Understanding Phenomenological Reflective Practice in the Social and Ecological Fields: Three Rivers Flowing 9780367631314, 9780367631284, 9781003112280

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Part I Rivers, signposts and borders
Essay 1 Three rivers flowing
Interlude 1 The re-search journey
Essay 2 Contours of the practice
Essay 3 Borderlands of the practice
Part II The elementals of the practice
Essay 4 Elemental One – observation and developing a faculty of seeing
Essay 5 Elemental Two – working with aliveness
Interlude 2 Andreas Weber and a philosophy of enlivenment
Essay 6 Elemental Three – working with the phenomenon – ‘From the “inside-out”’
Interlude 3 Hillman, Watkins, ‘Ensouling the social’ and Notitia
Essay 7 Elemental Four – expanding consciousness
Part III Two stories of practice
Story 1 A story and portrayal of practice in the social field – Hummingbird House
Interlude 4 François Jullien, climate change and COVID-19
Story 2 A story and portrayal of practice in the ecological field – the bioregion of Maleny
Part IV Discussions, promises and a postscript
Essay 8 Is the practice effective?
Essay 9 The practice and ethics
Essay 10 A question about (critical) theory
Essay 11 Promissory reflections
Postscript: Many rivers flowing
Index

Citation preview

Understanding Phenomenological Reflective Practice in the Social and Ecological Fields

This book introduces social practitioners – community development workers, social workers, organisational change facilitators, social, ecological, cultural and political activists – to a phenomenological tradition of reflective practice. Critiquing reductionist, linear and ossified thinking in the social and ecological fields, the book ofers an exciting new alternative that is honouring of the uncertainty of all living and therefore emergent social processes. Linking phenomenology and Goethe’s ‘delicate empiricism’, the book challenges practitioners to observe and work with living processes. As such, the book charts two stories, two inquiries. One personal and the other social. The first is the personal phenomenological inquiry into the author’s own practice, a search to make sense of the nuanced and subtle practice that he brings to the social world. The second journey is the inquiry into how this social practice, shaped as it is by a confluence of three rivers – dialogue and community, soul and depth psychology, Goethe and ‘delicate activism’, along with other thinkers on ‘observation’ and ‘aliveness’ – can be understood in the context of a wider phenomenological reflective practice. This second journey draws on years of experience and research in Brazil, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Europe. Presenting a philosophical, personal and practical analysis, it ofers a new approach to observation and action, while working with aliveness and complexity within the social and ecological fields. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of social work and community development and particularly courses on social complexity. As a scholar Peter works, teaches and researches on the borderlands between community development and other disciplines and fields of practice, from phenomenology, dialogue, depth psychology, peace and conflict and forced migration. He has worked in the fields of youth, community and organisation

development for over 30 years, in places as far afield as South Africa, Uganda, Vanuatu, PNG, Nepal, Philippines, Brazil and Australia. Peter has been a writer or co-writer/editor of 15 books and over 55 professional journal articles. At the time of finishing this book he is: • • • • • •

Director/consultant at Community Praxis Co-op, a consulting and training organisation with a vision of more just, peaceful and sustainable communities A part-time community development practitioner at Hummingbird House, a hospice for children with life-limiting illness A custodian of the Camellia Centre for Soul-Work and Reflective Practice A visiting professor, University of the Free State, South Africa An honorary associate professor at Deakin University, Australia An adjunct associate professor at Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

Understanding Phenomenological Reflective Practice in the Social and Ecological Fields Three Rivers Flowing

Peter Westoby

Cover Photo Credit: Girraween National Park; First Nations land - Kambuwal People - Rachael Donovan First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Peter Westoby The right of Peter Westoby to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-63131-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-63128-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-11228-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280 Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of abbreviations Acknowledgements

Part I

vii viii

Rivers, signposts and borders

1

Essay 1 Three rivers flowing

3

Interlude 1 The re-search journey

9

Essay 2 Contours of the practice

20

Essay 3 Borderlands of the practice

33

Part II The elementals of the practice

51

Essay 4 Elemental One – observation and developing a faculty of seeing

53

Essay 5 Elemental Two – working with aliveness

75

Interlude 2 Andreas Weber and a philosophy of enlivenment

90

Essay 6 Elemental Three – working with the phenomenon – ‘From the “inside-out”’

94

Interlude 3 Hillman, Watkins, ‘Ensouling the social’ and Notitia

104

Essay 7 Elemental Four – expanding consciousness

115

v

Contents

Part III

Two stories of practice

131

Story 1 A story and portrayal of practice in the social field – Hummingbird House

133

Interlude 4 François Jullien, climate change and COVID-19

151

Story 2 A story and portrayal of practice in the ecological field – the bioregion of Maleny

158

Part IV

Discussions, promises and a postscript

173

Essay 8 Is the practice efective?

175

Essay 9 The practice and ethics

182

Essay 10 A question about (critical) theory

192

Essay 11 Promissory reflections

199

Postscript: Many rivers flowing

208

Index

212

vi

List of abbreviations

CD CD QLD CDRA HELP HH HH@H HNA IPCC KPI LGA NDIS NGO PCQ PHA QCH QLD QUT TULES

Community Development Community Development Queensland Community Development Resource Association Healthy-End-of-Life-Project Hummingbird House Hummingbird House @ Home Holistic Needs Assessment Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Key Performance Indicator Local Government Authority National Insurance Disability Scheme Non-Governmental Organisation Palliative Care Queensland Participatory Holistic Assessment Queensland Children’s Hospital Queensland Queensland University of Technology Tying Up Loose Ends

vii

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgement of wise elders Aware life is brief, and yet death feeds and makes the greater whole, I give thanks for my elders and ancestors who have always been gracious in their guiding wisdom. To my elders in practice, Dave Andrews, Anthony Kelly, Ann Ingamells, Polly Walker, Anne Brown, Sipho Sokhela, Lucius Botes, Allan Kaplan and Sue Davidof. Mum and Dad, too. Much love to you all, ever gracious in sharing your wisdom. To my ancestors, honour to your souls; I endeavour to listen.

Other acknowledgements My first thanks go to Allan Kaplan and Sue Davidof – foremost as friends who’ve welcomed me into their lives, home and worlds. You are the cornerstone of this quest that is a search, that is re-search. But also, thanks to you as comrades on a journey, and for opening your networks of relationships across the world so that I could encounter such beautiful people. My second thanks to all those beautiful people in South Africa, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia who opened their hearts, souls and minds to me. I am grateful beyond words. I’d love to be able to sip cofee, wine or whisky – whatever your preferred option is – and talk of what you taught me. I hope you catch glimpses from reading this. Special thanks to Arnaldo and his family for hosting me for six weeks in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Verne for endless hospitality in South Africa; and Glen, Philip and Alexandra in New Zealand. My third thanks to all those within institutions that have made this possible. This work would not have been possible without the support of staf and colleagues at the University of the Free State (particularly those within the Centre for Development viii

Acknowledgements

Support, University of the Free State, South Africa) and particular thanks to Professors Lucius Botes (now at North-West University) and Lochner Marais. Thanks also to The University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia for whom I worked while conducting most of this re-search. A special thanks to Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Applied Social Sciences and Law, particularly Dr J. Gradener, Associate Professor of Social Work for hosting me for a three-month writing sabbatical following four months of intensive fieldwork. Those three months of meaning-making were crucial in the unfolding of this book.

Peer review declaration The publisher endorses the South African ‘National Scholarly Book Publishers Forum Best Practice for Peer Review of Scholarly Books’. The manuscript was subjected to a rigorous blind peer review prior to publication. The three reviewers were independent of the publisher and/or author in question. The reviewers commented positively on the scholarly merits of the manuscript and recommended that the manuscript be published. Where the reviewers recommended revision and/or improvements to the manuscript, the author responded adequately to such recommendations.

I am also grateful To Kaiya Decouto for a close and careful editing of the full manuscript right near the end; my publisher Claire Jarvis at Routledge, who has always been supportive of my work; Anthony Kelly and Helen for their financial support in providing a tenweek writing fellowship, and endless encouragement; multiple readers who gave helpful feedback, including Rachael Donovan, Mark Creyton, Dr Jason McLeod, Dr Athena Lathouras, Lesley Shuttleworth, Dr Briony Stoker and Anthony Kelly again. To a fellow sojourner in the mysteries of a soul-life, Verne Harris, what can I say? This book would not have been possible without those many weekends in the mountains, endless email dialogues and Melville conversations. Finally, to Rachael Donovan who gave me endless encouragement, enthusiasm and insight. For co-hosting our poetic retreat at the Camellia Centre for SoulWork and Reflective Practice and co-dreaming that place into existence. I love you deeply. ix

Acknowledgements

Recognition I acknowledge that this work is performed on, and through, immersion/research/ practising into the practice that, under Goethe’s distant tutelage, has been forged and developed by Sue and Allan Kaplan, of The Proteus Initiative. This has taken place over the course of many years, starting back in 2011 and reaching to now, and onwards. A practice that needs ever-present vigilant practise.

x

PART

I

Rivers, signposts and borders

Consisting of three essays and an interlude, Part I provides a map of sorts for the reader. An opening essay, ‘Three rivers flowing’, locates this river of phenomenological reflective practice alongside two others – dialogue and soul. They touch and cross one another, distinct, yet connected. Essay 2 ofer signposts for the practice – namely what is this ‘thing’ we are calling a phenomenological reflective practice, and why the necessity for it now? Finally, Essay 3 explores the terrain I call borderlands, exploring complex issues to do with naming and discovering the practice.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-1

1

Essay

1

Three rivers flowing

I am sitting at the Otter Pools in Towerland, a pristine wilderness area near the southern tip of Africa, and as I drift dreamily in the clear, cold water of the river, I tune into the presence of two additional rivers: the one flowing above, of warm air and wind that will later dry my shivering body, and the one below, more ephemeral perhaps, but none-the-less present – the flowing river of ancestral dreaming. As I consider the potency and presence of these three, I am drawn to reflect upon the flow of three other ‘rivers’ in my life. The first is a life of community work and dialogue, in which I have been involved all of my adult years. Dialogue has been central to my life, enlivened by a tradition of community practice focused on human connection and bonding, communication and mutual understanding and collective transformation. Three books have emerged from this work: A Theory and Practice of Dialogical Community Development,1 Dialogical Community Development 2 and Learning and Mobilising in Community Development.3 That river continues through this book, focused as it is on reflective practice in the social and ecological fields. Dialogue signposts an attitude and capacity to meet the Other – person, nature, life – really meet the ‘other’, as Thou (a Martin Buber term) in which there is the possibility of connection, joining, new understanding, encounter and disruption. To not only absorb, assimilate or accommodate the other into our own world, but to join with another, and potentially be transformed by the other, or more accurately, transformed by the ‘in-between space’, even if that transformation is to only be more awake now because of the encounter. Dialogue as a beautiful event at times, it arrives. Dialogue arriving. Dialogue as difcult. Some people never know dialogue, and it most certainly is a life-long journey. This book, while about phenomenology and reflective practice, is also about dialogue.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-2

3

Rivers, signposts, borders

I fell into the second river in response to a personal crisis at the age of 27 – this is the river of soul. At first a small stream, this has now grown into a powerful force of energising life for me. Soul is the shadow-tradition of C. J. Jung and James Hillman, Mary Watkins and Marion Woodman, the work of Michael Meade and Satish Kumar. For me, it has also been the source of two books: Soul, Community and Social Change and Creating Us: Community Work with Soul.4 That river too continues here in this book, with a meandering call to ensoul our reflective practice, which in a nutshell involves being fully present and ‘getting inside’ our practice through reconnecting mind, body, emotion, intuition, emotions and feelings. In many ways ‘Three rivers flowing’ is about life, yet it’s also about soul-making, because soul-making times are called for in dying times. Species extinction, the dying of the planet as we know it, rivers, reefs, oceans, fisheries and so much more. Definitely dying and trying times, and while one response to such dying is activism and activating a praxis for the Great Turning, or Just Transition, or whatever narrative and praxis might be important for each reader, soul-making is part of the invitation. To go into our depths as human beings, to inhabit the unknown with courage, to grieve, to see more clearly what genius each of us is called to be in this time. But, in the past decade, I have encountered a third river – that of phenomenological practice, an approach of living, thinking and ‘seeing’ in a dynamic and living way, and then discovering what such an approach can mean for social and ecological transformation. This third river is the core focus of this book. I sense that these three rivers come together in my life in a way that foregrounds understanding my deep connection and wakefulness, which is soul – and dialogue, to self, other and the world. At this point in my life, it is this third river that, in the words of poet Poe, fills me with ‘wild excitement’, and I am guided by the wisdom of Rilke: And I should like to ask you . . . to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer.5 The material in this book has emerged from my deeply personal quest to explore and engage in this third river of phenomenological reflective practice, while connecting to the previous two. This quest, inspired by my friendship with Allan 4

Three rivers flowing

Kaplan and Sue Davidof, both key players in the phenomenological approach worldwide, and founders of The Proteus Initiative, an organisation dedicated to socially responsive and life-supporting practice, has animated me for over a decade now. Prompted by a determination not to fall into the trap of inflexible, abstracted and ossified thinking too often evident both in practice and academic circles set in their ways and viewpoints, I seek a way of living, being and doing that is signified as phenomenological reflective practice. This practice is attuned to connecting, wakefulness and aliveness, a practice that would shake me up and enliven me to the wonder and wholeness of a world always becoming, so generously present, if I could but find a way to be open to it. It is to see and sense the hidden or invisible ‘ritual house’ of the social and ecological, that which ensouls our work. A commitment to honour Sue Davidof’s exhortation to ‘radically participate in every situation I found myself in’ has also been core within this search and practice. This way of engaging insists that one remain responsive to both the outer and inner movements of any situation, and it is this very responsiveness which holds the key to thinking and relating that is both enlivened and enlivening. The opposite, a practice lacking the flexibility of aliveness, incapable of movement and devoid of responsiveness – stuck on control, predictability, domination, extraction, repetition, engineering, is sure to lead to depletion and decay, yet this appears to be the common model. It is this model I feel an urgency to challenge, and it is this challenge that has fuelled my quest. My understanding and practice have been honed through many hours of conversation and exploration with Allan and Sue. Our conversations have taken place over candle-lit dinners in wilderness places in South Africa, on road trips in New Zealand, over whisky-soaked dinners in Cape Town, in workshop processes in Brisbane and Auckland, in difcult email exchanges, in Zoom exchanges in recent pandemic years and explicitly within editing eforts for this manuscript. I am also grateful for their key interventions to parts of this text. A final introductory comment: there is no clear definition given about what this ‘practice’ is, albeit it’s most certainly a phenomenological reflective practice. The reason for that will unfold in due course. And it’s not to say I haven’t wanted to provide a definition, along with some early readers, who have also wanted me to. I’ve grappled with definition, knowing the risk of non-definition is the appearance of almost ‘anything-goes’. Instead, the writing attempts to portray what phenomenological reflective practice is and draw the reader into the contours and elementals of it, coming at it from several angles, the borderlands. Yet, a final, final introductory comment: in attempting to portray ‘this practice’, I’d like to diferentiate between the multiple and the many in the way that Henri Bortof 5

Rivers, signposts, borders

does.6 To say I am interpreting the practice – both my own phenomenological practice and those talked to in the networks Allan and Sue introduced me to – I ofer an interpretation. However, the integrity of that interpretation is determined not by whether it mirrors how Allan and Sue see the practice, or anyone else for that matter (for everyone will have a slightly or even substantially diferent take and the principle of diversity stands), but by whether it ofers an interpretation that allows for multiple, if not many. To have many interpretations of the whole is to slip into relativity – anything goes. No-one can critique what is written, my perspective stands! However, this is not good enough. As Bortof suggests, we can have multiple interpretations of Hamlet, but not many. When someone watches a new rendition or interpretation of Hamlet there’s a point where it’s still Hamlet. Hence multiple, diverse. Yet there’s also a departure point, no longer really Hamlet. This is the fallacy of the many. The multiple signifies an integrity of the whole, not a departure from what I call the elementals of this practice. As such, I am confident that my interpretation of this phenomenological reflective practice is one of multiple, not many.

Structure The book has been structured into four parts, which include essays, stories and interludes. The essays give form to the substantive ideas relevant to this book. The interludes are more biographical, giving texture to the ‘coming-into-being’ process of the book – the journey so to speak. The two stories that make up the third part of the book are in-depth portrayals of the practice in both the social and ecological fields, grounding all the ideas in my ‘concrete’ work and world. Essay 2, ‘Contours of the practice’, signposts the key contents of the book. Essay 3, ‘Borderlands of the practice’, contains key thoughts about the edges of discussing this practice. Part II consists of four essays, each an elemental of the practice. As mentioned, Part III consists of two stories portraying the practice in both the social and ecological fields. Part IV, comprising Essays 8–10, focuses on three important discussions, highlighting some of the more complex, difcult or contested elements. Essay 11 ofers ‘Promissory reflections’ and the ‘Postscript’ pulls together some of my thoughts. In many ways, this organisational structure is artificial; some of what is included in Essay 2 could equally be included in Essay 5, and vice-versa, but for now, the structure serves a purpose for conversation. 6

Three rivers flowing

Essays, not chapters I always remember being asked by a student, ‘Is community and social development an art or a science?’ The question has sat with me for many years. In recent years, I have seen colleagues ofer workshops on ‘the science of development’ while I have tended to lean the other way and could imagine ofering ‘the art of development’. In writing this, I am reminded of Allan Kaplan’s Artists of the Invisible,7 a key book underpinning this inquiry. Yet, art alone is probably inadequate in an era addicted to efectiveness and efciency. Alluding to Lukacs’s seminal essay Soul and Form, this phenomenological reflective practice is actually an ambiguous practice between art and science.8 It’s about both the poetic and the prosaic, includes rigour and imagination, seeks ‘to know’ (the purpose of science) and yet is okay with not knowing (an artistic gesture). Mirroring this and echoing Adorno, I have opted to write in essay format as, ‘[E]essay celebrates an open inquiry, an open-endedness not often found . . . . Questioning is the essay, and it is this that releases writing and thoughts from any systematic demands.’9 In opting to write in the form of essay, I also acknowledge the necessity to know, the paradigm of science which has wriggled itself right to the core of my being. This re-search journey has been accompanied by a haunting instrumental need to finish a book, with tight chapters, clear logics of argument, a convincing narrative thread. Yet, another part of me – resistant to the instrumental will of the university and that wilfulness wormed within me – has gone as slowly as necessary, at the pace of my artistic self. As such, I’ve written something, aware it can never be finished, can always be more polished, a little more precise – always with more questions. Essay-like. Instead, I’ve given more attention to the quality of encounter, with self, other, text, world, the questions arising – and have given shape and texture to that encounter with the form of essays. I’ve been motivated more by a creative urge than an academic imperative, animated by the slow philosophy of slow food, slow writing, the slow professor. Perhaps reading slowly too.

