The Diamond Journey and the Flashflood

This thing about time

Unbelievably, the current has picked up even more speed these past months and dipped me under with barely a moment to breathe. I’m content to follow the flow though because everything I’m involved in here, whether it’s our thesis, organising the Art of Hosting training, or the many smaller projects in between, continuously infuse me with new inspiration and energy.

At the end of it all will be a time for breathing and recovery. But for now I am still deeply committed to presence with this big watershed year that I will surely miss for the rest of my life once it’s over. So despite my thrill in the busyness, I wish time would slow down a little. Luckily, with the coming of spring, there’s the lilts of the blackbird, and the churring of the great tit. There is the most soothing sound I know, the rookoo of the wood pigeon. The calls of geese and the huge sound the swan’s wings make. There’s the screams of the sea gulls, the only thing that can make me miss the blonde dunes of my homeland coast. They are the ones who help me taste a bit of Deep Time here and there, as the weeks rush by.

Whereas a few weeks ago I was still, with passive curiosity, observing the first dreams and visions for my future after MSLS float by, I have now stepped in to actively engage with them. We have set up a Future Council with a few friends, dedicating time and space to help each other explore our future questions. I have entered into a wordless conversation with faraway lands as possible new homes, and am midwifing my own next steps. My future is shapeshifting and evolving alongside me, my walking partner on this path through the final months of this precious Karlskrona year.

The Diamond Journey

I have anxiously been awaiting spring, hoping that she would lift me out of the bottom of the U-shaped journey I descended into last Fall and I couldn’t seem to escape on my own. If I must, I can sit still and carry it all, but I can’t describe the impact of sunshine and bird song on my inner state. They are pulling me up the steep slippery slope of the U like a pair of extended hands.

I’m learning ever more about myself and my journey here in Karlskrona. New realisation sank in a month or so ago that the hard parts of my year here are integral not only to my own but also to the universal MSLS experience. I’ll bet you there’s a lot of solidarity amongst MSLS alumni when it comes to hardship. It seems like personal challenge has been purposely designed into the programme. There’s our curriculum, the collective MSLS journey, and then there is each of our own ‘diamond journeys’, deep in the trenches of our being, for those who choose to take our class learnings home with them. The mental models and processes we’re taught in class, they are the stuff of transformation. I owe so much to them, how they have supported and guided me, as beacons and footholds into the crushing darkness of my own crevasses where, under heavy pressure, diamonds are formed.

I’ve been learning new things about stepping back from the rush of life, about where to steady myself when losing balance. I love people and I am of the school of talking about your stuff, but a two day solo trek along the forested coast of the archipelago, camping in the freezing February snow, alone with the sea, the granite, and the birds, rejuvenated me in a way that a thousand conversations could never have. I can’t imagine that after this year amidst such natural beauty, I will settle for a home base that can't offer me this.

Art of Hosting

And then the swelling wave that we’d heard thundering closer for months, suddenly came and went. For the past five months, our dedicated organising team of nine had been laying the groundwork for the Art of Hosting training in participatory process. It’s organised annually by MSLS students, and designed and hosted by an international team of experienced practitioners. By the time the hosting team arrived in town, we were marvelously ready to set afloat all our work and just watch it unfold, smooth as a baby butt. This past week, we did not only learn about participatory leadership and the power of self-organising, but experienced it firsthand as a team. It was an incredible gift that I will carry as a glowing example into my future work.

It was the first real flicker of insight, taking a step back and looking at ourselves in our natural habitat through the eyes of visitors, into how far we’ve come as a class, a group of friends, a team of teams. How we reached that point of shifting into high performance. How much more I have come to understand and accept about my and others’ basic humanness, and how to adapt to the diversity of working, thinking and communication styles. The ripening and the wisening have been profound and the fruits of this journey will only really begin to reveal themselves as we’ll step back into the world this summer.

While we were supremely prepared as organisers, the reality of the event never sunk in until a hundred strangers were suddenly on the doorstep of our little life. We had never been to an Art of Hosting training, how could we have prepared for the experience? Yet, as I had known would be the case, it was a glorious homecoming for me. I recognized the methods - World Cafe, Open Space, Theory U, circle practice, Appreciative Inquiry, storytelling, checkins and checkouts - on a mental level. But more importantly, the training showed me how these methods have already begun to nestle in my body, from where they will grow, until I myself become the tool. And methods are only one aspect of Art of Hosting. Also the language, the focus on personal practice and the seasoned wisdom of how to understand and sail the 'social undercurrents' felt deeply familiar. Part of the reason, I discovered in the training, is that Art of Hosting practice is so deeply embedded in the MSLS programme, that we have unwittingly been raised in its tradition. We are its children.

It was a week that I have barely begun to digest, three days after the end. It came and went like a flash flood, leaving me stunned and stranded on the shore of my Karlskrona life, turned inside out in the blink of an eye. I’ve been dipped into human experience, building community and relations in a flurry of timeless moments, witnessing an overwhelming outpouring of generosity and care in myself and those around me. I will not forget how I thrived this week, and I will carry that too, as a shining example into my future work. Layers on layers that we can continue to peel, and ripple effects that we will increasingly feel, for a long time to come.

On top of all that, I got to celebrate my birthday with all these beautiful people on the last day. Some of my dearest friends, and a dozen new ones, dancing me into my new cycle around the sun in a midnight jungle jam session. More hugs than I have ever received on a birthday. Party after party, being sung to in English, Swedish, Dutch, German, Vietnamese, Portuguese, and Japanese. I’m happy I am owning my existence like this, not shying away from celebrating it extravagantly for days, in this one time opportunity to celebrate it with all these people, in this dear place. 

The training ended too abruptly for a clean transition. The Rotundan, our round wooden room on the Baltic sea where the training took place, charged by now with our energy, was full of new-found community and then deserted from one moment to the next. Lucky us, for being able to stay in Karlskrona our home, with some dozen hosts and participants still lingering over the following days, so that we could walk ourselves out of the experience at human speed. The reflection and critical questions have begun to sprout. Good, because that will help nuanced rather than naive enrichment. Even so, I’ve walked around in an afterglow, held in a warm web of old and new dear ones, defying the divide between colleagues and friends, and now extending far beyond Karlskrona.

But Karlskrona is the source, the place that is remaking me. What a big giver you are, a gift that keeps on giving. I love you Karlskrona, you and your seasons, all the allies and the demons. Your steadying granite rockbed and the ebb and flow of your teacher sea. I love you and your children, the friends that have become family. I love your epic sunsets and your morning fog, the different rhythms of your clock. Your darkest twists and your most brilliant gifts in the diamond journey. I love you for the fruits you've born, the allegiance I've sworn, the ripening I have done, and the future that will come from you. I love you for the tribes you’re giving me, and the land that I have married, and your soul that I will carry in my own to the end of my days. There is a deep magic in this place.