Category: Process

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A Way To Think About Your Project.

I think in Mind Maps. Bubbles that link, interact, dance, and play…

A complete ecosystem of connection…

A symphony, a song, a lyric and a melody. A project, an idea, a way of puttering in this project world.

03 What is it that you are trying to do Steps to Start (Getting it out of

It is really easy to get completely inside this kind of thinking. Or… experince a major headache if you don’t see things this way.

02 From one setting to another setting- a way to think about your project(1)

These kinds of maps are not brainstorming or forms to fill out. They are a way of questioning a project and evaluating the capacities of the system which is proposing the project. It is relational thinking. The fun of it, for me, is to be given some information or data – in context… then, to play with the project players… play and find the connections, the disconnections and the opportunities in the emotional/capacity/compentency arena to make sense of the elements of a project.

The idea is that …

05 2022 Project - Business PlanningPermitting Questions and Flow

It used to be that I thought about these connected systems in disparate form and formation. No longer! The idea of projects which come to fruition is a dance of iteration, commitiment, mutual reguard, and hard work with partners. It is managing disagreement and conflict in ways that are generative. It is a whole symphony in a single product launch or process engagement.

It is soul-feeding. Just as music or poetry or a fine vista… soul-feeding.

04 Discernment Framework

This set of Mind Maps are the newest iteration of this work. There is progression and delight in the dance of a project. Just as planting a field yields, with good cultural practice and care, a crop; this set of assesment tools, alignment processes, and practices – questions, can yield success in deployment, engagement, enrollment and collaboration.

If you want to see the whole set… in flow, look here

To all who have walked this set of processes… in all of the various iterations, thank you. It is only with feedback that a system grows, changes, and iterates. To the play of living – with thanksgiving.

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Of Mary Oliver and Parker Palmer… the gift of giving to…

D1FE4C6F-135F-4CEA-A3E0-51B6030DAAA6The high C
The song sung at an internment
The song sung at a sacred moment
The song sung at a passing

In each place and time,
given of myself fully…
And, this moment,
as candles burn

feeling lost and without
anchor to a place
anchor or moorage
in bay or at quay

so sensing a rising
resentment to this state.
Sun breaks upon
rising mountains

tears of falling
raining from upwelling
eyes blurred in
light of day.

80F964F6-CB34-444B-939F-D8C60FDA0172To Palmer’s questions:
What do I need
to let go of?
What do I

want to give myself to?
These gentle query
basking in fall sun
guide the boat.

A dear friend,
declared a shooting star
a swift passing
across the sky.

That same friend,
called out surround;
armor all around
with butcher’s bill

from tilting ground
with broken
with battered
head to hands

again to questions…
What do I need to let go?
What do I want to give
myself to?

47747915-BCDF-469E-9C34-F6D1D29D8AE0And again…
What do I need to let go?
What do I desire to give
myself to?

In the rising
the walking at
the altar in the world
a gentle echo.

A gentle kiss
the all of creation
the surround of
that giving in moment.

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Two, Three, Four, and more… align

The ocean turns over. Part that was deep comes to the surface. That which is surfaced… is evaporated. Now the vapor moves over land and comes back down as rain… rolling down the mountains. Bringing the flotsam and jetsam of the stream… back to the deep.

The ocean turns over… welling up from the depths. Welling and welling…

In air, the jet stream courses across the tides… bumps into and streams over mountains.

Where the mountains rise up… the great plates of the rolling earth’s crust… push up and over… shove deeply into core… there is also another set of speeds.

Then, then we come to the great speeds of shift in the human condition. A life… short and long… rushing at hyper speed… yet, only in miles of kilometers per hour… as the day rises, eases, and sets.

A life, rising, easing and setting…

In each dimension… these speeds – as normal motion. There are moments when all align. A moment of … and, if it is a the plates rushing over and under… it may seem an eternity to other scales. An eternity… which is but a pico in another’s relative time.

So, once seen… this cacophony of tempi… all moving at pace… along… and thinking, ah, there is another who moves at my time… my meter… my alignment… Another partner. The sudden easing away, as another, in fact is moving at alternative tempo… which for a beat, was in aligned wonder…

And, in another set of bars, will align again… out there in the great symphony.

Sections, all playing to a great pulse… yet, within the department, division, sector… an independent sub-tempo holds sway. Until the tide shakes the very core and … all are in the great hall for a movement.