Notes 1 Peter Westoby and Gerard Dowling, Theory and Practice of Dialogical Community Development: International Perspectives, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013). 2 Peter Westoby and Gerard Dowling, Dialogical Community Development: With Depth, Hospitality and Solidarity, (Brisbane: Tafina Press, 2009). 3 Peter Westoby and Lynda Shevellar, Learning and Mobilising in Community Development, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).

7

Rivers, signposts, borders 4 Peter Westoby, Soul, Community and Social Change, (New York: Routledge, 2016); and Peter Westoby, Creating Us: Community Work with Soul, (Brisbane: Tafina Press 2016). 5 Rainer M. Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, (London: Penguin Classic, 2011/1929), 18. 6 Henri Bortoft, Taking Appearances Seriously: The Dynamic Way of Seeing in Goethe and European Thought, (UK: Floris Books, 2012), 109f. 7 Allan Kaplan, Artists of the Invisible, (London: Pluto Press, 2002). 8 Michelle B. Walker, Slow Philosophy: Reading against the Institution, (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 67. 9 Walker, Slow Philosophy, 62.

8

Interlude

1

The re-search journey

The re-search (to go searching) has been an inquiry that has taken place over several years and on at least four continents. It has been rich beyond belief, and yet deeply challenging because it has been an inquiry which shakes, stirs and summons me. This summons is into a way of practice as being and doing that is profoundly diferent to the everyday habits of mind that have penetrated much practice in the social and ecological fields. These habits will become clear.

Who I talked with, and how In that journey I talked with over 50 practitioners. All the practitioners I met came with thoughtful recommendation from Allan and Sue. This entire endeavour could be considered both a phenomenological inquiry, and within an action re-search partnership with The Proteus Initiative. That is, the concerns of the inquiry are those of a community of practitioners linked to The Proteus Initiative. The recommended participants represent a rich diversity of both social and disciplinary-work backgrounds; their fields of expertise include political and social sciences, anthropology, geography, psychology, environmental studies, jewellerymaking, architecture, ceramics, journalism, personal coaching, bio-chemistry, engineering, to name but a few. The majority of the meetings took place in Cape Town and Johannesburg, in South Africa; Sao Paulo and Recife, in Brazil; Auckland and Wellington, in New Zealand; and Brisbane, in Australia. I also had delightful encounters in the cities of Berlin and Amsterdam. From the beginning, I preferred the idea of engaging as ‘encounter’ rather than ‘interview’. ‘Interview’ very much carries the energy of the subjective interpreter, DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-3

9

Rivers, signposts, borders

of a subject and an object, whereas ‘encounter’ contains the possibility of the unexpected, of discovering new perspective, and it was this dynamic engagement I hoped to create space for. Sometimes I liked to imagine this ‘encounter’ like Buber’s ‘encounter on the narrow ridge’ which is a way of alluding to the challenge of being fully and wholeheartedly present to someone – a way of being understood as I-Thou.1 This ‘narrow ridge’ is that edgy space in which people encounter the world ‘as it is’ – a living phenomenological disclosure. The abyss on either side of the narrow ridge involves avoiding the real present encounter with life through various forms of ‘abstraction-psychologism, historicism, technicism, philosophising, magic, gnosis or the false either/ors of individualism versus collectivism, freedom versus discipline, action versus grace’.2 That’s a sentence worth reflecting on, and in re-working this manuscript over the years I often pause at each of those words asking how I avoid encounter with life. Which one of those forms make it easy to go to sleep? On reflection, both occurred; there were many dynamic, authentic conversations as encounter, and there were also those meetings that did feel more like a traditional interview. Throughout my engagement with these various practitioners, each revealed to me not only their appreciation of the richness this practice has brought to their lives, but also some sense of the key ideas, principles and wisdoms that this practice entails for them. As I have listened to each one, my purpose has been to make sense – through my own radical participation – of the patterns of meaning that have emerged from this multi-layered listening, to self and other, and the world. While searching to understand how others are interpreting this practice in their lives, I was also searching to discover how this practice lives within my social practice and myself. So, as re-searcher, I have not simply been ‘outside’, looking in at other people’s practice, I have also been ‘inside’, attempting to embody the practice of a more developed ‘faculty of seeing’ and ‘living-thinking’ within myself. In this search, I have also allowed myself, like any new, fresh, seductive love, to be somewhat seduced into the practice too – embracing it wholeheartedly – but then a more mature love has grown, clear in that embrace, and also thoughtful. But, I did also intentionally try to put aside my scholarly, suspicious, critical lens – at least for a while – so I could radically participate appreciatively in the emerging field of phenomenological reflective practice. I was grateful for a conversation with my host Arnaldo in Sao Paulo, early on in this journey. In answer to my question, ‘What is at the heart of this practice?’, his first response was observation, followed closely by the requirement to be in relationship with the phenomenon. These two critical components became a compass 10

The re-search journey 

and guiding light throughout this re-search. Constantly questioning whether I was engaged in a living relationship with the phenomenon I was trying to understand (this practice) helped me not slip into the re-search paradigm of ‘distancing objectivity’ so familiar to me in the academic working environment. This was essential for my re-search practice. Had I simply remained as a subjective interpreter of an imagined objective meaning, I would have entirely missed the point of the dynamic conversation and inquiry, where both parties were reaching for meaning and understanding simultaneously. From this living perspective, within each encounter with a practitioner or a group in a workshop, I was in an event where meaning-making was unfolding.

An intriguing discovery In light of this, I made an intriguing discovery – one that speaks so eloquently to the practice itself. In the course of recording the first four conversations digitally (with permission), I became aware that the process of recording induced a certain level of inattentiveness in myself, as it required less presence of me. I began to understand how, if I sincerely wanted to understand and gather what had seeded and grown in people’s lives as they reflected on their practice, nothing less than my full attention in the moment was needed. As a result, the use of digital recording became secondary as I learned to develop and rely on the discipline of deep listening and being fully attentive – in fact, being open, present and receptive to the encounter as it unfolded.

A reflexive moment Through the process of this deep listening, I gradually noticed another shift taking place within me: I found myself listening beyond my identity as a community worker, which has been my vocational background for decades – that first river. Rather than focusing on what I could learn from these people that would inform community work, which limited me to hear only that which supported my already familiar paradigm (a gesture of assimilation or accommodation), I found myself able to meet them inside their stories, and in this place of meeting, I discovered an intensity and energy that can only be described as ‘intense aliveness’. Despite the very varied backgrounds and fields of expertise among all the practitioners I interviewed, this sense of aliveness was a commonality within every one of them. And this aliveness is infectious. 11

Rivers, signposts, borders

Over time, I found myself moving beyond simply being intrigued by community work and life, to being infused with a new delight about what was possible in the broader social and ecological fields of life. This infusion of delight started to crack open my fixed sense of identity, transforming both my sense of self and the sense of my work in the world. This represented a significant shift from assimilating or accommodating what I was learning into my pre-existing perspective and paradigm, and instead nudged me towards a transformative possibility. Here I now was, being invited to imagine my work not only with more depth, but with more breadth too. No longer mired in a rigid identity, it was exciting to feel open to possible movements. To see the patterns of meaning-making that had contributed to my identity also enabled me to re-configure the patterns, and therefore the dynamic process of identity-making. My consciousness was expanding, being stretched, along with my identity. While wanting to highlight how a transformation in my capacity to listen deeply led to a direct shift in my identity, it is the idea of shifting, of not getting ‘stuck’, that I’m keen to foreground. Rifng of depth psychologist James Hillman, the self is dynamic and, ideally, always in movement – it is better to think of oneself as ‘selving’ rather than as a self.3 Likewise, François Jullien proposes we ‘put an end to the reign of identity of a self ’, or at least any sense of a settled self because, in that laziness, or relaxed condition of settling, we have ‘turned away from life’.4 As such, part of my journey has been a commitment to undoing any settled identity, and fixed picture of what this practice is about.

The body’s intelligence An interesting discovery, too, was how important bodily sensing is to this practice. Working with my notes after a meeting, I found myself not only reading and reflecting on what had taken place, but also going for long walks, drawing pictures with crayons, taking naps – in other words finding ways of allowing the unconscious (which is the body) to make sense of things – and be receptive to the meaning being made. In doing this, insight can arise unexpectedly. There is a sense that I was learning to trust the ‘body’s intelligence’ – and it reminded me that many years ago I more or less did the real work of my doctorate in a swimming pool. I’d often feel awash with ideas but couldn’t make connections, sense a pattern. Yet, a kilometre in the pool would be transformational and ah-ha moments arose regularly from that embodied space. From a depth psychology perspective – ensouling the world – such embodied intelligence involves the transformation of events into real experience through the 12

The re-search journey 

arising of image and meaning-making (the language of the unconscious). Words and ideas are woven into patterns and process; metaphors provide a sense of the whole; the gestures and gestalt of an essay become clear.

Towards being alone together One such occasion comes vividly to mind. I awoke early one morning in my third-floor apartment in Amsterdam, and opening the window, I greeted the world around me – the trees filled with the new leaves of spring so close I could touch them, the birds in their feathery nest an arm’s length from my window, the canal with its colourful barges below me. As I stood there, fully engaged yet simply watching, certain ideas arose in my mind regarding this re-search. Rather than seeing all these diferent experiences as separate parts of a whole, I caught myself in the experience of seeing the entire practice as ultimately a profound search for wholeness in a world rife with the alienation and vast loneliness that Hannah Arendt speaks to in The Human Condition.5 And I saw alongside this a deep yearning for a practice that can truly shift the experience of humans into a new way of being. This insight was later vividly confirmed in an encounter I had with one of the South African practitioners, Paula Hathorn, in Cape Town. Deeply reflective, with a quiet, peaceful demeanour, Paula’s generous spaciousness in terms of not rushing the conversation, and her careful, considered words spoke to this practice as overflowing with a warmth, a care, an attention to self, the Other, the world, which was filled with a penetrating and revolutionary quality – human, humane, humanness, humble. And alongside this care was a deep yearning – to be alive to a way of being that fosters attention, observation, love, nonviolence, courage, respect for Other, and so much more. This yearning was present and tangible with every practitioner I spoke with, and it resonated deeply with my own longing for a diferent expression of humanity and connection that had drawn me to this practice in the first instance. As I reflected further, not on the separate meetings, but on a sense of the whole – the possible gesture, or gestalt, the intuited whole emerging from the myriad encounters – I became aware, too, of the deep yearning for a sense of community in this practice, while simultaneously recognising that each person is profoundly alone. Alone together. Here’s an expression of restoring wholeness, alone and together, like presence and absence, the sunrise and sunset, light and shadow. I recalled how so many of the people I talked with had shared that ‘this practice had been like coming

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home’, and yet there was still a need to ‘create a home’ in order to keep sustaining an aliveness. This was despite the fact that people felt there was, as Paula put it, ‘a precious network of relationships linked to The Proteus Initiative’. Similarly, so many of the people in Brazil, most of whom were linked to the Fonte Institute, were grappling with how to avoid becoming isolated; and, while I was in Brazil, I was aware the Fonte Institute was in the process of trying to reimagine how to structure itself such that people didn’t feel so alone. So, it became clear that there is not only a yearning for this practice in the world, but also a yearning for a clearer home and sense of community.

People’s encounter with the practice Each of the practitioners I talked with told a story of their first encounter with the practice, usually through someone alive to it – often Allan and Sue, though sometimes others – but always they were pointed, at some juncture in their journey, to The Proteus Initiative. Some of the people I engaged with found their way to the practice through writings, predominantly Allan Kaplan’s Artists of the Invisible;6 still others through courses ofered by the likes of the Fonte Institute or the Community Development Resource Association (CDRA).7 It seems that something is being inspired by The Proteus Initiative. Despite being intensely personal, this journey has not been a solo journey at all. Not only have I engaged with these practitioners, each generous and eager to share their time, their thoughts, their insights, but accompanying me on this journey have also been numerous books. Particularly important during my stay at the wilderness home of Towerland in 2016 were: J. W. Goethe’s The Metamorphosis of Plants,8 and Craig Holdrege’s Thinking Like a Plant.9 I would also like to foreground three other authors, each essential companions on my seminal 2016 journey, and integral to the heart of what is emerging here: •

•

Henri Bortoft, particularly his book, Taking Appearance Seriously: The Dynamic Way of Seeing in Goethean and European Thought.10 Here Bortoft explores seeing in a ‘dynamic way’, or seeing ‘living process’ through both Goethe’s work and also phenomenology Andreas Weber, both his seminal essay ‘Enlivenment: Towards a fundamental shift in the concepts of nature, culture and politics’;11 and The Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling, and the Metamorphosis of Science.12 Here Weber explores a biology of life 14

The re-search journey 

•

Francois Jullien’s rewarding book, The Philosophy of Living,13 which analyses numerous concepts as a way of reflecting on living, what it means ‘to be alive’ and so much more.

Since then, many others have joined the companion shelf, including a re-reading of much of James Hillman’s opus, along with new works by Arturo Escobar and Matthew Crawford, an intentional encounter in reading ten feminist authors who have been transformative, particularly bell hooks, Rebecca Solnit, Patti Smith, Andrea Levy, Jenny Odell and Audre Lorde. In some way, this book explores the elements of these ecologically, biologically, politically, philosophically and mythically oriented authors, then translated into phenomenological reflective practice, that is, seeing living social and ecological process, understanding life and what this means for the social and ecological fields.

What’s sitting within me I write this book very aware that any writing is shaped by what sits within (the inner landscape), and also without (as external context). During the years of this quest – this search that became re-search – so much has happened to me that now sits close, that accompanies me as I go to bed at night, that stays close through the night and to which I awake again in the morning. These experiences provide some of the rough edges that give contextual substance to my search, and it feels important to give the reader some sense of them (or skip if it feels indulgent). I have sat in camps of displaced communities in Uganda, communities illegally and carelessly displaced due to the work of extractive industries (namely petroleum miners) and left utterly impoverished in every sense of the word – politically, economically, socially. I was there with a non-government organisation (NGO) to hear of their experiences, bear witness and amplify their voice through writing of their plight. They are the invisible majority. This practice speaks into a world of such displacement and witnessing. I have journeyed through many days and nights of loneliness, because any quest, any journey, inevitably leads to times of being alone. I have had to face many of my own demons and nurture a relationship with aloneness that allowed me to discover, and even enjoy, a new quality of solitude. This practice speaks to our deep aloneness, to the path that is solitary and the accompanying desire for connection and love. I have walked the burning campuses of South African universities, filled with the rage of students who see the patterns of apartheid unchanged after more than 15

Rivers, signposts, borders

20 plus years, who are sick and tired of their corrupt government, who are weary of dialogue, and who now are making demands for change. This practice speaks to all our rages, disappointments and hopes for a better world. I have travelled with an aging body, highlighted by a knee injury that has forced me to move at a slower pace. During some of my search, I carried the chikungunya virus, caught in Brazil, so awoke each day to arthritic symptoms in my joints, which are painful as hell, yet serve to remind me constantly of both the joys and perils of the journey I have undertaken. This practice speaks to our human fragilities and fears, as well as our boldness as we keep going. I have watched the battle-weary police in Paulista Avenue, Sao Paulo, on their huge horses and in their military vehicles, readying for another evening of holding polarised protestors apart from one another. But despite the polarisation, from what I hear when I talk to people, most are again simply weary of corruption, and disappointed, both in their leaders and the decay of their democracy. This practice speaks to our despairs with a decaying politic as well as to all our dreaming for something renewed. I have explored the amazing histories of these places I have had the privilege to stay in – lapping up books, conversations and meanderings, all as a way of seeing, such that the places would disclose more. I have walked, seen, learned – and through this my love for these places has grown. So, this practice speaks to our curiosity, intrigue and love of people and place. I have walked in Brussels Central Train Station, negotiating my way past the military with their machine guns, the place still in shock less than two weeks after a terrorist attack on their airport and train station. I was acutely aware of the palpable fear that sits just below the surface of frivolity in Europe. This practice speaks to growing fears, shock and a yearning to walk on despite the face of violence. I have, at times, missed home terribly, toasting my 49th birthday spent wandering the streets of Amsterdam alone, and toasting too, the birth of my nephew, Quinn, with a beer in a sidewalk café. I have worried overnight as my father undergoes a serious heart operation. This practice speaks to such worries, wanderings and wonderings. I have been deeply saddened by news reports of an Egypt Air crash, and the difculties of the search due to the fact that the Mediterranean Sea is already awash with the lifejackets and wreckage of hundreds of migrants and refugees who have died in their attempt to find a better life. Imagine – an ocean awash with life jackets and wreckage. This profoundly disturbing image is one that will not go away, and it foregrounds the world of boundaries, borders, walls, my own country’s complicity

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in the deaths at sea, and my rage at all the political bullshit. This practice speaks to a world awash with bullshit yet calling for faith and faithfulness. I was transfixed by the rise of Donald Trump to president of the USA. With Europe retreating also to right-wing populist nationalism, and that arising of Trump, it is hard not to be conscious that something big is at play in the world. Something is shifting. Some invisible processes, some ‘silent transformations’, to use a phrase of François Jullien, are now making themselves manifest.14 Oxford Dictionaries declared that their 2016 international word of the year was ‘posttruth’. What is it to live in a post-truth era, when objective facts are less influential in shaping politics and public policies than appeals to emotion, personal belief and the deliberate manipulation of information? Convenience and corruption spread like invisible tentacles through the social and cultural tissue of society. In such a space, I have almost lost my bearings. This practice speaks to the need for an ever-expanding truthfulness, and an accurate interpretation of what’s unfolding. I have swam in the tea tree lakes at Sufolk Park, in Byron Bay, Australia grieving. My skin and body soak up the tea tree-infused water of the lake. My eyes gaze as birds fly overhead, and I hear their wonderful song. Clouds overhead float in easy surrender. The heat bakes the land with ruthless fierce warning. I drift, and slowly feel myself becoming present to the place. I sense the ancestors’ presence. Slowly, a sense of a lake in movement – a lake as process, a lake as ‘event’, deeply connected to everything around it, below it and above it, a lake as story – begins to arrive within me. I am part of the story, I am part of the lake, within the lake, participating in the lake. I become aware of the lake as living process, a living presence, also observing me, and I feel extraordinarily, vividly, ecstatically alive. This is the gift; this is the practice. I am ever grateful for this re-search journey. Finally, I experienced lockdown in my home on Jinibara country, Maleny, Australia, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Having just moved to this new home a month earlier, I’d counted on being far from many friends, but hadn’t bargained on a whole new level of isolation. Within that upside world, I mused for months about what this virus could mean for me and the world, both the generative possibilities of deep reflection (a Great Pause), and yet also a growing fear of a hyper-capitalist shock doctrine, amplified inequalities and the surveillance state being applied by global leaders steeped in patriarchal violence. This practice speaks to the need for pausing, slowness and yet seeing what is unfolding with clarity, as painful as it might be.

