Dialogue – Bartels' Universe

October 6, 2020

People with People

Stressed Systems get more…

Internally, there is this moment of …

Stressed systems get more rigid and hierarchical.

Or, the communication gaps start to show up…

Or, the dis-hinged, dis-connected parts… start to be seen.

A great stone into a lake. The lake splashes… exposing all of the deep connections… and, then the water slops back… once seen, it cannot be unseen. However, it can be forgotten. Obscured by the fog of warring words… Obscured by the splash of a great stone hurled… Obscured by the smoke from all of the fires burning…

People with People…

So, when people are serving and interacting with people… there is a mediation of this stressing. When people, with people see the links exposed and are able to remember…

Remembering to breathe.

Remembering to smile.

Remembering to laugh at the foibles of our shared people-ness.

Remembering to practice pace, form, and care…

People with People.

And, in that moment, people with people… helping people… helping self, soul, system and outcome.

It ain’t much… and it is what I’ve got.

People, laughing… and in the caring laugher, the caring care… the connecting… the rigid hierarchy can flex… with the many links and connections that are people with people.

The mitigation of rigid is flex… and the flexing is the connections of many voices… in song.

September 26, 2020September 26, 2020

In a mansion with many wings…

“Waking to a sudden realization. Too many front doors. The regulatory layers… each screaming in importance. The ardent voice of each layer… me first, me first… And indeed. For each layer, created to keep something from every happening again. Protecting against death, the potential of death, or the fear of not getting paid. Ardent in protection. Ardent in the authority to serve and protect.
Each layer… a certain capacity. A certain range. A loud voice. A big stick to enforce. Each with a single front door. Created in the clarity of moment… and put in the house of many rooms. For, each layer may be included in a separate wing… and, have its very own front door. Here on the sixth floor… a front door to the greater world… and the stick of enforcement… able to move up and down … even to the ground floor. Where each and every passer by… is enforced… for not seeing the sixth floor front door…
Searching valiantly for a rationalized front door… and, in this moment of morning… understanding the solving is backward. For, the solving creates another ardent layer… A macro vision to a micro community. The micro… so many front doors… behind the macro of door makers, room makers, ardent leadership… keeping safe… this large solving in a sea of micro … and micro in macro… the clarity of … and now the build in a different way. To see the friction between the micro and macro… the opportunity in both and… a gift of a foggy morning.” – Bill Bartels –

August 31, 2020

A new massing of mind maps

July 27, 2019

This is not a form… It is a way of practice

The apparent form is not a form at all. It is a matrix of listening. It can be as mindmap. It can be as outline. It acts as iterative process. When we begin with … how… if it not framed as a what or behavior, we are not asking a question at all. We are making a yes/but statement. Each question word is contextualized with the other question words. This is linking using Lean Six Sigma practices, Active Listening practices, Spiral Dynamics practices, Chris Alexander practices, Traction Gap practices, Range practices, Natural Systems Practices… the list of analogies goes on and on. (Memenomics, Spiral Dynamics in Action, Adizes, Collins, Katz and Nowak, Frankl, Kooser, Hollis, Mate’ , It is the practice of leveraging daily work to grow daily work. So, to engage the work is to engage and connect in community.

Just musing on this challenge.

July 27, 2019

Lesson in presence.

What my father taught me, as he lay dying. When he would suddenly feel like he was falling, he would reach up a hand… and all he needed was to have the hand grasped. Nothing more. Perhaps a word… gotcha. That is all.

Sometimes… a schizophrenic asks for 5 minutes in a warm room to drink a cup of coffee… Disheveled … and five minutes. Permission is given. A timer is set. A cup of coffee is drunk. Then, raincoat on, umbrella up… with great appreciation, that seen, connected mind… in gratitude, can be in the rain, with a community connected smile.

Five minutes and a cup of coffee. A hand and gotcha… Then, in a safe place of connection… getting back to the work of … negotiating with the staff in my mind… laying down to die…

Is our connection that of being in charge of both sides of a conversation? Is our connection to connect with the moment of common? Or, is our connection to begin, within, to see and choose, with understanding,

What language? We, us? They, them? We, us with a management of both sides of the connection? We, us with connection and deep listening? They, them… are we and us when we ‘choose’ …

The challenge of this moment is that subtle and ‘all the power of the universe’; seeing.

Dancing in the tension of the gap… in that dancing, there is something else. It is the gratitude of a moment when the connection carries across the gap. The circle of all of ‘us.’

May 19, 2019May 19, 2019

Signal Path… Logic Path

A signal path is that set of connections to allow the origin to get to the receptor.

The logic path… is a set of decisions that may support this set …

The two are not the same. Yet, often, we use a planning logic path to describe a set of signal path connections…

Without understanding the rest of the story.

Emphasis … on the wrong tool for the project at hand.

So… surprise, the tool and the project are at odds. The administrators of the tool and the administrators of the project speak in languages foreign to each other and the outcome is a set of language where the project and process become expert at being for what it is against.

Rinse and repeat.

A mime walked into a bar and asked for a beer… the barkeep said… huh?

April 2, 2019April 2, 2019

How did … when did?

04-02-19 The crisp chill of morning.

The morning light … a surprise lays on the edge of the field. A great branch, clipped by the tractor, fallen from the tree… That sudden sense of … how did you come here? When did you come here? The great tracks leading both up to and away… yet, the branch, fallen to the ground, a surprise. The whole of the view is shifted for the opened area of the sky.

The ardent question. When did you come here? The whole of creation, has been here the whole time. When did the sudden seeing happen? To wake to that which has always been. That sudden awareness of the whole of … And then, once seen, not a possibility of unseeing.

This seeing or the breath; it is a gift of this morning. The sudden and always… come to a moment and breaking, as the sun rise, over all awareness.

With care. With blessing. With awe.

March 28, 2019March 28, 2019

The Mocking page to invitation

“… the truth will make you free.” John 8:21-32

The candle in the cave.

Light warming the darkness.

That place where, the empty page invites.

That place where the empty staff; music calls.

The invitation to dance with lyric, narrative, melody and poetry.

The invitation to dance in all creation.

Easy to put ‘truth’ in the context of demand.

Easy to put ‘truth’ in frame of law…

When the lenten candle lights the cave …

In preparation, in solitude, in quiet reflection…

In the cacophony of voices… all call truth…

Light warming darkness.

The meal inviting communion.

The soft touch of …

The light caress of …

The Candle in the cave.

No mocking.

Invitation.

No mocking.

And so the lyric, the narrative…

That lenten muse…

For in moment, in communion.

The page embraces.

The staff enfolds.

And the song pours forth.

In call creation.

Amen, and amen.

March 4, 2019March 4, 2019

A Flexible Rule of Three

We seek to solve a problem… however, the elements of the problem are not clearly defined. The rule of three… an input, a process, an output. At a scope, a scale, and in a context. A who, a what, a where… with a when, a how and a why. Rinse and repeat. Deeper and deeper goes the wander. with each pass, a greater clarity can come. In the growing moras of a challenge; a new pass in the rule of three. The rule, when the questions are in the incorrect order… may kick up a fuss that says a point has been missed. True. In this miss, the projection error can now be corrected.

Movement from blather to insight. Perhaps insight through blather. Just a touch to understand that questioning in engaged moment can move a culture far along a path. Most especially, when the whole of the culture practices the questions of this simple rule. Not to find a one correct answer … no; to engage the garden that is found in the dialogue.