Then, back to routines of harmonic fervor. To rouse in great hall again… further on along… as the ocean turns over, the great plates rise and fall… the spinning of the galaxies… dance through heavens… all in moment, all in chorus, all in … all in… all in…

A moment and all. In that moment. Just for a moment.

Clear. The moment. Before dawning in this moment. Humbled to see and swim in this cascade of clarity. The falls of … a spring shower… a gift of laughter in the humbling tide. A wave that carries high up on the beach. As it recedes… the tumbled sand shows patterns not seen before or since. A new seeding in. A new rising up. A new aligned presence. A moment. A gift. Unbidden, a gift. With thanksgiving

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Cord & Chord or Chord & Cord

845E5E63-E9D7-4268-AA7F-7A5E5203BB05

Woke this second day of may… riffing on the word cord… or chord… after the poem, find some borrowed thoughts on the words. Striking that wood cord… while racked and stacked… seems to not fit the same. Perhaps it is from raft building with binding cord… ah well, bemused in the wash of creative tide.

©Bill Bartels 05-02-2021

Cord & Chord or Chord & Cord

Binding, woven, pulling taunt,

Or three quick steps in rising tone.

Bound and tossed, Deep into…

Loosed and dancing, Circle Round.

Speaking song, Singing pitch

Pulling tight, battened down.

Then to maths the vision turns

Pulling sun to set horizon

Sea that rolls, dancing song

Lines that set, journey’s sails

Maths again, tell the path

A sun shot from the rolling deck

Song to work, lines to bind

Maths to say the path we sail

All in cord or chord or both

Dancing round, yes, dancing round

Unbound, and yet, linked in work

Using each to build upon

No longer tying, binding – bound

Tis as a tool, this twine we use

Tis as tool this song we sing

Tis as a tool these maths we work.

To pull the sun down to the sea,

Telling our path across expanse

Singing our journey

Singing in harmony

Raising voice, to set the sail

Raising cord and chord to pull the line

Woven, strong, in cord we share

Woven strong, woven indeed.

 

And now… the borrowed – in the folk tradition – some framing of words…

Cord: The cord is a unit of measure of dry volume used to measure firewood and pulpwood in the United States and Canada. A cord is the amount of wood that, when “racked and well stowed”, occupies a volume of 128 cubic feet. Wikipedia

Cord: thin, flexible string or rope made from several twisted strands.

Cord: an electrical cord.

Cord: a long slender flexible material usually consisting of several strands (as of thread or yarn) woven or twisted together. 2 : a slender flexible anatomical structure (as a nerve or muscle)

Cord: The vocal cords (also called vocal folds) are two bands of smooth muscle tissue found in the larynx (voice box). The vocal cords vibrate and air passes through the cords from the lungs to produce the sound of your voice.

Chord: A chord, in music, is any harmonic set of pitches/frequencies consisting of multiple notes that are heard as if sounding simultaneously. For many practical and theoretical purposes, arpeggios and broken chords, or sequences of chord tones, may also be considered as chords in the right musical context. Wikipedia

Chord: In geometry, A chord of a circle is a straight line segment whose endpoints both lie on a circular arc. The infinite line extension of a chord is a secant line, or just secant. More generally, a chord is a line segment joining two points on any curve, for instance, an ellipse. A chord that passes through a circle’s center point is the circle’s diameter. The word chord is from the Latin chorda meaning bowstring

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Some random thinking … Playing with Time

Can we ‘make’ the sun rise more quickly? Can we delay the moon’s rising? In the speeding up of the deep carbon cycle… are there consequences for this ‘adjustment’? Each is a far fetched moment… yet, there is active demand to have daylight be more… and night less… so that there is greater productivity… what other cycles are being ‘adjusted’ in the name of – a specific system need-as opposed to a harmonic balance-in the dynamic of the ‘whole’ of a linked – supporting – emerging set of variables? Just musing the sun rise… a dynamic balance.

A Way To Think About Your Project

Each a view of the same set of elements. Each element speaks from a different set of foundational facts… The conversation, if it is adversarial, stacks the various foundational facts, Triangleselements, views, and position in different perspectives, contexts and places… being invited to rationalize this pile, this stack, this conversation… takes time, thought, collaborative perspective, respect for the various agency… all in a sense of calm… it doesn’t come cheap… if the whole motivation is to get a quick determination… to get to where ‘I’ want it to be… well, that is an argument that will return again and again… Seeing the patterns spin… play that tune again, and again, and again… or not… and if not, taking the time to make rational, connected, linked, and aligned agency.