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In conclusion This practice, while oriented towards social and ecological practitioners, and also people in general – for I am growing surer that it can be a practice for all – seems to be crucial for the world. We make the world as we are – our being and our doing are deeply intertwined – and such being and doing is our practice. If what we are seeing unfolding in the world is reflective of who we are and what we do, then we are becoming an ever-present destructive species. For people are destroying – extracting, marginalising, disregarding – if not consciously, intentionally and pro-actively, then at least unconsciously, unintentionally and from a one-step-removed convenient distance. People also continue living, loving, playing, caring, but I am talking about larger forces at play within each of us and the world – those hidden fault-lines and fractures that define a substantive part of who we really are becoming, shaped by domination-control-patriarchal-extractivist-oriented hyper-capitalism. In the light of all of this, it is apparent that something diferent is needed, some shift – not only in social or environmental political strategy, tactics or even culture – but of everyday practice, and even ontological being. We are coming to the end of a paradigm. Perhaps on the edge of a Kuhnian paradigm change, from mechanicalengineering-extracting stories, to something more aligned to living process. As I travelled, and found myself in these places and situations, it became clearer and clearer to me that this practice I was exploring ofers a worthy and humane contribution to such a shift. While this exploration of a practice of ‘seeing’ and living in radical participation with every encounter grew out of a yearning for a more responsive, enlivened and enlivening way of being in my own life, over the course of time, I also became profoundly curious as to how other people were interpreting and engaging with this practice, both in their personal and professional lives. From this curiosity, the idea for this re-search project was born. In January 2016, consolidating a five-year personal search, which continues even now, I took a nine-month long sabbatical and, with a sense of nervous excitement, set out to meet with over 50 people as far afield as South Africa, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia.

Notes 1 Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, (New York: Routledge Classics, 1947/2002). 2 Maurice Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge: A Life of Martin Buber, (New York: Paragon House, 1991), 44.

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The re-search journey  3 James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, (New York, London, Toronto and Sydney: Harper & Row Publishers, 1975). 4 François Jullien, The Philosophy of Living, (London, New York and Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2016), 60. 5 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998/ 1958). 6 Allan Kaplan, Artists of the Invisible, (London: Pluto Press, 2002). 7 It is worth noting that in the early days of Fonte (or the second incarnation of Fonte) several people went to South Africa and participated in courses facilitated by CDRA. Antonio was the first to meet Allan in Cape Town – a conversation that was to be the catalyst for a long and on-going fruitful conversation. Antonio shared with me how: By the end of 1998, just by coincidence I was reading a report from CDRA and I felt strongly identified with what Allan and other CDRA people were saying in this report. And then suddenly from no-where I was invited to participate in a meeting in J’berg/RSA and I said, ‘My God, I must go to Cape Town and meet Allan’. I sent many faxes over days and there was no reply, but eventually I went and I flew to Cape Town and had dinner with Allan and we spent three hours talking. I felt that many pieces came together. Since then, 1999, we brought Allan to Brazil to help us in our work. 8 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Metamorphosis of Plants, (London: The MIT Press, 2009), 108. 9 Craig Holdrege, Thinking Like a Plant: A Living Science for Life. (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books, 2013). 10 Henri Bortoft, Taking Appearances Seriously: The Dynamic Way of Seeing in Goethe and European Thought, (UK: Floris Books, 2012), 109f. 11 Andreas Weber, ‘Enlivenment: Towards a Fundamental Shift in the Concepts of Nature, Culture and Politics’, Ecology 31, (Berlin: Heinrick Boll Foundation Publication Series, 2013). 12 Andreas Weber, The Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling, and the Metamorphosis of Science, (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2016). 13 François Jullien, The Philosophy of Living, 60. 14 François Jullien, The Silent Transformations, (London, New York and Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2011).

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Essay

2

Contours of the practice

Three stories For a few days I’d been musing over a response within myself to email exchanges I had with several friends and colleagues. Every email sent, whether work related or to do with our personal connections, are signed of: ‘Kind regards’. Clearly, it’s an automated signature used by many. And it’s annoying me. Of course, my observation is not important in the big picture. A first world problem, some would say, ‘Get over it and lighten up’. Yet, as I walk on a misty morning reflecting on this signature and my response, I see that I am annoyed because such an email signature feels deadening. As it is, a convenient automation, it’s indiferent to the singularity, the particularity of each exchange. Instead, I yearn for an email that is indicative of being on the edge of the living moment, a real conversation, which might include a ‘Kind regards”, or a “Best wishes”, or even a ‘With love’. Who knows? The point is, the uniform, automated signature is a mechanised, repetitive, convenient, routinised ending. It is not alive, it’s not reflective of what’s unfolding in the email exchange, a living conversation. The story illustrates something of what this phenomenological reflective practice is about. To be on the edge of the moment, alive and present to the singularity, the particularity of a living social and ecological process. To be engaged ‘as if for the very first time’ (perhaps the best shorthand for phenomenology). Rifng of the above story, I’ve taught many classes in universities. Often overwhelmed by the workload of academic life, it’s tempting to walk into a classroom with PowerPoints used the year before and just change the date. Or perhaps in the rush, at least give a moment the day before for a quick perusal, adding a new reference or two. Tempting. Yet, deadening. Certainly, antithetical to living teaching, which, like the email signature story, needs to be present to the singularity of each 20

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-4

Contours of the practice

group of students, the particularity of the day, sensitive to where I am at as the educator. Living teaching is to teach ‘as on the edge’, alive to the moment, responsive to the gesture of the group (where are they leaning?), attentive to each individual and to be with the content of the teaching as if for the very first time. It is reflective educational practice – as a practice of facilitation, instruction, provocation – that is on the inside of the phenomenon of the group in the here and now, and inside the ‘material’ of the teaching. And now a third and final introductory story. In recent years I have been supporting a Brisbane-based NGO to reflect on its practice, with the goal of making visible its ‘framework of practice’, that is, a framework of ‘what matters’. The approach has been phenomenological and reflective in the sense of trying to see or surface the actual practice of workers – not so much what people say they do or want to do – but actually do. Part of the work of sensing, seeing and surfacing the practice has been to support workers to write stories of what they do in their everyday work. Then to tell the stories to three other colleagues, who each in turn listen in diferent ways. The first person listening for facts, taking careful notes, feeding back to the storyteller what they actually said. The second person listening for feelings, reflecting back to the storyteller their feeling energy at diferent times of the story – sadness, enthusiasm, regret, anticipation. And then, finally, the third person listening at a deeper level, in a way that an image or metaphor, might arise – something that portrays a deeper listening to the whole story and or the intention. This third way of listening incorporates the rigour of the previous two – ensuring facts and feelings are accurately heard (and checked through dialogue). They are shared as an ofering in noticing and listening, with an attempt at purposeful withholding of interpretation, judgement. Workers get to think about their practice, tell their stories and listen, and also hear what’s ofered by listeners. And I, as the facilitator, am also able to observe the quality of storytelling, listening and sharing, and invite the ‘group’ to bring some attention to this. In doing this, we are able to not only name what appeared to matter to the workers, but to also surface a culture of care, support and listening. People are astounded by the profound potency of simply being attentive to one another – no ofering of advice, nor jumping to quick meaning-making. Pure attention and careful interpretation, if any. Aware of the ever-present polarity in the social field between observation and intervention (within which many practitioners are quick to leap to intervention), the group notices the power of observation. They can see their practice with a new-found clarity, perhaps also ‘for the very first time’. Additionally, they can see the kind of group and organisational culture that they want to cultivate, a consciousness that enhances possibility. 21

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Three stories, diferent in the sense that one is about everyday email practice, one is about educational practice and the third about reflective practice and organisational development practice. Yet, what connects the three stories are the qualities of a phenomenological reflective practice focused on the sensibilities of aliveness, observation, seeing, attention, presence and consciousness.

Two inquiries behind the stories I can tell such stories as I have been on a journey that has made this book possible. Two journeys’ actually, two inquiries. One personal and the other social. The first is the personal phenomenological inquiry into my own practice, my own search to make sense of the nuanced and subtle practice that I bring to the social world. The second journey is the inquiry into how this social practice, shaped as it is by a confluence of thought – that includes phenomenology, Goethe, depth psychology and other meditators on ‘observation’ and ‘aliveness’ – can be understood in the context of a wider phenomenological reflective practice. It’s that broader re-search journey, talking to scores of practitioners around the world.

Which brings us to the nub of what I am trying to do I embarked on these inquires to understand how to bring some fresh and rigorous new sensibilities to practice in the social and ecological fields. Those sensibilities can be understood as phenomenological and reflective. And we will get to those. Yet, the nub of the new sensibilities is perhaps best understood through the question explored by a gathering of 26 people at Towerland, South Africa early on this journey. Allan and Sue, in hosting the gathering over a six-day retreat at Towerland, asked us to reflect on the living question, ‘Can a social practice that foregrounds observation contribute to healing in the world?’ Enfolded in this question is much to ponder. For example, an observational practice without reaching for efect, without instrumental need to change things. An observational practice that is in a subtle way an intervention in-and-of-itself. An observational practice characterised by rigour, care, imagination, linking the inner and outer, the movement that is life, that reaches to perceive from the ‘inside-out’ of organisms, and yes, social organisms too, as I am reaching for a social practice in the social and ecological fields. 22

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A participatory sensory observation that is not detached, yet is rigorous. I assume the reader is left with more questions than answers in this quest for the nub. But patience is needed. Perhaps if the reader feels lost at all as we traverse the contours of this practice, come back to this initial question. As any social practitioner knows, posing a good and beautiful question is half of the work.

Key words in the title and illustrated in the stories But beyond the nub of it – the sensibilities and that living question – there are some key words intertwined within the title of this book: phenomenological, reflective, practice. I’d like to briefly provide some signposts of what they mean. Let’s start with practice. Many of the people I spend time with have a ‘morning practice’, that is, a set of morning behaviours with a clear intention, done regularly enough to be called a ‘practice’. That is, you can’t claim to have a practice if you only do it once or twice. A practice infers regularity, a rhythm, a fidelity, an agility, an intention. I make tea first thing and then move into the day with some journalling, meditation, a 45-minute walk through the nearby rainforest and then one hour of writing. Others would have a diferent morning practice. Practice is also not what we think we do or say we do, but what we actually do. Practice has a further clarity when we bring purpose and intentionality to what we do. For example, I love the practice of meditation and so I meditate as an activity with a clear purpose (if someone asks me why I meditate I answer with something like, ‘so I taste the tea and smell the flowers’). I practise (do it over and over again) meditation practice (what I do with intent). Each of our lives is filled with many practices. This is also true for ‘professional’ practice, whereby what a professional does has a very clear intention – a nurse cares for patients, a teacher educates and so forth. However, through this book the word practice is mostly used to refer to a social practice – to foreground observation within the sphere of social organisms, or social phenomena (groups, communities, organisations, movements). But not any kind of observational practice; instead, one linked to the other two words used in the title – ‘phenomenological’ and ‘reflective’. So, let’s move to phenomenology, possibly the word in this title that makes some readers sigh – an academic word! In one of the above stories I mentioned phenomenology is to ‘see’ or sense ‘as if for the very first time’. In many ways, 23

Rivers, signposts, borders 

this is the best summary I can think of. To be fully alive to any phenomenon – seeing a tree as for the very first time, letting go of categories of ‘tree’ so the tree can be perceived in its own singular, beautiful, wondrous way, as both a ‘thing’ (a bounded being) and a ‘process’ (in movement, and connected to everything around it, almost unbounded). But not only a tree, how about a person – imagine, alluded to within the word respect, ‘re-spect’ (re-see, with new spectacles each time), seeing someone ‘as if for the very first time’, letting go of pre-judgements, or stuck ‘stories’ of what that person means to us. Imagine letting go with what Buddhists call ‘the mind of a beginner’ and seeing someone afresh. But, as already said, phenomenology implies not only seeing, but particular ways of seeing. Richard Palmer, quoted by phenomenology and Goethe scholar Henri Bortoft, explains, phenomenology means letting things become manifest as what they are, without forcing our own categories on them. It means a reversal of the direction from that one is accustomed to; it is not we who point to things, rather, things show themselves to us. This is not to suggest some primitive animism but the recognition that the very essence of true understanding is that of being led by the power of the thing to manifest itself . . . .1 This ‘reversal’ is crucial, to be receptive to what is disclosed through a humble, open willingness to ‘let go’ of quick categorisations, interpretations, judgements. This phenomenological way of seeing is somewhere between the polarity of movements that can be understood as active versus passive – a receptivity to what is being made present. As such, phenomenology can also be described as a shift away from experience towards ‘experiencing the experience’,2 a more dynamic process, a ‘living thinking’ as I have mentioned before. In many ways it is easier, or more accurate, to talk about a ‘phenomenological way of seeing’, or the ‘phenomenological step’ as opposed to phenomenology itself. The crucial point in thinking about this as a ‘step’ is that phenomenology is concerned with what appears in its appearing. This is the phenomenon: the appearing of what appears. It is, as James Hillman, inheritor of the Jungian tradition says, an ‘aesthetic response [that] saves the phenomenon, the phenomenon which is the face of the world’.3 This is not a way of being in the world that we are accustomed to and therefore requires profound reflective capabilities. To reflect is to stop, pause, consider not only what we are seeing, but how we are seeing – the lens through which we are

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Contours of the practice

seeing. To pause before entering the fray to ask ourselves about our quality of presence, attention, noticing, listening. To withhold from a reflexive impulse to share, speak, categorise, interpret, react, instead asking a question. So much is asked of us to be in a reflective practice. A life journey in and of itself. Alluding to what was said earlier, as a practice, reflection requires regularity, intentionality, a clear idea of what’s being done. Not a once-of, occasional, random thing. A reflective practice implies stretching our observation muscles, our phenomenological seeing and sensing, our awareness-in-the-moment. From the trace of this phenomenological practice, it also insists on working reflectively with others, recognising that we each see in very limited ways, and need others to see with us. As such, it’s a collective practice. Returning to the third story told above, ‘seeing, sensing and surfacing’ the culture of the organisation requires a number of people to observe and dialogue about what they have seen. It’s not a solo, solitary practice, but a community practice, a ‘community-of-practice’.

Goethean reflective practice One option for titling this book was a ‘Goethean reflective practice’, and for the record, this ‘phenomenological reflective practice’ is deeply indebted to Goethe. And my understanding of Goethe is further indebted to Allan and Sue of The Proteus Initiative. Are phenomenology and Goethe interchangeable, and what is the relationship between the two? Not completely interchangeable. For Bortoft, Goethe was the first to develop and point to a ‘dynamic way of thinking’ which also sits at the heart of phenomenology. But as John Cameron suggests, ‘Goethe can be described as a “proto-phenomenologist,’’ predating the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, by over a century’.4 Bortoft points out that this Goethean dynamic way of thinking appears again in European thought in the first part of the twentieth century in the philosophy of phenomenology . . . .5 Bortoft clarifies that these two ‘movements’ (Goethean and phenomenology) were divergent in many ways, and yet they also ‘belong together’ because of this ‘movement of thinking’. I like to think of them as both representing what I call ‘shadow-traditions’, which are ways of thinking that disrupt the more linear, reductionist, static and somewhat hegemonic ways of seeing. Depth-psychology is another of these shadowtraditions, which is also an infusion of phenomenology into psychology via the work of James Hillman.

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Rivers, signposts, borders 

But why do we need such sensibilities now? Because what’s ‘with us’ is inadequate, and even using the word inadequate it . . . well . . . is inadequate. More and more social practitioners are getting clearer that within activist spaces, human and social service organisations, international and local development, environmental, community-based and higher education, there’s a big problem. The problem could be characterised in several ways. Foremost is the colonisation of mechanical thinking and practice which sees the world in ways informed by linear, reductionist, engineering ways of thinking. Think of logical frameworks, models of input-output impact, management for results. This colonisation is accompanied by instrumental thinking in which practitioners ‘intervene’ into social phenomena and social organisms, imposing their ‘will’ on them. There is a manic addiction to solutions with an unconscious unwillingness to first learn what is causing the problems. Inevitably, most solutions are then tainted by the causal factors, creating yet more problems. Furthermore, the worldview behind mechanical and instrumental work is underpinned by a paradigm of control – ‘if we do x then y will occur’; ‘these inputs will lead to those outputs’; ‘if we transfer these resources or this knowledge, that capacity will be built’. The colonisation leads to diminishing freedoms in social and ecological fields as mechanical thinking and control – manifest in compliance and audit worlds, ‘evidence-based practice’ (sometimes a euphemism for hiding the politics of evidence) – lead to a lack of engagement with the world in ways that acknowledge the ‘truth’ of living process, including the humility of not-knowing. All in all, these mechanical and routinised ways of doing work lead to ways of being and doing that fail to do justice to the complexity and emergent nature of living systems.

This book is a response to these problems If the problem is instrumental forms of intervention – imposing human will on social and ecological phenomena – then a response is a non-instrumental way of being, characterised by first observing, understanding and then walking or working ‘alongside’, accompanying, working from the ‘inside-out’ of a social organism. This way of practising is about receptivity and responsibility, all made possible by a kind of observational practice that enables practitioners to sense the inner nature of social change, accompany energies, movement and momentum for change. At the same time, if the problem is mechanical thinking and practice, then this book foregrounds living thinking and practice. If the problem 26

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is diminished freedom in a culture of compliance, audit and control, then this book foregrounds a reflective practice focused on freedom and responsibility. A lot more on this later. If the problem is routine and ruts – and I will sometimes characterise this as ‘stuckness’ – then a way forward is to be in a living responsive relationship to complex and emergent change. That is, to always be present and ‘on the edge’ with what is! And what is is always changing. So, our practice needs to be edgy, never settled. And to be edgy requires an intimacy with self, other, and the social and ecological fields in ways that require each practitioner to ‘step up’ into a profound commitment to being awake. And such wakefulness is to then be alert, discerning enough to be gathered up into the web of belonging, connection and consequence of being alive. In this sense, wakefulness is to be delivered into citizenship in the world, accompanied by a withering of the need to be special in any way. In many ways this book is about how practitioners can be awake in their work as it is which ironically – from a holistic perspective – acknowledges the necessity of going to sleep too.

