The kilele project
Our work is finding ways to reconnect. It is an age of fragmentation, of technologies and politics that intentionally unroot us from deep time, deep place, and deep community. To face these crises, we must learn to live in multiple ecologies at once: the vast and immediate “globe”—this emergent noosphere—and also, urgently, the place of our bodies, in our land. In looking for tools to reconcile these worlds, we find to our surprise it is often the most ancient and elemental human traditions that can ground us back to wisdom. Walking through the land together, sitting in circles telling stories, wrestling through unanswerable questions—these practices create a relational soil that can seed all manner of dreams. In a time of desperate rhetoric and dizzying complexity, these are strategies to find the “simplicity on the other side of complexity,” to find the courage to take the next step on uncertain paths, and to delight in the mystery of the journey.
I believe in going back to basics in the face of overwhelming odds, using land, story, and dialogue to unlock unexpected ideas. I seek to work with communities, organizations, and landscapes that value this approach. If you find that the ways I describe here resonate, it would be a great joy to connect and collaborate.
Land
The very fact that it must be emphasized is a symptom of the problem. In many if not most if not all of the conflicts and anxieties of modernity, the conceptual severing of humans and the earth lurks as an original villain. Thus, in all projects towards peace and social and environmental integrity, we must prioritize the re-membering of ourselves as participants and indeed products of the land. But as this knowledge must be embodied, it is best done through immersion into and journey through our vibrant, diverse, and potent places. A true sense of belonging and responsibility to land unravels many of our unsustainable assumptions.
environmental peacebuilding | experiential leadership education | conservation ethics
Story
The project of modern civilization relies on a story fixated upon a stable and imaginary conclusion, so it must be stories of complexity and errantry that hold it accountable. That is, it is only when we realize that we cannot grow forever—that life longs to ebb and flow and creates abundance only in freedom—that we will correct our course. The deceptively simple practice of personal and collective storytelling opens portals to process-thinking that undermine such tired and rigid paradigms. The art of storytelling with both friends and enemies complicates conflicts and aerates the social soil, allowing new and redemptive possibilities to emerge.
community storytelling | narrative consulting | environmental journalism
DIALOGUE
As the land loosens our thoughts and stories open our hearts, conversation becomes the bed of possibility. Genuine dialogue is not an objective but a process suspended by radical presence, and guiding dialogue to fruitful outcomes (always greater than the sum of its participants) requires wisdom and humility. The deepening of community and transformation of conflict both rely on a collective commitment to these principles. Dialogue is difficult. It involves the unlayering of our identities and a willingness to be changed. But only a consistent and enduring practice of conversation will bind and rebind our responsibility to one another.
intercultural dialogue | conflict mediation | deliberative governance