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Easing into the end of a day

As the day eases to end… There is an invitation to stop and take stock. There is an invitation to just sit in the easing.

It is a moment of complete presence. A gift. Sitting with the gift. With thanksgiving.

 

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People with People

8DA396C3-BF1B-4D94-9D81-88561A02109BStressed Systems get more…

Internally, there is this moment of …

Stressed systems get more rigid and hierarchical.

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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.D684B1FA-96CD-4451-996F-56E30E320E34

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.AA326162-0A1F-415A-8A86-DD0134F08855

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.

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Someone(s) and Dancing

# 06-20-2020 The fourth …

Scope, Scale, Context, Capacity.

All grounded in mutual regard.0A488EB3-CA09-436F-BBE7-E465A2BEF082

The fourth force. The counter prevailing.

Prevailing.

Counter prevailing.

When the argument is ‘against’ then the focus is not clear. In the fog of non-clarity… What-izing, Who-izing… the only clarifier is that of mutual regard. In the intensity of the fog… mutual regard is lost… as in a “White Squall”… all vision is blind.

When the argument is ‘for’ then the possibility of collaborative prevailing and counter prevailing may share places in the dialogue. For, the fourth wall is that of mutual regard. The dialogue, becomes grounded in mutual regard. A foundational part… that of mutual regard.

IMG_8132Someone died. Someone might die. Someone didn’t get paid, What is the Someone? Who is the Someone?

Someone Died
Someone Might Die
Someone Didn’t get paid
The Someone is?

The counter prevailing view… as Someone.
The prevailing view… as Someone.

 

 

An Institution or… Institutions… as Someone.
An Institutional response… as Someone.
A political party… as Someone.
A Reactive response… as Someone.
A family… as Someone.
An Invasive response… as Someone.
A Reaction to invasive activities… as Someone.
A Disaster response… as Someone.
A Dominant position… as Someone.
An artist… as Someone.
A Minority position… as Someone.
A person… as Someone.
A club… as Someone.
A religion… as Someone.
A social view… as Someone.
The Federal Government… as Someone.
An individual… as Someone.
A segregated group… as Someone.
The State Government… as Someone.
A declaration of separation… as Someone.
The homeowner… as Someone.
A musician… as Someone.
The Municipal Government… as Someone.
The lighting and landscape district… as Someone.
A general plan… as Someone.
A Park… as Someone.
A road system… as Someone.
A resolution of an agency… as Someone.
The economy… as Someone.
A declaration… as Someone.
A sacred space… as Someone.
A regulated body… as Someone.
A sacred place… as Someone.
A taxing scheme… as Someone.
The Court… as Someone.
A bank… as Someone.
The act of suppression… as Someone.
A regulatory scheme… as Someone.
A game… as Someone.
A win… as Someone.
A watershed… as Someone.
A loss… as Someone.
An elected body… as Someone.
A team… as Someone.
A river… as Someone.
An official… as Someone.
A belief… as Someone.
A band… as Someone.
A physical moment… as Someone.
The sewer… as Someone.
A subset of government… as Someone.
A neighborhood… as Someone.
A landfill… as Someone.
A cemetery… as Someone.
A land… as Someone.
An earth… as Someone.

Taken with NightCapThe perspective of … someone-hood. The many someones who… because one has died, one might die or one did not get paid… ardently establish rules to make sure that, this set of outcomes … never happens again. All in a frame of independent action. Layer upon layer… of uncoordinated, independent action… What-izing… What-ism… Who-itzing… Who-ism.

Each layer, rational in its perspective… without collective connection … for, it is reactive to the horror of death, potential death and non-payment. A cacophony of layers… rational in selective scope. … rational in selective scope. Someone-izing… Someone-ism.

The two certainties in life… legislated against… Death and Taxes… for if a tax is a fee for license to be allowed to … a demand for payment… not paid … then we have taken the regulatory scheme and made it the snake which eats itself. The layers of scheme… eating the whole… until, as with all structures of creation… we pass away to dust.

When systems are on the same plane as that of creation… the humor of the grand joke… begins to make my sides ache with laughing. For, if I do not laugh… I must weep.