What of the relationship between the social and ecological fields? In many ways this book is written for what I think of as social practitioners – people working in the social field, with the purpose of foregrounding a living, organic, ecological perception and practice. Or stated another way, a social practice informed by an ecological, organic, living sensibility. This implies, as explained above, an intentional move against a mechanical, linear, reductionist sensibility. It’s to rescue the social field from a deadening practice, stagnant in its assumptions and accompanying ways of being. You could say then, that I am focused on the social field, but bringing an ecological sensibility. Yet, in working in the social field, I am often invited to work with environmentalists, or activists-for-nature – across a spectrum from local community-based conservationist groups through to climate activists using non-violent strategies of civil disobedience. And I’ve noticed that often their love of nature and the environment – which motivates them – doesn’t necessarily attune them to the social dynamics at play in their groups or organisations. Or they are attuned in a binary way of ‘for or against us’. As such there’s often, and not always (apologies to any eco-activists right now tempted to take ofence at my generalisations), a lack of care or consciousness brought to the invisible social patterns or patterning at play in their groups or organisations. 27

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Only recently I was working with a group of 20 eco-activists and environmentalists in a community some 500 km north of Brisbane. In bringing attention to the social elements of their work – how they relate to one another, and how they relate to those in the ‘community’ they are trying to bring into a more sensitive relationship with their living environment (dune protection, creek revitalisation) – they realised they’d forgotten to take care of their relationships with one another, to connect more regularly as friends (not just comrades) and to even bring a more dialogic approach to working with so-called opponents (so easily morphed into enemies). So, I find myself bringing ecological-oriented practitioners into awareness of the social. My point being that the social and ecological are deeply intertwined. And this is not to ignore the cultural, political or economic – and we could add spiritual. It is to simply foreground the social-ecological. But, some words about the other elements of life. Within the framing of this work, the cultural is always at play. I tend to see the cultural as the invisible generative force within any group, community or organisation. It’s generative because it’s often culture that shapes people’s behaviour – in the same way that cumulative and collective behaviours shape culture. It’s also often invisible in the sense that ‘we’ often only see our own taken-for-granted assumptions, behaviours, mores and worldviews, when we step into another culture. It’s like the fish swimming in water, not aware what water is. Culture is like the water. And this seeing of ‘culture’ – and the ‘seeing’ is the work of consciousness, a key elemental of this phenomenological reflective practice – is also about power. To have power is to have more options, to be able to lean into our freedom and responsibilities, and we can only do this when we have consciousness. To see as is, to ‘face the facts’ we might say, to know accurately where ‘we are at’. To see our culture is to then have the power and freedom to make choices – do we want more of this culture, or do we want to change it? And to be talking of freedom and power is to be talking about politics. Hence this practice is intensely political, concerned with issues of decision-making, choices, options, possibilities.

Depth psychology, or a soul perspective, also informs this book Along with phenomenology, depth psychology represents another ‘shadow tradition’ that has been backgrounded in a world that has celebrated ‘Progress’, ‘Western knowledge’, ‘Development’, ‘Mechanical/Separate thinking’. Many ways of 28

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thinking and knowing have been pushed to the margins. In drawing on depth psychology, aka James Hillman and Mary Watkins, whose key aspirations are to rescue psychology from a ‘scientific literalism’ – to bring a phenomenological seeing and sensing to the psychological field – I am trying to bring such a seeing to the social and ecological fields. At the heart of this is to draw on depth psychology’s rescuing of the ‘heart as an organ of perception’, an ‘aesthetic seeing’ – not just a rational seeing. Like Goethe, who insisted a truer science required the rigours of observation and the poetics of imagination, so this phenomenological reflective practice requires a rigour of observing and sensing in the social and ecological fields (hence a lot of this book is about honing observational muscles), as well as an awakening of imagination in our reflective practice. As will become clear through this book, such a reflective practice includes both the seeing and sensing – rigorous participatory observations – and an imaginative component, which is to start drawing on images and metaphor as a way of also ‘seeing’ a whole, the invisible, the living element in a social phenomenon. In the same way that beautiful poetry resonates with a reader because the poetic images and metaphors used by the poet represent an intimacy with what’s being described – one that the reader immediately recognises as being ‘true’ – so a poetic reflective practice uses images and metaphors as a way of describing an interpretation of the social in a way that others see as true (or not, yet the humble ofering can lead to an enriching conversation). Or true enough to ‘work with’ – a bit like alchemy.

It’s also a book ultimately about what’s known as ontology However, in this new work I take the idea of practice a little further, distilling from phenomenology and living thinking, so that ‘the social’ can be seen in a different way to normal habitual impulses. Recognising that all perception is a form of participation – that is, we make choices about how to perceive, even if those choices are often unconscious – at the heart of this book is the argument for a way of perceiving practice in ecological, organic, aesthetic and living ways. It’s also a way that can only be perceived through radical participation within the social or ecological phenomenon that is being observed, sensed and intervened in, and then with collaborative reflection. It’s not to stand apart observing with an objectivism that is deceitful in its conceit. This approach, highlighted by the phenomenologist David Abrams, referencing the thought of Merleau-Ponty, insists that: 29

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By asserting that perception, phenomenologically considered, is inherently participatory, we mean that perception always involves, at its most intimate level, the experience of an active interplay, or coupling, between the perceiving body and that which it perceives.6 Hence, the invitation to a new way of perceiving is beyond practice, it is also a summons to a new way of being and perception – hence ontology. In doing this I am pointing towards what commentators refer to as the ‘ontological turn’. As leading post-development scholar Arturo Escobar suggests, what defines this turn is the attention to a host of factors that deeply shape what we come to know as reality . . . factors like objects and things, nonhumans, matter and materiality, emotions, spirituality, feelings and so forth. What brings together these very disparate items is the attempt to break away from normative divides, central to the modern regime of truth, between subject and object, mind and body, reason and emotion, living and inanimate, human and nonhuman . . . .7 As will become clear, the phenomenological reflective practice is one grounded in a new ontology that is radically social as ‘a way of being’ or, to be more accurate, ‘an ontology of being with’ as Nancy puts it.8 This way of being collapses the normative dualisms of modernity and relocates thought, action and being in a worldview of relationality or what the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh calls interbeing.9 As a scholar of Martin Buber’s work, I also align this ontology as an ontology of dialogue, always inhabiting the ‘in-between’ space of Self and Other, subjectobject, reason-emotion, mind-body and so forth. It is a radical third space, always in movement between what can be understood as polarities – and only understood through what will be referred to in this book as ‘living thinking’ or ‘metamorphic thinking’ (a term of Goethe’s). Such ontology links practice with ideas such as the ‘body’s intelligence’, which is an example of a third space collapsing the mindbody duality. Within this example, a phenomenological reflective practice linking perception (an orthodox area of inquiry within phenomenology) and reflective practice (a new field for phenomenology) requires a sensitivity to the body’s intelligence among other perceptive faculties. Finalising this point and responding to some of the historical critiques of phenomenology that suggest the reflective urge often remains abstract and theoretical (philosophy as theoretical reflection), the ontology that infuses this proposed 30

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phenomenological reflective practice – as a form of ‘ontological resistance’ – locates embodied, embedded and collaborative reflection on experiencing the phenomenon in the centre of practical wisdom. Here the actual practice of reflection on the social or ecological phenomenon becomes a new form of embodied reflection (not something just conducted in the isolated mind). Or again, imagined as an aesthetic reflex, where meaningful and meaning-making images arise from our bodies’ encounter with a phenomenon. A phenomenological reflective practice that takes this ontological resistance seriously locates perception within many faculties – eyes, ears, the body’s intelligence, intuition, smell, dreams, touch, feeling, thought, with others, in movement, in conversation and so many more – as will become clear.

A final story, about writing Writing this book has taken on three kinds of rhythms. In 2016, living in Amsterdam, 2–3 hours of writing daily; from 2017–2019, an occasional intensive week here and there, often when visiting one of my favourite islands, known as Minjerribah (Stradbroke); and then late 2020 into 2021, a daily writing of 30–45 minutes. Most of 2020 was a fallow year, letting my writing-self rest. Three rhythms, but a practice held with as much fidelity as possible. When a rhythm started to feel settled, deadening, it was best to give it up, lean into something new, find something that felt fresh, alive, on the edge of real writing, from the ‘inside-out’. It’s tempting to stick with something that works. Yet, what to do when that form of the practice stops working? Let it go, feel into the body’s intelligence, a deep knowing, coming from being a true resident within ourselves. I write. I reflect. A new form of the writing practice. I share with a few true and trusted friends for feedback, inviting other perspectives, other people’s seeing and sensing. This is writing as a phenomenological reflective practice, a fourth story accompanying the first three. The efectiveness of writing, like any practice, determined by the efect. The test of aliveness, intimate, written with as much love and power as I can summons.

Notes 1 Bortoft, Taking Appearance Seriously, 105. 2 Bortoft, Taking Appearance Seriously, 17. 31

Rivers, signposts, borders  3 James Hillman, The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, (Putnam, CT: Spring Publications, 1992), 48. 4 John Cameron, ‘Place, Goethe and Phenomenology: A Theoretic Journey’, Janus Head 8, no. 1, (2005): 174–198. 5 Bortoft, Taking Appearance Seriously, 17. 6 David Abrams, The Spell of the Sensuous, (New York: Vintage Books 1997), 57. 7 Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2018), 98. 8 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1991). 9 Thich Nhat Hanh, Together We Are One: Honouring Our Diversity, Celebrating Our Connection, (India: Jaico Publishing House 2010).

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Essay

3

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By this third essay a series of questions comes to mind. What do we mean by ‘the practice’? How do we describe the phenomenological reflective practice without defining it? At the same time, how do we navigate the complexities of discussing a particular practice in a world when there are so many claims to practice, and where there are no firmly established norms in the social or ecological fields on the use of words such as practice, methods, frameworks, tools and so on? In the context of such complexity and contestation, I use the word ‘borderlands’ referring to the no-man’s land between borders, to provide some angles that might help people think themselves into the practice. If contours give us a sense of the breadth and depth of practice, the borderlands reveal the edges. As such, in this essay I consider: • • • • •

The dilemmas of naming ‘this practice’ People having a practice How the practice is linked to other traditions of practice How the practice could be for all – a people’s project rather than a professional project How the practice is discovered rather than acquired.

The dilemmas of naming ‘this practice’ Clearly, I have opted to name this practice. The book title gives it away and I have alluded to other possible names in the previous essay. Yet, the question of whether or not to name the practice, with accompanying consequences, has been a very real dilemma. DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-5

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I am sitting in a six-day process at Long Bay, New Zealand. It is day two and someone, who is clearly feeling a little frustrated, speaks to the group with the question, ‘Everyone keeps talking about this practice, but what is it?’ A muted silence falls on the room; people seem to move to the edge of their chairs. I can feel my mind whirling and can almost hear the cognitive eforts of other people’s minds at work. The silence is indicative of the group’s awareness that it’s not a simple matter to name or describe this practice. Definitions of practice, phenomenology and reflective – as attempted in the previous essay – wouldn’t cut it. It had become an intellectual discussion. There’s a sense that it can only really be experienced and then talked about from the edge of the experience, being attentive to what happened in experiencing – and then in solitary and group reflection. I am reminded of the words in that most beautiful of books, The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander, who urges that: to seek the timeless way we must first know the quality without a name. There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named.1 In some ways a practice attentive to life, or living process, cannot be named. A tension point The memory of the Long Bay moment of silence takes me back to another conversation I’d been a part of with some practitioners in Sao Paulo, Brazil. There, too, people were continuously talking about ‘this practice’ without ever saying what this practice was, and I, like the person in Long Bay, had questioned this. It generated an interesting discussion, part of which is shared here: Tiao:

Marina:

Filipe:

34

I have become more and more quiet over the years in this conversation because I’m also not sure what people are talking about. I ask, is it a tool or a way of life? Can I go to work and be present, and attentive, and then leave this behind? . . . What connects this group? That we all know we have a practice in our lives – in our ‘development life’. For me, the less we name this practice the better – not giving it a name divides us less. I don’t want to define it, and yet there is this need to have a name – just to give me something to stand on, a place to breathe – and I call it ‘phenomenological Goethean practice’.

Borderlands of the practice 

Marina:

I respect that Filipe, but I’ve experienced in my past – or how do I put this? I’ve dedicated a lot of my ‘internal’ system to not knowing, to instead being present to the phenomenon. And this requires being empty – and for me this requires letting go of names – which too quickly gives pre-conceptions. We have to be able to approach the phenomenon with all our senses. And from this ‘reading’, meaning can emerge. I think Allan’s work is about helping with this – this is something like a Goethean practice.2 It is to be faithful to what is happening – describe it, even if I don’t like what I see – and then see what arises. And somehow, we need to be able to avoid analogies or metaphors that arise and too quickly provide interpretations.

I liked what Marina had to say – it resonated with me. But Filipe’s thoughts also made sense: how do we talk about something without giving it a name? Marina’s reference to ‘something like a Goethean practice’ is important. She’s advocating for no name, and yet referencing Goethe. As explored in Essay 2, enfolded in this is, on the one hand, Goethe’s ‘diferent’ way of doing science (to Newtonian science), recognising there was a contingency, not inevitability, about the evolution of Newtonian science.3 And on the other hand, in re-emphasising the senses as part of a diferent way of doing science, Goethe was interested in nature as it comes to presence in the experience of the senses. As Bortoft puts it: This means putting attention into the sensory experience itself, entering into the lived experience of the sensory perception, so that rather than just being “sensory” in the empirical sense, it is better described as the “sensuous” experience, or perception, of the phenomenon.4 Again, it is much the same as Hillman’s idea of an aesthetic sensibility or reflex, his ‘thought of the heart’, or even more astutely a restoration of ‘the animal sense of imagining’ and the ‘courage of immediate intimacy’.5 In the light of this, perhaps it might then be appropriate to say we have to be able to approach the (social or ecological) phenomenon with all our senses, and from this sensuous experience, or perception, a ‘reading’ of the phenomenon can emerge. This goes some way towards portraying the practice without defining it or giving it a name. Those for a name In direct contrast to those practitioners who were not keen on naming the practice, there were others in my encounters who did feel strongly about giving it a 35

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name. Ana Paula felt the same way as Filipe, arguing that, ‘we need to acknowledge this and name it’. She went on to ask, ‘How do we know if we don’t have a community of practice – we need a “community” so we can keep discussing the practice and know we’re talking about the same thing.’ Flora felt the same way as Ana Paula, explaining that she calls it ‘Goethean social practice, or reflective social practice, or phenomenological social practice’. Flora did pause and consider how she’s aware that ‘it’s not restricted to a box – where it can die’, and perhaps that is what Marina is cautioning when she talks about avoiding a name. Such cautioning echoes philosopher François Jullien’s thoughts about the risk of when a choice is made for ‘essence’ or ‘truth’ (or their correlates). For him ‘philosophy has failed the phenomenon of life, of life as life, what ceaselessly passes into its other’, as there is no ‘stable essence’.6 Of course we are not here talking about a philosophy, but a practice. However, there is the same risk of failing the living phenomenon of a practice, so well stated by Flora, ossifying into an idea or a concept. But, the risks of naming But what are the other risks of giving the practice a name, apart from fears ‘it can die’, or it has ‘failed the phenomenon of life’, which are both serious thoughts? I recounted the above dialogue to Ana Paula later on in our encounter, and she responded: In my community practice I’m already aware of how much power I have – educational, economic – so I don’t want to bring this extra power in of having a name, a theory; this creates even more distance. I do agree with Marina that naming can stop us seeing but naming among those of us in a community of practice can also be powerful for dialogue. Her thoughts consider not only the danger for practitioners and the practice (ossifying/dying), but also the contextual issues of whether to name or not name. For people in social and ecological work, already grappling with many elements of exclusion or marginalisation, a naming, like any use of language (discursive power) gives power to those on the inside (“I know, and you don’t”) and creates distance. Her thoughts also give rise to the dangers of naming a theory in everyday grassroots communities as such naming can easily create distance. Yet, here, in a book written for people interested directly and distinctly in a phenomenological reflective practice, the question of naming remains important and is probably best left as a living question. 36

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One thing that has become clear is that when people ask, ‘What is this practice?’, ofering a name achieves little. Instead, the issue is not naming the practice, but portraying it. In discussing this issue of naming with Allan and Sue, their focus is to invite people to ‘cultivate a faculty of seeing’ rather than giving a name to the practice.7 In some way it is simply an approach to being in the world that foregrounds seeing and sensing in a dynamic or phenomenological way. This cultivated faculty of seeing then enables a phenomenological inquiry into many aspects of life, which also enables a ‘seeing’ of one’s personal practice, and one’s social practice, while at the same time, these very practices are transformed by the nurtured faculty of attention and seeing. What has become clear to me is that people who want to explore this practice need to live with a contextual paradox: on the one hand, giving something a name comes with risks – such as reification, debates about what’s in the name, whether to foreground Goethe or phenomenology, and the power that comes with a name to mystify or exclude, or distance. Or most significantly, there is the ego trick that makes people think, ‘I understand the name, therefore I have the practice’ or ‘I did a workshop on this practice, therefore I’ve got it’. On the other hand, and this is the paradox, without a name it is hard to have a meaningful dialogue, to support or nurture an emerging ‘community of practice’. The deployment of Goethe – what can happen? One last point for consideration within this purview of naming the practice is a discursive issue – that is, ‘What happens when “Goethe” is introduced?’ Some people above have discussed the issue of power in relation to naming generally – they have said that a name, like an abstract theory, can create distance between people. However, others shared about the danger of people’s particular pre-conceptions of Goethe, and even Rudolf Steiner’s links to interpreting Goethe. Particularly in the Academy there seems to be an easy dismissal of Goethe, or an unease at using Goethean discourse, given his popular categorisation as a Romantic thinker, which is often seen to be in ‘opposition’ to the Enlightenment tradition. Phenomenology appears to be an easier path for people. For example, Tania, linked to the University of Cape Town, shared how: I’d mentioned Goethe and she [referring to a senior and highly respected keynote speaker, on a panel] closed me down, saying, “Goethe is all about romanticism, we’ve moved beyond that”. And I was shocked and 37

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surprised – she was someone who talked of openness and seemed to be that. At that moment there was no humility within her – and Goethe seemed to irritate her no end. And in those conditions, I failed – you can’t bring something like this into that situation. I was gutted, for me personally and for the practice I was trying to show people. There was no openness to a contemporary interpretation of Goethe. While the issue of naming or not naming this practice can be seen to carry very real and complex issues, I go back to Tiao’s thoughts, and agree, that regardless of each person’s position on whether to give the practice a name or not, the wiser option may indeed be portrayal of it through direct experience.

