds – for our species or the planet – but based on where we are right now, today, it doesn’t look good. At all. In fact, it looks really, really bad. And I could bed deep into my old friend, cynicism, and say that I’m alright and screw everyone else and the sky isn’t falling and why do I need to change and grow and share and love… I could do that. But I refer you to the paragraph above where I talked about the fact that I’m running out of time. We all are. Fast. Time to put up or shut up.

So, inspired and nurtured as I have been for the last 20 years by the love and awesome curiosity of my partner Fern, I’ve decided that it’s about time… It’s about time I offer whatever talents and learning I have in the service of others. It’s about time I set aside my fragile ego and my fear of failure and share my life’s learnings for the betterment of all. It’s about time that I accepted that being a teacher doesn’t mean I have to know everything or be everything. Quite the reverse. As I look around the world right now, the scariest, most dangerous people I see are the ones who claim they do know everything… And the most profound and valuable teachers are their opposites. The ones who have walked the path ahead of us and with deep humility and a sense of their own unimportance, share what they know in the hope it will be of service.

What I now know to be true to my very bones is that change is life and life is change. Nothing about that sentence is simple or easy (or grammatically correct…) but it is profoundly and undeniably true. I embrace life and change in all its complexity, beauty and harshness. For however long I have left, I commit to serving life. 

 

It’s about time...

Fern and I hope you will join us at CAT in September.

I will also be teaching a couple of days on 'Changing the Frame: the Science and Art of Communicating for Transition' at Schumacher College in April. The course runs from Monday 19th March to Friday 6th April. Full details available here.