A9995280-2D4B-4A93-A9C2-836729BB72B3First we, the makers of all of these schemes, must parse the proper levels of belonging and then … in the competition to belong, either up or down the hierarchy of someone… the personhood aspect is hidden in the great list of someones.

And, even the application is hidden for it is a parsing… the parsing is part of the someone-ing. The, in the parsed someone-ing, there is the possibility of an additional segmenting to be more clear about the various clauses and … that which creates an equitable application of the scheme to those who would engage the service for which the scheme is protecting the someone from death, the possibility of death and the possibility of not being paid. For a small fee… not a tax, for that would require a vote of the ‘someones’ and ‘they’ might not understand the incredible need… for protection from death, the possibility of death and the impropriety of non-payment.

This leads to another application… If I, as a certain someone, believe that my payment already covers the service (someone) who is now attempting to demand payment to avoid the three awful outcomes… then, I may take the position that I am being abused … and… the abuser… also takes the portion… death, the specter of death and the specter of non-payment…

Musing on the hard work of rationalization among all of our someones…

997C78A4-AB39-42AA-B1C7-C0D7EA38E546That rationalization of … that harmonization of… a grand invitation to meeting this moment. Driven by the unrest of so many someones … demanding voice and hearing… the veil of … demanding hearing. And, the counter… pay no attention to this voice or that voice… suppress this voice or that voice.

The yelling at a voice being suppressed. And… the challenge of beginning to be in conversation… a dialogue of voices… at a table… where food, sustenance, the sharing of and breaking of bread… sharing. The sharing of, the passing of water. The making of a table, a hearth, a welcoming moment… meeting the moment.

The quiet of a shared meal. The communion of a shared cup. The gathering in a shared song. The moment of a moment that … in diverse voice… gathers velocity, together, for…

For a different day.

Then, the mighty pen… that of declaration of ‘civil unrest’ … a ‘rioting’ of someones … against … someones.DF3C2979-310B-4071-9570-457D39553E89

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The parting…

Shift happens in a moment. That would be the first moment. Shift happens in many moments; starting with the first moment. If it is a shift that is anticipated… then there are all of the anticipatory moments, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, even centuries of anticipation. The angst of anticipation.; the binding angst. Then… the pivot, the shift, the moment. All that energy suddenly unbound. The unbinding can be so violent that it also unbinds my own connection to the moment. Blasting across the all of creation. At other moments, the unbinding is as a release of … allowing the prisoner to go free. The opening of the cell door… The new journey actually begun.

Time and passing time happens. The rolling of generation into generation. Moment into moment. Moment into minute, into hour, into year and on and on. That wonder of cycle. Sun rising, sun setting… the seasons: of living, of the year, of the earth, of a star, of all of creation. Leaning into cycle. Leaning into the wonder of a rising sun … the setting sun. The tradition of watching the sunset. The pause… just before the sun eases beyond the horizon… the ‘going, going… gone’. The breath of pause, the prayer and holding up. The thanksgiving for the gift of days. The thanksgiving for …

In each beginning there is an ending. In the anticipation of both beginning and ending, there are moments of wishing to go back. To hold that warm and perfect place of memory that was a… let us do that again moment. The deep desire to hold that moment in all time. Into this wish, this desire, this deep wanting… the grand hook of zero sum comes. The straw hook, reaching into heart and soul to offer the return to Eden. We are far, far east of Eden. The simplicity of options of yes and no are long past. Yet, the offer of return is the siren song of desire, of wanting and of heaven. The thought makes me smile. The movie line… “Is this heaven? No it’s Kansas” (Field of Dreams)

And so… The moment, minute, hour and on; call to my heart this morning. The understanding of call to communion. Communion in the altar in the world. The call to sharing around the well of living water. That water, consecrated in heart, soul and spirit. That water, in sacred cup, passed among all of creation. The deep roots, sharing in woven communion. As a tapestry, woven wisdom.

In the passing of a moment. The passing of a life. The passing of an era. The passing of a someplace. The passing of icon… the phrase, “We will never forget,” is raised up. Yet, in the sands of time, many grains have passed from memory. So, to honor those sands, the foundation stone the builders rejected… now becomes, from the gift of earth, of creation, the new foundation. To welcome new foundation is to make the whole of creation ready to weave anew. This weaving anew happens with each sunrise. So too, with each sunset.