On people having a practice Yet, while thinking into whether this practice should be named or not, an equally significant question is whether people have a practice at all. A dear friend on this journey, Rubert, shared how he felt a ‘need for a practice . . . and I saw many of my colleagues were just happy to run a program’. For me, what he had noticed is at the nub of the problem – do people have a practice, and how do they discover their practice? Briefly explored in Essay 2, to have a practice is to have an intention, idea and regularity. Yet in the social field, people and organisations love programmes, projects, tools, methods, events and frameworks. In an era of technical-rationalist thinking, many social purpose organisations would be happy with practitioners without a practice. A practitioner is then envisaged to be someone able to apply the methods and tools of modern development applications – such as outcome mapping, Gantt chart planning and event management, monitoring and evaluation, base-line surveys and quantitative analysis. The practice becomes nothing more than implementing the programme+, tools and methods. Many ‘practitioners’ that I run learning programmes for have no sense of their practice. They are used to running events or activities. When I ask what their practice is they often look bemused. In fact, what is really called for by their organisations is someone who knows how to ‘run the tools’ and ‘use the frameworks’ – practitioners without a practice. I know of many instances where practitioners simply google for the latest tool. Practice is somewhat marginal to how most social or ecological purpose organisations currently operate. Any new gimmick or fad of social tools seems to gain traction easily. 38

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Echoing this thought, Sue Soal, a leader in this field from Cape Town, gave me an account of her and Allan Kaplan’s interactions [some years ago] with some large donors in a meeting: [The donors] had power – financial, telling people what to do – over [locals]. And yet it seemed to me that they didn’t have a lot of depth, and they didn’t have a practice, in the sense of an ‘idea from which doing came’. We at CDRA,8 we had this saying, ‘What are we doing when we do what we do?’ I recount this as a way of crystallising what was briefly explored in Essay 2 around ‘practice’ and considering the implication of this ‘an idea from which doing comes’. Without this ‘idea’ and clear intention that guides, people’s work simply becomes a case of applying tools, methods and techniques, or running events, programmes and projects. Whereas, to understand a practice as ‘an idea from which doing comes’ is to recognise: • • • •

Some sense of clarity of intention in the social or ecological purpose – to know why we are doing what we do A commitment to a tradition of practice – where the idea has a lineage of thought, experimentation and evolution It is something done regularly A fidelity to an honesty in the practice – to do it as well as one can.

Gently holding the identity of a community development worker, committed to that first river practice of dialogue, this is pertinent for me. Taking that example, I understand my practice of dialogue as ‘bounded’ in the sense that there is a long tradition to the idea that has evolved over many years, which gives shape to the ideas behind my practice of dialogue. I can turn to this bounded tradition and trace the authors through the myriad diverse ways of thinking about dialogue. I then experiment in a life of dialogue – in my personal life, my work life, in every aspect of my life with a purpose. I try, learn, fail, reflect; I pause and gather more information; I gain insight as people challenge my non-dialogical failings; they point out the limits of dialogue and I, too, discover them. In other words, the practice itself supports my integrity within the practice. Occasionally, dialogue as a phenomenon becomes present to me in an embodied way that is truly alive. Usually in such a moment I am not even cognisant of dialogue. I am simply in it. Or, I could say, dialoguing arrives. I am neither actively seeking dialogue, nor passive, but I am receptive. I also contribute to the tradition of practice informed by this idea: I meet with others and reflect; I write about it and contribute to journals on dialogue. 39

Rivers, signposts, borders

But I am also aware of how this practice of dialogue, while bounded, is also enfolded within, and in relationship to, other practices in my life – such as my community development practice and my meditation practice. Each of these three practices – dialogue, community development and meditation – are bounded in themselves ‘as a practice’, and yet are deeply connected. They are porous and influence one another because they are in relationship with one another, while also being separate. But each has an idea behind the doing. Each has tradition/s of thought. Each demands commitment, regularity and fidelity. Then, beneath all of these is this third river of phenomenological reflective practice we are exploring in the borderlands – the practice of seeing and sensing in a ‘living way’ – a way that involves seeing the parts and the whole in a perceptive, intuitive, participatory, ethical way, sensing the separations and the relationships, the growth and decay, the connections and diferentiations, the movement of being in relationship with the phenomenon that we bring attention to. Without this practice of observing in a living way, the fullness of other practices – such as my community development work, dialogue and my meditation – might easily remain limited. I don’t see it as clearly, not in a living way, community as a verb or a process – development as something alive (or in decay) in all phenomena. Without the third river informing my community development, I might be seduced into a community development project or programme, a series of capacity building interventions, not as a practice.

This practice animates other practices and traditions . . . A clear thread through all my encounters was that most people came to this phenomenological reflective practice through diverse avenues of social or ecological practice. I myself came from a tradition of practice informed by dialogue and community development. Yet this phenomenological practice had me feeling animated. Merrem, whom I encountered in an energetic conversation in Recife, Brazil, helped me to get inside the seeds of my animation for this practice. Merrem, whose practices, like mine, are rooted in Freirean popular education tradition and participatory approaches, had this to say: I was 20 years working with people and always doing this popular and participatory way – and Profides9 helped me to understand the context and ideas such that I knew what was happening, what we were experiencing; 40

Borderlands of the practice 

but previously I couldn’t describe it. It gave me consciousness to see the process, to see a ‘stream’ or flux, the life stream, in the projects that I was supporting. I was aware that I was working in alive processes. This practice enabled him to see his Freirean practice in a new, fresh, more alive way. For Merrem, finding the phenomenological practice was refreshing, or enlightening. Many people in this search talked about how the practices Allan and Sue were teaching were bringing a new aliveness and consciousness to their existing ‘traditions of practice’. As examples, Arnaldo has been working with the Jungian tradition; John came from a strong Quaker and education tradition; Tanya from the green activist movement; Rubert with anti-racism and psychology backgrounds; Tamara from a deep ecology and Art of Hosting background; Undine from a peacebuilding and memory-work tradition; and so on. Each felt as though they saw and sensed their own tradition of practice more clearly because of immersion in this phenomenological reflective practice. Building on Merrem’s narrative, he pushed further, explaining how this practice makes his own tradition more alive with seeing and consciousness, therefore infusing the practice with a new intensity. He elaborated: It’s like a way of looking at things, and they can potentialise each other, making the other stronger. There are diferences even while complementing one another: for example, from popular education I’ve been challenged to look at the world via class, through exclusion; and yet, the Goethean contribution helps me get a better view of the phenomenon, and this makes things clearer to me. This intrigues me, for it implies a separate and yet simultaneous ‘role’ of the practice. On the one hand it’s a practice that infuses existing practices with greater attention and awareness, a diferent way of seeing and being conscious, which overall enables a perspective that is more alive to a dynamic way of being in the world. It ‘potentialises’ someone’s tradition of practice, as put so well by Merrem. Yet, it’s a diferent tradition of practice However, on the other hand, it is a separate practice that ofers diferent ways of thinking about social change, activism and development. In this sense it’s also part of a diferent tradition of practice with its own demands for integrity, fidelity and evolution. For Sue Soal, it was more about complementary, yet difering ideas about 41

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what she understood as two approaches. She shared how ‘[a] Goethean approach brings the purpose of consciousness, holism, growth; and I also bring a community development purpose, or a political one – justice, equity and access. My work has been combining these two sets of purpose.’ So, it would seem that this practice not only brings a new intensity to existing practices – it also brings diferent lenses to seeing the world, and can therefore profoundly shift previous practices, sometimes even disrupting, or causing dismay at how we have previously practised. What’s clear is that phenomenological reflective practice is now an evolving practice in and of itself, with workshops, journal articles, university programmes, a book Artists of the Invisible,10 papers such as A Delicate Activism,11 this re-search about ‘the practice’, and so forth.

A practice for all – a ‘diferent quality of being’ in the world It is January 2016 and I am sitting in Danna’s back garden for one of my conversations. It is a gorgeous Cape Town summer’s day – the sun is warm, but not too hot, and the wind, after a relentless week, has paused briefly; the stillness is blissful. After talking for some time, Danna took me through her house, showing me her works of art. I paused at her bookshelves and found an anthology by one of my favourite poets, Mary Oliver, and learned that Danna had chosen a poem for her ‘reflective social practice’ Master’s thesis. It reads: Instructions for living a life • • •

Pay attention Be astonished Tell about it

I am astonished; isn’t this the very heartbeat of the practice I am exploring? I leave my time with Danna buzzing with an unnamed excitement; my perspective has shifted. Where I had seen this as a professional project, exploring what this practice might mean for professionals in the social and ecological fields, through this encounter I suddenly saw this as a valid practice for all – for citizen, for people. When I ‘see’ something like this, when an idea arrives within me, I suddenly experience boundless energy.12 I felt it that day. The stillness of the windless day 42

Borderlands of the practice 

was infused with a new clarity and purpose of writing. I wasn’t writing to professionals at all, or to my ‘professional self ’, or not only them. I was writing to anyone who wanted to be more attentive to a living way of seeing and being in the social and ecological world. I was writing to myself who was on a search for more aliveness. I was writing to that part of me dreaming of de-professionalisation, as Gustavo Esteva puts it so well.13 With notes in hand, I reflected further on the conversation with Danna, where she acknowledged her growing yearning that all people could discover this practice: [The practice] allowed me to be in the world a lot diferently, with an awareness of self, other, the larger picture. It’s allowed me to be slower and more conscientious in the world. And more accepting of how things are, and seeing how things are, so I can engage with what is. It’s hard to put the practice into words – it’s a feeling – a sensitivity and openness to others that I didn’t feel before. This is part of the acceptance. There is recognition of my assumptions, my prejudices, and my judgements that are so ingrained and so invisible much of the time. I now see how these shape how I engage in, or step into the world. So, I am more conscious in a daily way. [my emphasis in italics] Consciousness, attentiveness, openness, observation, awareness of judgements and sensitivity – all key words to this practice, and words that will be explored further on. But the point for now is that this practice is a way of being and practising in the world that seems to be available to all. A few days later I was sitting in an atmospheric patisserie in the neighbourhood of Vila Madelena, Sao Paulo, with Ana Paula. I loved the huge table in the centre of the main room where people could sit in a shared space with others enjoying the aroma of freshly baked bread and steaming cofee. Ana Paula reflected: Early when I encountered this practice, I perceived that it melts the diferentiating between personal and work life. You are what you do and you do what you are! To be in the world like this also requires courage – you have to keep asking, ‘Am I doing what I say?’ But it also puts life at the centre. I dig the images she used – a ‘melting’ of the diferentiating of the public and the private. And I also love the way she talked of ‘perceiving it’, seeing this radical way of being in the world. Rodrigo, an architect from Olinda, north-east Brazil, also ‘saw’ something when he encountered this practice – explaining that ‘I saw that 43

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this could help me in my family, myself, the entire universe’. Fabi, who combines social practice, adventure learning and a love of body surfing, shared how for her, ‘I call this practice a way of living rather than just a practice’. Juliana also explained that, ‘One thing I like about this practice is that there’s no in and out, no division between personal and professional. It’s a case of ‘I am my practice’ – my values are with me everywhere.’ As I re-encounter the words now I feel my heartbeat quicken. I glance out of my lounge window and see the trees swaying in the morning breeze. I am aware of morning energy and know that my rhythm will see this energy increase and intensify as the morning lengthens. And then as the day diminishes so will my energy. I am aware that I can bring attention to my life and my daily practice in the way that all these people have shared. I will walk to work later today and say goodbye to the leopard tree as I pass it; I will say hello to the photos of Nelson Mandela and Leonard Cohen as I enter my ofce. I will attempt to give my full attention to students as they pass in and out of my ofce, seeking advice and feedback on their work. I will come home and with loving care prepare dinner for a visiting friend. And in all this, I will seek to bring a closer attention and wakefulness to detail, to the parts, knowing that a potential parallel seeing of the whole can arise from a seeing of this detail. I will see the sunset and sunrise, notice my quality of presence, and even when I need to be absent. I intend to lay in bed this evening tracing the detail of the day seeing what image arises that gives meaning to the whole day. I will inevitably fail in those ‘seeings’, endeavours and ‘seekings’, but I will keep practising paying attention, not as a professional practitioner, but as a human being. Being human January 2016, and I am sitting with Lungisa in Kirstenbosch Gardens, Cape Town, possibly one of the most gorgeous gardens within an urban space on the planet. Table Mountain towers up above us on one side, and I am in excited anticipation of a walk-up Skeleton Gorge as soon as our yarn is over. Lungisa is wonderful to talk to, and she shared how much she loved the gardens as Allan and Sue had brought people here to practise the practice, observing nature and seeing it through Goethe’s dynamic way of seeing. But she also pointed to the practice as ‘raising awareness of humanity’. For her, the issue isn’t so much the integrating of the public-private, or work-personal, but is simply about the human. She explained to me how in this sense it’s not a professional practice at all, but a disciplined practice of living, requiring a presencing into biography, reflection and all that is human within us. 44

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Becoming the practice – how to learn it? I had arrived in Brazil, after two months in South Africa. I was weary with jetlag and also wary of getting lost on my first local bus trip in the mega-city of Sao Paulo. Yet I managed to arrive on time for Sunday lunch to be with Ana and her partner. Some four hours later, I emerged from that lunch and conversation energised and animated by what had taken place. I was particularly struck by Ana’s attentiveness to a way of thinking about learning. Ana, one of those who had ‘discovered’ this practice at a time of her own depletion and disappointment in working within the social field, knew she had ‘found a home’. In fact, she was clear that ‘bringing this practice’ to the world was now her life journey – and she was aware that all is in movement, so this might change too. With that vision in mind, she had been doing a significant amount of thinking about how people learn. She had this to say: This practice is about something you become – it’s not a case of first you learn and then you apply. You have to develop it within yourself and it develops within you – it’s a mutual relationship. This made me crazy in the beginning – I wanted to learn and then apply and get a result. We’re so used to thinking and seeing in mechanical and linear ways – such as first we learn and then we apply and then we get results. It was like a revelation to me – not to be able to ‘buy and apply’. Instead, it was about nurturing and growth. Returning to the first borderland issue, perhaps this is the key risk with naming something, or even doing what I am doing now – researching and writing about something. Once something is given a name, or elements of the practice are written about and then read – rather than creating opportunities for people to experience, reflect on and discover it – people might easily slip into the deep cultural habit of thinking that ‘knowing about something’, or ‘reading it’, ‘having it explained’, means ‘I’ve got it’. It becomes another ‘thing’ (‘object thinking’, not ‘metamorphic’ or living-thinking), a tool, another package or just another acquired mimicry of the practice. But a practice that has at its core the requirement that we bring the fullness of both our attention and presence is not easily appropriated. Experiential learning processes of discovery The ‘learning process’ for this practice also intrigued John. Sitting with me in a Melville cofee shop on a cold Johannesburg morning, he reflected on participation 45

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in the Master’s programme of Reflective Social Practice, facilitated by Allan, Sue and David Harding. He shared how: I loved watching the three facilitators holding so consistently – to keep holding the frustration of the participants – keep staying open all the time. To which the goal of learning is participants making-meaning themselves – not being short cut by facilitators – because usually facilitators deal with participant frustration with meaning-making for themselves. John had understood the artistic work of enabling conversations, where participants were left to ‘discover’ the meaning themselves. I can recollect many such occasions sitting in multi-day workshops with Allan and Sue. Sitting on the edge of my chair, and the edge of my confusions, wishing they would give an ‘expert answer’, ‘sage thoughts’. Instead, they locate themselves within a living, mutual conversation, vulnerable in their own edges. Yet this is why some people felt that frustration recounted earlier in this essay – hearing about a ‘practice’ and wanting it explained like a thing. Lungisa added some pertinent words: You have to be open, to learn to be patient, and immersion, journeying, not knowing the outcome. It’s an experience . . . you need to have gone through it. It’s not just a feeling – it’s about the head, heart and feet, and you have to go through this thing. It’s transformative. Lungisa’s reflections are apt in that they highlight the experiential nature of the learning process, requiring being open to new experiences, and even un-learning prior to, or during, new learning. This is not a practice only of the head, learned through thinking, but a completely diferent immersion in a holistic process. Yet in an age where education is often linked to abstracting processes, and a foregrounding of ‘theory’ rather than practice, it is somewhat revolutionary. It turns the normal mode of contemporary learning on its head, returning to a ‘praxis’ of action and reflecting, doing and reflecting. Bringing the practice into organisations Wilna, the coordinator of a Pretoria based NGO, also talked about how she, because of immersion in this practice, now facilitates learning with co-workers.

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Re-thinking learning as a process of discovery, she has tipped the traditional didactic ‘staf training’ processes on their head. She explained: We’ve moved away from a didactic learning and moved very much into action-reflection and participatory learning. We open up spaces to learn – we don’t get experts in to give us lectures or teach us. Our practice grows as we reflect and we develop observation skills. Didactic models are set and stuck in time and won’t always help in the real space of now. Practice has to be alive and growing in the real context. I would have liked to ask more. After all, this learning as practice needs more unveiling. But for now, I am thinking of the musician who, for years, practises their scales, and fumbles daily. They work harder and do their utmost – with little efect. But then as time passes there is less thought, and one morning in picking up the guitar there is an amazing ease of playing. As François Jullien would ask, ‘What subterranean work has taken place through the days, months or years?’14 What was at work? Was I at work? . . . Or was some work at work within me? Group learning journeys As I write, I am also drawn into reflecting on a commitment to join a three-year Proteus Initiative learning process in New Zealand. In late 2016, I returned from the first of several six-day intensives, and the three of us from Brisbane were trying to work out how we would continue to gather together between the annual intensives to support our journey in this practice. We imagined a learning group that could gather together for a day or two every few months to renew our practice – to observe, to be attentive, to see the parts and the wholes, to see in living, dynamic ways. We know the practice can only expand within us through practising. We know it’s experiential and reflective, as the people above have highlighted. And in the ‘working out’ of our Brisbane group, I was reminded of stories told me on my research journey of how others had created such groups. For example, Denise from Recife, Brazil explained how: We call ourselves a Group of Learning and we’ve been getting together for about 10 years. We kept learning together and got closer to Allan and then Sue, and we went to Towerland as a group in 2012 to work out what we were as a group.

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Rodrigo also referred to this process: We left [Towerland] clear that we were a learning group – we wanted to think through a learning process that suited us. And that’s what we did. We thought and thought and then, with Allan, we developed the Postgraduate Certificate, as we wanted something deeper than the Artists of the Invisible Program. There are some important signposts for learning in this account of Denise’s and Rodrigo’s – of how a group emerged. Allan and Sue did not try to form a group. This group, emergent from relationships, conversation and desire, formed itself and then had to work out over time what it wanted to ‘bring to the world’ or how to ‘be in the world’. Paula and Tania shared a similar story of the formation of a Goethean Observation group in Cape Town, and Tania explained that: I have a group that meets regularly, and at Towerland each year, to keep the practice alive . . . . Initially we met four times per year – seasonally so we could also observe plants in diferent season, but then the group ‘died’ but now it is re-emerging. Initially we met Friday evenings over dinner and then spent the whole of Saturday together. These stories are indicative of a phenomenological spirit of inquiry for the people involved, and illustrative of a way of discovering that is contrary to many contemporary learning processes. No one was ‘providing’ a service for people – albeit Allan and Sue were ‘holding’ or ‘anchoring’ (words people used) the actual workshop processes.15 People were creating their own opportunities for learning in partnership with Allan and Sue.

In conclusion I’ve settled on a name for this practice – the title of the book – aware of all the pitfalls. The trick is to remember the potential falls. The mind is a trickster and before we know it, we are settled into routines and rhythms of ‘thinking’ we’re seeing living social and ecological process, but have fallen back onto concepts and ideas, linear and instrumental blindness. Perhaps we have gone to sleep. What I do know is I don’t know how to do this practice. I’ve not learned it and now I’ve got it. Like any muscle, rarely used, there would be atrophy. The real trick is to keep practising the practice. 48

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What I also suspect is that this phenomenological practice has become intrinsic to my whole life – it’s infused my community development work, facilitation, teaching, writing, gardening, meditation, walking, relating to friends – everything. At times I touch the whole of that infusing; at other times it falls through my fingers like water and I’m left feeling like a baby, fresh, new, needing to start again. Humbled. Human. The point is I keep learning, and practise ways of being which become tacit, embodied, enlivened even more when journeying with others who are committed to a journey of participatory perception. A community of practice living in the borderlands, between worlds.

Notes 1 Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), ix. 2 This is referring to Allan’s work with Fonte Institute, Brazil. 3 I use ‘Newtonian science’ as shorthand for the whole tradition of science that goes back to Aristotle/ Plato/ Bacon/ Galileo/Descartes, etc. 4 Bortoft, Taking Appearances Seriously, 53 5 Hillman, The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, 74. 6 Jullien, The Philosophy of Living, 60. 7 Or it was when this was written, by now they might have changed their mind. 8 CDRA stands for Community Development Resource Association (Allan founded it pre-The Proteus Initiative) 9 Profides is a learning program facilitated by Fonte Institute in Brazil. 10 Allan Kaplan, Artists of the Invisible, (London: Pluto Press, 2002). 11 Allan Kaplan and Sue Davidof, A Delicate Activism: A Radical Approach to Change, (Cape Town, South Africa: The Proteus Initiative, 2014). 12 Is this not a Goethean aperçu? See Rüdiger Safranski, Goethe: Life as a Work of Art, (New York and London: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2013), 66. 13 See Peter Westoby, David Palmer and Athena Lathouras, 40 Critical Thinkers for Community Development, (Rugby: Practical Action Press, 2020). 14 Jullien, The Philosophy of Living, 35. 15 This is not to say that on other occasions workshops or processes were not organised more as a ‘service’, as a ‘learning opportunity’. In this sense, a couple of people organised things, with Allan and Sue, and then put the word ‘out and about’. I tell these two stories, which energised the people telling them, to share the kind of organising of learning that is possible within a more phenomenological spirit.

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PART

II

The elementals of the practice

Situated between the borderlands of this practice (Essay 3), and a couple of stories (Part III) are the elementals of the practice (Essays 4–7). Elementals can be understood as the archetypes of the practice, or to quote Christopher Alexander again, the ‘pattern language’ – the core concepts – at the heart of this practice. They energise the practice, fill it with life, keep us true to what matters in our social and ecological work. It is vital, however, that these elementals, or archetypes, are not mistaken for a set of steps to the ‘doing’ of this practice, but rather are seen as pointing towards a way of being in the world (the ontology) that accompanies social and ecological change from within. The four key elementals explored in Essays 4–7 are observation, aliveness, working from the ‘inside-out’ and consciousness. Each of these four elementals are important in and of themselves, but, alluding to David Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicate Order,1 each is in some way only an explicate part of an implicate whole. Each one is not separate from the other three. Each archetypal is important to explore as a part, but it is only in the coming together of them all with a clear intention that this practice is discovered.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-6

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Essay

4

Elemental One – observation and developing a faculty of seeing

Everyone I encountered who was on the journey into this practice talked of observation in a way that it could be almost synonymous with ‘the practice’. Like the question posed in Essay 2, ‘How can a practice that foregrounds observation bring healing to the world?’, it’d be accurate to describe the practice as an observational practice. Yet, I have opted to include it as only one of the four elementals in recognition that observation in the social and ecological fields needs to be intertwined with aliveness, working from the ‘inside-out’ and consciousness. It’s not just about observation. Mind you, those who embrace this practice understand that how we see something afects what is seen, and that to see diferently – to see beyond our habituated concepts, patterns, structures, prejudices and conditioning – leads to discovering the world anew. To say it again, perception is always an act of participation – hence I have occasionally talked of participatory observation previously recognising that many people hear the word ‘observation’ as something detached observers do. To see in this way requires more than the straightforward observation of things or beings, but also keen observation of the details and parts, the diversity, yet also the connections and the patterns that contribute to sensing ‘the whole’, and the process of becoming that is within (from the inside-out) each apparent thing or being. It is to see all the parts as integral to a living process, a process naturally in a state of constant becoming because everything alive is always in a state of constant change. To see in such a way requires the development of a capacity for sustained observation and imagination – a rigorous but rewarding practice.

Observational muscles through practice As such, much of this essay focuses on exercises and experiments that help practitioners hone this faculty of seeing, flexing the observational muscles so to speak.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-7

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Hence, I write about exercises such as observing plants, or taking time to see places and observe people. The exercises stretch people to bracket their quickly arising interpretations, stuck in old patterns of seeing, so their seeing can be enhanced, stretched. As a social practice, observing isn’t just a solo activity either. Ideally, done with others, ‘we’ see more. But linking forward to the next two elementals, the purpose is to see that ‘no-thing’ that is everything – aliveness – so we can work with that, or to see in a way that we can work from the ‘inside-out’ of a social phenomenon such that it can become more of itself, that is, flourish.

Observation and imagination Aligned to the development of this capacity for observation is the ability to read situations in a way that allows the practitioner to make meaning of the process of observing, and thereby be able to intervene in a way that is meaningful and productive. Making meaning also implies the element of imagination within the process of observation. Observation first and then meaning-making through imagination are intimately enfolded within one another. Let us return to the idea of seeing a rainbow. What we are actually seeing is an image that arises from the confluence of rain, sun, light, memory, being there to observe it, perspective, collective agreement to name it a ‘rainbow’ and so on. There are the successive or simultaneous operations of the sense-organ that sees and a perceptive mind that recognises and names. This latter operation is in many ways an act of imagination, or ‘figuration’ as Barfield prefers.2 It is what gives the seeing meaning. For Barfield, reflecting on the need to move towards a participatory worldview, Goethe’s work represents an attempt ‘to use imagination systematically’.3 And, of course, particular meaning is made through this systematic observation and the seeing of aliveness, movement, process – only made possible through imagination. People from a diferent culture could give a completely diferent meaning to seeing a rainbow. They quite literally make a diferent world through a diferent imagining. I am on the edge of my chair writing this, aware that in so many ways I need not travel any further to discover anything. I could stare out of my ofce windows and see the panorama before me, and create diferent meaning; I could discover diferent worlds in seeing and perceiving diferently.

Have you seen a tree? My practice has at times been accompanied by slow and careful readings of Craig Holdrege’s book, Thinking Like a Plant.4 Often, just when I thought I was making 54

Elemental One

progress, I realised how very diferent the idea of an object is to the object as it really exists! The question, ‘Have you ever seen a tree?’ was one I used to explore and deepen my practice, and the leopard tree at an old home became one of the foci. Have you ever seen a tree? What a strange question it seems, for of course we have all seen a tree – many trees. But what I came to understand was that I had been seeing was my idea of a tree – an imaginative abstraction, a name, a representation. But as I lived into this exercise, as I began to engage all my senses in my attention to this particular and singular tree, so did I begin to see the tree in a diferent way – its changing colours, shapes, textures, scents all became visible to me. And as my intimacy with the tree grew, it started to disclose its patterns, its cycles, its relationship to the complex eco-system of my street, and beyond that, its relationship to the wider cycles of life. While what is revealed may feel magical, this is not about any mysticism – a magical seeing or some secret gnosis. There is a rigour and discipline required to see the detail, and sense into the movement that allows the living dynamic whole to be revealed – which requires that imaginative faculty too – and part of this rigour is quickly letting go of any attachment to the arising interpretations about what is seen. It is as Barfield put it, the use of ‘imagination systematically’.5 This constant letting go allows for another seeing, and then another, and in this, the hidden patterns and relationships which make the whole as a living process become more apparent. It’s this kind of exploring of seeing – a rainbow, a tree – that actually enables us to develop the faculties needed to see in living ways in the social and ecological fields. Building on such questions as ‘Have you seen a tree?’ and ‘Is there such a thing as a rainbow?’, this essay explores a number of exercises, including: • • • • • • • • • •

Experimenting and exercises in ‘seeing’ Rigour and discipline in the practice of seeing Seeing as an ‘intervention’ Enabling everyone to see Listening as a form of observation Attention Seeing the invisible Exact sensorial imagination Fidelity to the actual From seeing the natural to seeing the social • • •

Acknowledging the complexity of the social Seeing and humility: questioning what is seen Uncertainty and paradox 55

The elementals of the practice 

•

On the rim of the past and present – archives and social movements

•

A rhythm of reflection

While not grouping them explicitly, I have moved from a series of meditations on seeing, through to various exercises on listening and attending. Then I explore what it means to ‘see the invisible’, particularly within the social realm. Finally, the importance of group reflection is explored.

Experimenting and exercises in ‘seeing’ I am very mindful that the use of particular exercises was extremely important in helping me to find my way into the observational element of this practice. I found too, in this inquiry, that immersion in the experience of the practice through such exercises, together with the opportunity to reflect on the exercise, preferably as a group, has been pivotal in allowing all the practitioners I connected with to truly ‘discover’ this practice. Let me further explore this with a personal story of my first-hand experience of the power of such exercises when participating in a six-day retreat at Towerland a few years ago. Twenty-six people gathered together from all over the world were asked to reflect on that question, ‘Can a social practice that foregrounds observation contribute to healing in the world?’ Important in this consideration was the awareness of polarity as an inherent aspect of our living world (and practice), and that one of the key polarities is intervention and observation, with the default tendency in my wilful culture to move towards intervention rather than observation. Believing we see accurately (the problem and the solution) we are quick to move to intervention as action; observation is a lesser skill. As part of our exploration of this question, which required that we begin to foreground observation rather than intervention, we embarked on a series of practices requiring each of us to pause and learn to see afresh. One of these exercises involved spending an hour each day, in groups of three, observing one particular natural phenomenon. The group I was in chose to observe the succulents in one of the garden beds, a bed we had walked past dozens of times. As the three of us observed these succulents, and entered dialogue about what we were observing, I was struck by a number of things. Foremost was my shock at how little I actually saw. The other two in the group saw such diferent things to me. In our group discussions, I became aware how many diferent ways there are

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of seeing and was humbled by the realisation that I sufered a kind of blindness to what was around me. It forced me to question how much else of the world around me, of myself, of the social situations I found myself immersed in, was I not seeing? Within this daily exercise of seeing, and coupled with our group conversations, a surprising new intimacy with this garden I had previously so carelessly passed began to awaken. I confess that prior to this exercise I had hardly noticed the bed of succulents, and posit that perhaps, had someone destroyed the garden, I may not even have noticed; I certainly would have been unlikely to protest. But once I began to develop this more intimate relationship with these plants, I found myself caring deeply about the garden. This new seeing, which in turn fostered a deeper intimacy with my surroundings, opened up a new participatory relationship between me and the garden, and thus me and the world. My life was expanded. This newly found intimacy with the garden highlighted my previous alienation – my sense of separation and my lack of connection – not only from the garden but from so many aspects of my life. I saw how this lack of connection has profound consequences for each of us personally, as well as on a global scale: abstractions flourish, blindness obscures, exclusions expand, interventions proliferate and violence becomes easier to justify. One simple (though by no means easy) exercise generated a significant shift in the way I related to my world (and noticed how I did relate), and I was curious as to the impact of the exercises on other practitioners. It was not surprising to learn that these exercises in observation are foundational to this practice and have provided many people with profound moments of insight. These golden moments of seeing diferently change the quality of attention and consciousness we bring to our lives. They play a vital role in assisting practitioners develop an essential ‘faculty of seeing’, and as this faculty is developed, so also is the aspiration to take this same quality of observation to the social realm.

Rigour and discipline in the practice of seeing To develop this new faculty of seeing is no easy task. During the exercise of observing the succulents, I constantly found my attention drifting, and it took some self-discipline to overcome my inner resistance that manifests as restlessness and a desire to give up, to move away. We had been urged by the facilitators to ‘stay the course’, to deal with all the myriad ways our minds come up with to distract us from the challenge and discomfort of building a new habit, developing a new faculty.

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‘Trust the practice – but be rigorous in the practice’ – these words, spoken to me by a practitioner in Cape Town, proved to be sound advice. To stay the course, to face the challenge and discomfort the exercises evoked, did indeed require both diligence and a thorough and careful commitment from all of us. Without discipline, one would not develop this new faculty of seeing, and both the discipline and the faculty of seeing developed through the exercises are the skills one is then able to apply within the social field. And in the social field, it is even more rigorous, as Ana Paula said: It’s so hard, and it’s such disciplined work, because it requires skills to see and not judge, and to keep seeing when it’s hard to see, or even painful to see. Even when you develop the skills to see, then you also need new attitudes, to change habits in ourselves, and this is so hard. A few years after the exercise of seeing the succulents at Towerland I was at a sixday intensive workshop at Long Bay, New Zealand. Allan and Sue invited each person to find a place within easy stroll of the workshop room and we were told we’d visit it for 30 minutes each day, bringing a discipline and rigour to our seeing of that particular place. On day one we were asked to observe and be open to first impressions; the next day we observed the boundaries of the place, what’s living inside and outside what we perceived to be a boundary. For day three we observed colour; and then we were invited to see through our focal and peripheral faculties, opening ourselves to the broad perspective, and then focusing. We did the same with our listening faculties – what did we hear within the space, and then around it. On day four we noticed what is and isn’t changing in the place; and, finally, we ‘did a reversal’, where Allan and Sue asked us to shift from seeing the place, to instead allowing the impressions of the place to flow into us: ‘Can we make ourselves an empty vessel into which the place can flow?’ This last question is indicative of the phenomenological reversal, a move from purposeful observation to receptivity. This practice is not about the casual look, the quick or distracted gaze, a rapid interpretation or quick judgement. It is something completely diferent. The story illustrates systematic practice and a rigour that requires practice.

Seeing as an ‘intervention’ In Cape Town, I was sitting with Carly, founder of a successful NGO. While exploring some of her experiences in developing her organisation, she shared: 58

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There was a time I felt very stuck in relation to team relationships, but then I started observing myself and my practice, and also the team and the programme, and through this observation a shift started to occur as a result of ‘my seeing in a new way’. More seeing led to more understanding which in turn led to a diferent conversation . . . . This vignette takes us into the heart of how seeing and observation is linked to the elemental of working from the ‘inside out’ of a social process. When a problem presents itself, such as Carly’s recognition that all was not well among the team, the most common response is for practitioners to seek an intervention: change is wanted, so ‘something must be done’ – perhaps linked to a pre-determined ‘image’ (for example, a well-functioning team). As already said, within the polarity of observation and intervention, our world is currently strongly biased towards intervention, yet Carly’s experience demonstrates how the power of observation has the potential to bring about a gentle and organic transformation in and of itself, independent of any direct intervention. Think back to the earlier story of seeing the succulents. Here it seems that observation became a powerful intervention in that my attention to the succulents meant I fell in love with the garden, and because of that love I’d now be willing to fight for that garden. In this sense, the practice of observation was an intervention in the situation, shifting the relationship between myself and the garden, which in turn shifts the possible future. It is an example of an anticipatory practice grounded in an intimate and participatory relationship. This was true of my relationship with the garden, and Carly’s with her work team. In 2017 over a period of several months I applied this discipline of observation to a relationship that I’d been having difculty with for nearly a year. I’d been getting frustrated, wanting to change the person’s behaviour; at times I wanted to even scream and yell at them, as I perceived their attitudes to be abysmal. However, over the months I purposefully resisted giving any advice, straight or subtle. I paid attention to them, but mainly discovered that this attention sharpened awareness of the myriad feelings, thoughts, judgements and interpretations that were flowing through me. This attention and awareness shaped a new way of me behaving towards this person – being more gracious (after all, I might have my interpretations and judgements profoundly wrong). In turn, I found myself simply taking responsibility for my own attitudes and behaviour in relationship to this person. And over some months, something began to shift. Subtle, yet profound – healing seemed to become present in our relationship, and lightness returned. Not perfect, not how I wanted it to be (my image of a future), and yet movement. It certainly felt as though the practice of observation was an intervention into this relationship. 59

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Observing as intervention is the counter practice to instrumental action. To observe a phenomenon carefully is to be transformed in our own attitude, which in turn transforms the phenomenon. Physics has known this since the quantum revolution, recognising that observation of a phenomenon actually changes the phenomenon, admitting that any observer is entangled with the system being observed.6

Enabling everyone to see Another important dimension of ‘seeing’ has to do with enabling everyone to see. It’s not just about the practitioner building their observational muscles and seeing in a diferent way but inviting others in a social and ecological process to also see diferently. As such, it’s to move the practice from our own faculty of observation towards the invitation, or responsibility even, for others to see themselves or the situation they’re in more clearly. Some of the work is then to design processes that enable people to see, rather than a practitioner steeped in this practice sharing what they’re seeing. In my own practice one of the things I’ve noticed is the importance of discerning when it might be useful to share what’s being noticed as a practitioner, and when to withhold that seeing – and instead support others to see for themselves (while also acknowledging afresh the multiple noticings). In a similar fashion, Pilar shares how: Sometimes we tell others what we see, but our job is to help people to see for themselves. It doesn’t work to have a situation defined by what I see. So, when a group sees more of itself it can see more options. My job in the social field is to bring conversations or exercises to help people see, so they can choose what to do. Flora, in Sao Paulo, spoke of ‘our role [being] to help the elements see what is happening’. Her words again sharpen our sense of purpose in this practice. Not seeing for the sake of it. Not seeing as only an act of self-exploration or self-discovery (recognising that it is that too). But seeing, such that we can enable a thing to become more of itself, through others – participants in the social process – seeing for themselves what they’re creating. A key part of the purpose of this is for people to become more conscious of what they’re creating, and perhaps deciding otherwise, because imagination and consciousness demand ethical deftness too.7 Veronica, a practitioner working with peasant farmers in the dry, arid regions of north-eastern Brazil, saw first-hand how a process that focused on enabling a group 60

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of people to truly see a group of farmers at the heart of a social dilemma (in this case, families of farmers struggling with little water) shifted everything. Within the story, the collective seeing gave those farmers the means to see their own role and place more clearly within their story, which in turn had a profound efect in enlivening, empowering and enthusing not only the farmers, but everyone involved in the process. Rather than simply focusing on finding a solution to the problem of poor soil, lack of water, water storage and so on, a four-phase workshop was ofered which invited a collective exploration of the natural elements, the history of the farmers, their relationship to the social fabric of which they were a part and, finally but certainly not least, the narrative thread of the farmers – the characteristics that made them unique. At the end of each phase, those participating were invited to share their experience through drawing, or poetry, or story. According to Veronica, through the process of these activities, the lethargy, the reluctance and the resistance so present at the beginning gave way to something much more energetic and more enlivened: having done the activities, people were much happier; everyone was moved, especially the families. The feedback we gave them was so rich – it was not just about a water tank, or the plants. It was much more precious and sacred. We allowed them to express their lives with every point of reference. And it was this [phenomenological] approach that allowed us to get there, and it is amazing to see – to see an amazing life in front of us. This story is a potent one, showing as it does the importance of creating a context and a process which facilitates collective deep seeing. Penetrating to the heart of what is often thought of as ‘development work’ – a key social practice – Veronica explains further: This approach has a way of looking at a being and seeing what that being is; it’s about understanding the flow of life, the intelligence behind every living thing. If we can ‘get’ what moves this family, see what ‘makes them tick’, what makes them unique, what makes them act in the world, then we are in the heart of development. It is about seeing the human when so many people are looking only at the economic. As a result of having been ‘seen’ in this way, this family will dream, and change becomes possible. Just as a plant is afected by its environment and the conditions surrounding it, so it is a given that the possible change evoked for these farmers through such a 61

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process cannot happen in isolation – policies and supportive mechanisms need also to be in place to support such change. But that new dreaming can even become a possibility – which is perhaps the key to so-called social development – which makes this practice precious indeed.

Listening as a form of observation Listening is another primary faculty that is intertwined with observing well, perhaps two sides of the same coin. It assists in assimilating information and making meaning of our world; and learning to listen is part of this observational practice. Tanya Lane’s introduction to the importance of listening had far-reaching efects on her practice, as she shared this story: I knew we needed evaluation . . . . I was introduced to Sue Soal, who has worked closely with Allan. That first evaluation was profound . . . I thought Sue would come and teach us to write case studies, but instead she taught us listening skills, and this was radical for us – listening for feelings and intentions. This challenged my management practice radically – I learned that I ofended and didn’t listen well. This evaluation unlocked me from my role as ‘task master’, and it developed a new quality of listening in the leadership team, and these new practices built a team. The quality of listening we bring is crucial; it is this ability to listen beyond the words to the feelings, and then deeper still to the intentions that has the potential to bring about significant change in a person, a group, a community and an organisation. A week before my departure on this sabbatical search, I attended the biennial Queensland Community Development Conference, and found myself sitting next to Aunty Penny, a representative from an Indigenous Council of Elders. Amid several hundred people gathering around the food tables at lunchtime, I noticed her watching a butterfly fluttering above the group. She told me she had been aware of it all morning and was trying to listen to it. In that statement, she challenged me to a whole new level of listening – to the practice of ‘deep listening’ or dadirri8 so embedded within First Nations’ worldviews. She challenged me to not just listen to the obvious sounds around me – the words people said, or the things revealed easily by a place – but also to the unspoken words, to mystery and mood, to the

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song of people’s hearts, to what in them is dreaming of becoming. You might say, ‘the invisible’. Discovering how to listen deeply to people’s intentions and the invisible is part of the journey into this practice, and it requires being present, open and rigorous. On the journey of this inquiry I have been a part of numerous exercises that Allan and Sue have introduced – some of them profound and all purposeful. Often, I have sat in groups of four with one person telling a story about themselves – perhaps a story of their ‘daily practice’ (what they do each day, not what they say or think they do), or an account of ‘what they’ve said no to in life’. The other three have listened, but in diferent ways. As explained in Essay 2, this way of listening, for facts, feelings and intention can be potent and revealing with new insights for the storyteller. It seems that this kind of listening can penetrate past the thin veil of the surface of life, to somehow hear, and then present back to the storyteller, something new, fresh and alive to what is the deeper river in their life. It overlaps with some of the previous exercises, because this listening also helps people see themselves. It’s also potentially ‘listening as an intervention’, much like observation.

Attention Sustained observation and deep listening both require focused attention, and the type of discipline which allows one to see beyond the casual gaze to what is hidden – and to hear a butterfly in a hall filled with hundreds of people. Conscious of the political economy of attention, we are aware that many forces and agents compete for our attention. However, through discipline, one’s power of concentration develops; one grows the capacity to stay focused and not allow the ‘monkey-mind’ or ‘moneymakers’ (advertisers) distract from the situation at hand. As with seeing and listening, the quality of the attention we bring is crucial. It is also hard work. As Tamara said, ‘Our challenge is to create spaces to jump into a willingness to pay attention. It is much easier not to pay attention.’ Remember back to observing succulents over six days, or looking at a tree daily, or coming to a group without pre-judgement, being open and attentive to ‘what is’. It’s hard work. Resisting the seduction of constant communication and multi-tasking in favour of slowing down and paying attention does require a certain discipline and commitment. Attention is a two-way process. In the same way that paying deep attention can be life-changing to the observer, so too, being paid attention to, in the way a

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seasoned practitioner can attend, is also a life-changing experience. Carly spoke of her direct experience of this: ‘Over the years Sue [Davidof] has helped me see myself through her attentiveness – her feeding back of what she was seeing. And I do that with my co-workers now, and the more I see, the more I love them.’ Given that the majority of people view others, as well as life’s circumstances, through the filters of conditioning and personal preferences, it follows then, that we, too, have been observed in like manner, and so it is no surprise that most of us have difculty seeing ourselves in all our complexity and depth. So, when someone with the skill and depth of practice such as Sue reflects back what is seen, a powerful process of transformation can be set in motion. Developing these faculties of seeing, deep listening and focused attention also allows practitioners to see beyond the obvious to what might be invisible or hidden – to see the shadow side of a situation, such that consciousness can expand. Gu spoke of this, explaining that ‘I pay attention to what my clients are saying, as well as to what they want to ignore, and in this, something more becomes visible.’ So, it’s not only about helping people ‘see’, but seeing what they’re unable or unwilling to see. As Tamara discovered through the Artists of the Invisible programme, ‘nothing is as it seems to be’. This is crucial and, in some ways, indicates that the practice can be disruptive in people’s lives. Deep listening reveals the unexpected, the hidden, this shadow consciousness. After all, we all have blind spots which, by definition, we cannot see. _________________________________________ In summary, observation and listening, attention and being present – these are in some ways separate bounded practices. Each needs to be honed, hence discussions on each. Yet, clearly, they’re also explicate practices of an implicate whole, to use David Bohm’s term9 again – they are deeply enfolded within one another, and there are porous boundaries between them. To listen is to observe and viceversa, and to give attention is to be present, as is presencing a practice of profound attention. Practising each of the practices is an important part of discovering a new set of habits in the world – to avoid the easy distraction, to guard against the lure of multi-tasking, to overcome the tiredness that lets one drift. The discovery comes with a radical responsibility not to drift into unconsciousness-sleep – and a graciousness, too, when we fall asleep. 64

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Seeing the invisible For many practitioners, their first encounter with this practice was through either attending a workshop with Allan and Sue or reading the book Artists of the Invisible. This idea of ‘the invisible’ is crucial in this practice, and my focus here is to explore the multiple interpretations of this notion of seeing and working with the invisible. I summarise two key traces of thought. The first is creating space for ‘an arising image’ to become apparent. This kind of thinking is represented in my conversation with Arnaldo, who is deeply influenced by Carl Jung and the soul tradition of James Hillman, and his reflections about ‘image’ are indicative of this. Many people had things to say about the work of the invisible and an ‘arising image’. The second is Goethe’s scientific method of ‘exact sensory imagination’ as a way of observing a dynamic flow of movement; a method adopted by Allan and Sue is to observe the often-invisible flow of movement within phenomenological perception. Starting with the first trace, Arnaldo shared some pertinent thoughts: ‘In the Jungian world, we have this idea of symbolic expression – and synchronicity too: these are about the relationships between the invisible and what is visible. The symbolic approach is about seeing something beyond first appearances.’ He then added, focusing on the social field, ‘We need to see what image a group might develop to see what is going on, and the image can help a group see itself.’ He explained what in practice this entails: When we ofer programmes [with groups, communities and organisations] we bring questions and create an atmosphere to facilitate an image to arise, and then we create the space for conversation, which is important. But as I see it, the most important part of our job is building a space for an image to appear. Elements of the next interlude on ‘seeing’ Sao Paulo, Amsterdam and Berlin were about trying to discern an image arising – something beyond the seeing of bits and pieces. Arnaldo moves between his psychological and social practice, arguing that this image arising enables a seeing of the invisible, or at least enough of a seeing, or multiple seeings, to trigger a rich conversation which then further enriches people’s seeing. Building on our earlier discussion, the practitioner is holding two processes or purposes at work here – first, the practitioners’ capability and sensibility to ‘see the invisible’, and second, building, or nurturing, the capability of people in groups, communities, organisations and social movements to ‘see the invisible’. 65

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Exact sensorial imagination Turning to the second trace, Goethe also speaks of two processes to see ‘the invisible’ – ‘careful observation’ and ‘exact sensory imagination’.10 Undine described it in the following way: ‘With Goethe you look, look, look – see many pieces, and then look again, and you see relationships between; and you keep looking and suddenly a picture emerges.’ She went on to say the heart of the practice is ‘observation, which is tangible – and imagination’. But as the term ‘exact sensory imagination’ implies, this is not imagination as fantasy, but imagination as an enabling faculty to perceive connections between parts, and therefore directly related to what is being observed. There is a very simple yet powerful wisdom about the practice. We have talked of ‘seeing’ with all our senses, and the ‘art of seeing the invisible’, and above Undine gives her explanation of the process to do that – the seeing and seeing again, the seeing of patterns or connections and then, finally, the arising of a ‘picture’. Anticipating my attempts to see efcient Yeronga Village in Brisbane,11 even patriarchy12 as an activity of ‘coming-into-being’ – these attempts include holding both curious rigorous observation and intuitive creative imagination. Stretching further into how one can see the invisible within the social field, Eduardo gave a helpful example: ‘For example, you might say to me, “Eduardo, you look tired”, and what you have seen is not measurable quantitatively, but it is something of quality that you have observed, something invisible.’ Of course, we test the accuracy of the observation through conversation. We would ask, ‘Are you feeling as tired as you look?’ Eduardo goes on to say, ‘Impression is a useful word; to say, “I have the impression . . .”, which brings together observation with interpretation, yet it contains a sense of uncertainty, humility almost. Impression is something deeper than just observing.’ It’s a helpful idea and anticipating the observational stories of the next interlude and later essays, we could say I had impressions of Berlin, Yeronga and so forth. In a world where ‘knowing’ is favoured over ‘not-knowing’, the uncertainty, the not-knowing, that Eduardo speaks of, is important. A cultural norm of being sure, of knowing things, socialised since childhood, is counter-productive in this practice. It keeps us fixed in our learned beliefs and prejudices – static, solid, settled – and hinders us from being truly present and available to what is moving in the moment. Not knowing doesn’t mean getting stuck, nor does it mean ignorance; it means that any action taken is infused with the humility of both trying to understand and yet not-knowing, of being true to a good impression, or interpretation,

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knowing that there could also be a better one; and also an awareness of an unfolding process – that what is true right now might not be in the next moment.

Fidelity to the actual A key element of this observational and imaginative work includes foregrounding experience over theory and concepts, and also the importance that observation precedes imagination. Sometimes practitioners needed reminding of this through a regularly repeated saying: ‘fidelity to the actual’ – which for Sue Soal meant: ‘the “done deed”. . . experience must lead the way in this work. Concepts follow experience – we go in, and then we give “it” a concept, and then disassemble back to reality.’ As already said, the use of imagination in this phenomenological reflective practice – to see the invisible – is not about imagination as fantasy, but imagination as a faculty of seeing an image arise from seeing the parts and patterns of connection, the movement that is not seen, but can be discerned as at play in the ever-moving world. Yet, as we have previously highlighted, the imaginative capacity is predicated on accurate seeing. This is where the phrase ‘fidelity to the actual’ serves as practice wisdom. It reminds us to keep coming back to the phenomenon, to keep seeing, recognise when interpretations arise, but to then look again – to penetrate to the ‘actual’ and not to let imagination wander too loosely, to not see what we want to see, or prefer to see or defer to our feelings. The saying also serves as a reminder of the importance to keep coming back to actual experience, or experiencing, and to avoid the uses of imagination disconnected from observation. When theory and concepts take the lead, or the capacity to bracket theory is underdeveloped, the capability for seeing is clouded by abstractions and preconceptions.

From seeing the natural to seeing the social A common challenge for many practitioners was learning how to bring the same practice and rigour they applied to seeing and sensing the natural world to the very diferent complexities of the social realm. In my explorations with practitioners from all parts of the world, it became apparent that there were several key steps involved in making this shift.

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Acknowledging the complexity of the social To shift from seeing a tree as a thing to perceiving it as both a process and as part of a larger ecological context is relatively easy to grasp. To see a particular person in this way is also not too difcult; through deep listening, observation and conversation a person’s story starts to come alive, and their place in the wider context of their life becomes visible. However, to see a group, a community, organisation or social movement requires more rigour, given the multi-layered complexity of history, culture, systems, relationships and so on. So, what emerged as a first step was simply the need to acknowledge this complexity. Seeing and humility: questioning what is seen The awareness that we, as practitioners, can also never step outside of the social because we are an integral part of it, and therefore constantly afecting and being afected by it, means it invites us to constantly question what it is we are seeing. What we see is determined in so many ways by our own personal and cultural history. Pilar spoke to this when she said: When I am observing nature – when we do the exercises to see movement – for me, it is very abstract and also very concrete at the same time. The only thing I can do is trust what I am seeing, while also questioning what I am seeing. When I transfer this way of seeing to social processes, I know all I can see is a moment – a moment which at the same time holds all of my past. So I believe what I see, but question what I see, because what I see is deeply related to what I am; everything I believe afects what I see in that moment. There is always this dance in the moment. Understanding this relationship between ‘seeing’ and the ‘source’ (‘me’) raises the issue of responsibility which practitioners carry – to ‘see’ while not allowing personal history and preferences and prejudices to completely colour or colonise interpretations. Although this is not something easily achieved, there are ways of facilitating this. For Rubert, the act of pausing, of not rushing in with interpretations and solutions, was one such way, and he explains how: I withhold the interpretations my mind is coming up with; in this way, I can take in more and more, and allow conversations to happen and stories 68

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to unfold. This is not always comfortable, as we live in a world that wants an answer straight after a question. Paula expressed it slightly diferently: ‘I try to be open to what is in front of me. I struggle to stay present to the phenomenon, and not jump to ideas or metaphor as a way of parcelling things up.’ Tamara also spoke to this, when she said, ‘Normally we mix observation and interpreting or drawing conclusions, and we tend to interpret or conclude too quickly, and this lies at the heart of all social problems.’ Humility is a crucial personal quality of this practice, to ‘not jump’, or hold of on quick interpretation. To acknowledge we might well have it wrong, to be comfortable not having an answer. The humanity and humility sit alongside the rigour. Uncertainty and paradox When experiencing the complexity of shifting to the social, uncertainty and paradox become particularly apparent. For example, Ana shared how: Translating this practice from the ecological and personal to the social is both simple and elusive. In truth, the social process is not in your hands. In nature, it’s the tree – you can see the tree and walk away. In the personal, it is only you. But the social is much more complex. Firstly, you are inside it, part of it, yet at the same time you are outside, looking in, so there is a duality at work, and it is very hard to be inside and outside. When I am in a process, I see things and it’s clear, but a second later it’s gone and things are no longer clear. Holding this duality and uncertainty is scary for the practitioner and the community. This is one of the challenges of the practice in society now – yet the social context demands certainty – it cannot tolerate duality. What was right yesterday is no longer right today, and what is right now, will not be right tomorrow because something has changed – this is the nature of life. Ana is highlighting a set of paradoxes, for example, it’s ‘simple’ and yet ‘elusive’. It’s simple in the sense that you ‘see’ something – because you have been observing carefully, and you have cultivated the faculty of seeing the formation processes in a group – the invisible. Yet it is also elusive, because not only can you not be sure of what you have seen, but also because you are inside the social process and so cannot actually step outside objectively and see it. You are looking 69

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in, but are in as well, ‘sitting on the rim’ to use a phrase of Allan’s. After all, you cannot really bracket the ego or put aside the lenses of colouring and colonising prejudices. And, here is the crux of Ana’s insight – that because the practitioner is alive, and the key characteristics of aliveness are the moment and movement, then what we see might have been true, but things might also have changed already (in a moment). Hence, she names another paradox at play – of bringing something that we see into a situation – the conversation, the workshop, with the belief of its possible accuracy (otherwise why bring it at all), yet also with an uncertainty – that humility again. On the rim of the past and present – archives and social movements This coming back to the actual, fidelity – to seeing the invisible – is not only about seeing social dynamics or social gestures. It includes exploring histories, doing re-search. And, of course, such histories translate into the current social gesture, the past shaping the present in ways that either remain unconscious or can be made conscious. I always remember reading one of Rebecca Solnit’s earlier works where she unpacks the ‘invisible as atrocity’ – both the history of the Nevada nuclear test sites and also the invisibility of the historical and on-going violence against First Nation people at the Yosemite National Park.13 Social movements such as socialism, feminism and, now, intersectionality and critical race studies are phenomena that have illuminated the previously rendered invisible – oppressions, exclusions and violence that was unseen (by the mainstream, albeit felt by marginal bodies). To be an artist of the invisible is to be attuned to what such social movements have made visible. Hence, this phenomenological reflective practice isn’t just attentive to the present, the moment, but the present as shaped by the past. It’s interested in the story, the becoming, which is the coming-into-being of the now, linked to the past. Sometimes this work is archival, historical, haunting. I suspect that it’s an aliveness to the present, wanting to ‘see’ what’s really going on, that insists on such archival work, re-search and connecting with collective social movements. I will explore more of what this means in practice in Essay 7, but some things worth mentioning here are that this movement between the historical and the present, this edge between the now and what’s haunting (lines of oppression, violence and exclusions) is to sit on yet another rim, looking not only in on a group, community and organisation, while being aware of the self looking in – but also a rim of the present and the past. The phenomenological element is not only about a deep living desire 70

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to see how the past haunts and shapes the present but includes being present to the appearing of the past in the present.

A rhythm of reflection For many, alongside observation, group conversation and reflection is a second heart-beat of the work. For Sue Soal, this was certainly true, and her passion was that organisations and practitioners develop a ‘rhythm of reflection’. Without reflection, people simply will not see, or will leap into quick interpretations without questioning their concepts and perceptions. Certainly, invisible histories of oppression rarely surface through solitary introspection. Sue feels that without this dedication to collective reflection, we cannot truly be in the practice, or sensitive to our own practice and the shifts required as living social processes change. She certainly emphasised the importance of doing this reflection with others. Paula, too, strongly believed in the need for reflection: It’s about creating space for reflection, so you are observing your practice within a team, within an organisation. Crucial is this creating of space with a team for reflection. And about reflecting and observing ourselves, seeing ourselves – ‘how was I in it?’ Wilna, in Pretoria, felt that ‘overall, this is all about creating space to reflect’ and she was full of stories about her eforts to bring reflection to the centre of her own life and work (and she purposefully does not separate the two). She also shared how – as a senior leader in the NGO she is part of – a culture of reflection is encouraged, so much so that the organisation puts aside two sets of three-day organisational retreats per year, one day per month for reflection, plus 2–3 hours every Friday morning. In addition to this, she ofers staf members paid personal retreats every year, and invites them to journal daily. In our encounter, she shared many exercises used to enable reflection, and particularly emphasised the non-didactic nature of these processes, foregrounding the experiential and conversational approach embedded within the organisation. She sees the workplace as a ‘reflection and ownership space’ and said that this reflection served to ‘really keep the culture alive; to keep thinking critically, feeling deeply and reflecting with discernment. . .’. For Juliana, reflection was also key to this practice: ‘The place to reflect and learn is what diferentiates this practice from other practices around us. It’s a reflection about the work, and also me in the practice – and it is the latter which is so important.’ 71

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Elaborating on the importance of reflecting on herself in the practice, Juliana went on to speak about how deep personal reflection creates a movement towards deep honesty. For Paula, the importance of the type of deep reflection used in this practice is that it moves beyond the impersonal and fosters a deep appreciation and valuing of the individual or community at the heart of the story. This means the reflection process is not just about critique aimed at improving the practice, but rather there is an emphasis on appreciating and valuing the person and the practice, the story and the social process. For Lungisa, ‘to see what is emerging we need to slow down and reflect and develop greater awareness’. The space for reflection is crucial in allowing the pause, the momentary ‘withholding’ that Rubert spoke of. It allows, also, the space to see what is emerging, and to make meaning of this. It also seems most beneficial when these ‘rhythms of reflection’ are group processes, rather than individual, drawing on the potentiality of seeing more clearly, from many perspectives.

Yet . . . There are so many excuses to not pause, slow down and reflect, and even if some solo time is made, rarely do organisations now invest in group reflection. In recent years as a social consultant I am constantly dumbfounded – yes, literally rendered dumb, or numb actually – by the (unconscious) eforts not to reflect. There’s a lip service, but not an investment. It reminds me of a mantra of my dear friend and colleague Anthony Kelly: ‘Never underestimate people’s commitment to chaos’ (a chaos born of hasty addictive action). I am still curious about whether this is to do with the new post-human era in which people, almost cyborgs, are addicted to the technologies of attention, always now connected, communicating, always in motion. Or whether it’s more to do with the social-policy context, now globalising in its panopticon of control, measuring, key performance indicators and audits. There appears to be less and less space, and as I have moved across worlds, the more efcient a society is, the less interest and aptitude for reflection there is. A deep desire, yet an inertia. Perhaps a final provocation to the reader is to observe just how much reflection time is put aside in your personal and organisational life.

In conclusion Some time ago I joined with my two Brisbane colleagues and friends – Gerard and Ginny – to participate in our regular reflective practice day. As part of this 72

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gathering we’d asked Ginny to bring a plant that we could observe, and a gorgeous orchid was put in the centre of the room. We gave ourselves time to each observe for facts – what did we actually see and sense? Not the abstract idea or name ‘orchid’, but the actual – the five, large, leaflike structures, the stem, buds, colours, textures, even scent. Then we discussed what we’d seen and returned to silently observing again. This time we observed through the lens of polarities – what was growing, what was decaying; which parts were being pulled down by gravity and which parts were reaching up, experiencing levity; what of the centre and the periphery, and so forth. Again, we discussed what we’d seen. I can still see that orchid in my memory. I could almost draw it. But the main point is that several years after Allan and Sue had first asked me to observe in this way, I still anticipate how enlivening it will be. All my attention, observation, listening (to Gerard and Ginny), use of imagination – to not see the orchid as a thing, but living process and activity – would bring the orchid, myself and the three of us to a place of concentrated aliveness. The whole exercise feels like a kind of homeopathic practice, distilling the best of us as human beings, as inter-being perhaps. In turn, what would it mean to come to each encounter with another person with such discipline along with anticipation and embodied knowing? What would it mean to come to a meeting at work, a workshop we’re facilitating or an evaluation we’re conducting? It really is all about practising the practice, which invites practising each of the experiments and exercises discussed in this essay, making them consciously present, such that we are truly enlivened and enlivening. It’s to develop that faculty of observation, to stretch the observational muscles, ever aware that you ‘lose it if you don’t use it’.

Notes 1 David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980). 2 Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 24. 3 Barfield, Saving the Appearances, 137. 4 Craig Holdrege, Thinking Like a Plant: A Living Science for Life. (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books, 2013). 5 Barfield, Saving the Appearances, 146. 6 See Carlo Rovelli, Helgoland, (Dublin: Allen Lane, 2020).

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The elementals of the practice  7 Barfield, Saving the Appearances, 161. Owen Barfield argues that as we develop the field of systematic imagination, we also need to consider the ‘morality of imagination’ carefully, something he describes as being in ‘tender infancy’. 8 See https://www.miriamrosefoundation.org.au/dadirri 9 Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order. 10 Goethe, The Metamorphosis of Plants, 108. 11 For the full story of seeing Yeronga, Brisbane refer to Essay 6. 12 See Essay 7 for my exploration of ‘patriarchy’. 13 I was reminded of this in a recent reading of Rebecca Solnit’s, Recollections of My Non-existence, (London: Granta, 2020), a mind-blowing memoir.

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Elemental Two – working with aliveness

The first observational exercise I did under the tutelage of Allan and Sue involved wandering outside, noticing a plant I was drawn to and then spending 30 minutes observing and writing about everything that was seen. Over a decade later, I can still conjure up a picture of that plant in my mind (surely not accurately), yet the enduring memory is of noticing life and death, growth and decay, levity and gravity. However, I also remember foregrounding life – usually manifest in a supple, moist, upwards oriented part of the plant. But after some time I also started noticing how even where life seemed most apparent (an upwards growing, moist, supple leaf, for example), often, right on the edge was also a sign of decay. A brown, brittle, somewhat rigid element. I started to notice life and death seemed much closer than I originally imagined. Recalling this memory, only today (as I was writing this), I walked briskly through the forest near my home.1 With a fresh perspective I noticed again how it’s easy to see and celebrate the life that is flourishing. Yet this life is only made manifest and possible in relation to the constant death and decay that re-makes the forest. Dying and decaying trees and branches, fallen vines and leaf-matter, disintegrating palm fronds, all in and of themselves vast habitats for life, but also – in their decay – creating the conditions for new life. Importantly, the flourishing fungi are visible when I look closely, and significantly are the transformers of death to life, breaking down all that fallen matter into nutrients feeding life. Death and life together, fully entwined within one another. This ecologically oriented phenomenological reality then sparks my memory of Steven Jenkinson’s meditations on accompanying people in their dying days – that life requires an anticipatory befriending of death – and in that befriending, a growing recognition and gratefulness can arise that acknowledges the fact that

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-8

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our deaths serve a greater whole of life. This is to be human – to live and die, and in that dying, serve a greater life. The great cycle of life and death, intertwined. Connecting the two, life and death, is love and grief – the latter being a kind of skilfulness of surrender – to be in alignment with the generative formative phenomenological unfolding all around and within us. And this makes us love our lives, others and the world we are a-part of all the more.

A search for the quality of aliveness Despite the intertwining of life and death, growth and decay, in my own search to understand this practice, the meaning of ‘aliveness’ is something I have been constantly grappling with, always questioning what it means to be truly alive, and what it means to see ‘living social process’ – what does that look and feel like? I return to Christopher Alexander’s wisdom, signposted in Essay 3, who urged that ‘to seek the timeless way we must first know the quality without a name’.2 In that sense, aliveness can hardly be explained or defined – its meaning remains somewhat opaque – yet it’s a quality, a phenomenon we sense, experience and notice its efect. As such, we can feel it within ourselves. Perhaps it’s experienced when we step into a building that has some quality that enlivens us – a structural form that supports life; or when we’re part of a group whereby a living conversation arrives; or when we’re on the threshold of entering a wilderness pulsating with the cacophony of life. Who knows what it is for each person? Yet it’s discernible, even if it is ‘without a name’. This is crucial to understand, for while it’s impossible to ‘see’ life itself – albeit we see and hear the efects of life all around us and sense form that enables life – we experience life seeking to connect with life, and we experience the efects of life within ourselves. In many ways, noticing the efects is a life-long journey, and diferent for every person – yet I’d dare to suggest that while invisible to the eye, life is experienced in its most profound efect when we are being awake and present in the moment. It’s both something from within – connected to the life-force within and in the encounter with other (a morning dawn, a person, a conversation, a building, a group). It’s un-nameable, yet manifest, and like anything that is enfolded in polarity, it’s perhaps felt more in either its absence, experienced as the ennui that threatens to engulf the soul when we do not feel the efects of life – or when close to death itself. This question of life is not simply an emerging question, but the question of ultimate concern. Again, I am reminded of Christopher Alexander’s words: 76

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The search that we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person’s story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive.3 Central to my search for answers to these questions was the importance of constantly checking in with myself whether I was awake and ‘alive’ to whatever circumstance I found myself in, or whether I had fallen into ‘sleep’ by shutting down in some way. Remembering both those opening stories of Essay 2 and Arnaldo’s early prompt, I maintained the question ‘Am I in a living relationship with the phenomenon?’ Interestingly, through such a question, I found, as I journeyed through my sabbatical time, that I started to feel more alive. This feeling of greater aliveness found expression in several diferent ways. A kind of playfulness started to re-emerge in my life – playfulness with others, in nature and even in my work. I found that I wanted to play with the children who were around me, with the dogs too, in the waves on the beach! I felt an innocent lightness return – not the ‘unbearable lightness’ Milan Kundera talks of (a land of kitsch) but instead a deep lightness of soul. I was falling in love with life again. I remember a hot and humid day spent walking in Sao Paulo; a heavy storm that had been threatening the entire day arrived just as I stepped through the front gate of my hosts’ home. Instead of racing for cover as I would normally have done, I was overcome with a sense of utter awe for the rain, and stood in the torrent of rain, loving it, loving becoming utterly drenched.4 To sense that feeling of wonder appears to be of significance, a profound gratefulness for all of life. The more I fell in love with life and all it holds, so a new feeling of generosity expanded my heart. I wanted to give and giving gave me joy. And when I felt the tightness or slight resistance that signified lack of generosity on my part, I felt, just slightly, something within me dying again. I also found myself less inhibited and hesitant. The heat, the costumes, the colour, the music, the rhythm of samba and a city alive with passion caught me up in the flow of Eros as I joined thousands of revellers in the Sao Paulo carnival; I abandoned myself to the sheer joy of it, and I danced and danced, and kept on dancing – alive and in love with this world.

Holding the moment and movement While in Brazil I spent time at Tombi beach, near Sao Paulo, with Fabi, who leads four-day body-surfing programmes with groups of people, using their actions and 77

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attitudes in the surf to reflect on other areas of their lives. Here I also spent many hours in the water, increasingly playful and wonderfully alive as I found my own rhythm and flow in the living movement and power of the ocean. Strangely though, in the midst of this joy, there were also times when a deep and painful grief also surfaced in me. Rather than moving to avoid this pain as I might have in the past, I found myself able to remain present in it – to welcome it even – as a valid and soulful aspect of my living presence as it unfolds, moment to moment. This ability to hold the moment and movement more easily, as a polarity between joy and grief, was another important shift that happened naturally for me. Joy and grief, certainty and uncertainty, playfulness and seriousness – I was learning to hold it all without needing to avoid one in favour the other. I found, also, I could hold ideas more lightly, even while letting those ideas go. Rather than always reaching for certainty, this holding and letting go was a more organic, attuned way of thinking and living. I found myself content, and at peace with my life, while at the same time holding a quiet curiosity about my own potential for newness, expansion, for adventure, for what I might still become. In this new-found contentment and acceptance of circumstances and situations as they were, I found myself more trusting, more relaxed, more able to meet situations as they were, rather than wilfully trying to force them to fit my ideas of what they should be. For instance, a knee injury meant the loss of my much-enjoyed daily running routine, but instead of bemoaning this loss, I found myself appreciating the greater depth of ‘seeing’ walking at a slower pace allowed me. Through this practice of ‘seeing’, of paying deep attention, I was surprised at how long-held defences softened. I found myself being more attentive, and true, to my own inner responses, to the living processes that are ever changing and don’t need to be clung to, settled, ossified, stuck.

The afect of wonder – ‘to touch the whole’ Yet it goes further than this wakefulness to the moment and movement, because to participate in, and get into a relationship with life is to get into a relationship with movement, process, presence, adaptive being, which seems to also produce a particular afect – a sense of wonder. I am reminded of a conversation at a Long Bay workshop as one of the participants shared her experience of being a member of a choir. For her, choir practice consisted of the arrival of people and starting with individual warm-up; then each group warms up – the soprano, tenor, bass and so on – and then there is the practice of the choir as a whole in some kind of flow. In 78

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that space, each singer has to be singing wholeheartedly while listening carefully to others. To be in a choir that is overflowing with splendour is to feel the wonder, made present by the parts in relationship making a whole. To experience a choir like this is to ‘touch the whole’. It’s true too in our personal practice – to be in relationship with aliveness is to be brought to the edge of your chair – in joy and grief, fast and slow, aware of this flow between diferent parts that is indicative of the living whole.

But what of the subjective? But if this is so – that all is in movement and we are holding these moments – then what about our moods, and how might these subjective states influence what we see? What of those feelings of generosity and joy, the desire to dance and play, the sense of wonder and grief that I described above? If ‘we’ are not separate from the practice, how then can we claim rigour in our noticing, for the noticing is always influenced by the ‘we’? In relation to this, one surprising discovery for me was how the very act of paying attention to what I was feeling, my moods – really paying attention – had the power to shift my mood completely. The rigour of attention brings us into living relationship with where we are moodily at, essential for an authentic conscious practice. I recall a particular day in Cape Town, when, feeling somewhat melancholic, I wandered down to the tidal pool at Kalk Bay. I was surrounded by exquisite natural beauty; the place burst with colour and movement – the waves, the birds, even a school of dolphins and a cormorant weaving like a missile between the shore rocks, not to mention the people playing in the pool of bracing, cold water. But my bleak mood left me immune to it – it all looked black and white to me. Making an efort to stay aligned with this practice – to be present to my surroundings – I opened my notepad and started drawing. I drew what I saw: the outline of the mountains in the distance and the two piers with the small lighthouses perched at the ends; I drew the edges of the tidal pool in front of me, with the rocks surrounding it. As I paid attention to the details of my surroundings, to seeing the space I was in truly, I moved from the self to the world, and the world revealed to me – made manifest – was beautiful. My bleak mood lifted, and I was filled with a sense of relief, and gratitude, that on this occasion I had responded to the nudge of the soul to take out my pencil and draw, and it felt good – simply, wonderfully good. In this seeing, and then the lifting – certainly not inevitable – is an authentic space, and this is the space of necessity. Honest, edgy, real. It’s really all that is. 79

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To discern aliveness in the social field For many of the practitioners encountered in this research, this sense of, and search for aliveness is what most strongly attracted them to this practice. In the potent words of Ana, in Sao Paulo: When I got in contact with this practice, what got me was the aliveness and life. This is what really made sense to me. I couldn’t say before – I didn’t have a language but then I saw that the world was becoming mechanical and that’s how we choose to live and organise our lives. It wasn’t making sense – how did humanity come to this? Then I realised we’re oriented away from life and towards this mechanical world. It was this ‘enlivenment approach’,5 as Andreas Weber calls it, which seemed to have made the most powerful impact on Ana, who went on to reflect on this elemental of aliveness in relation to working in a social space: Aliveness is the aspect that holds the whole practice. This practice and all the bits are held in this idea of aliveness. Because it’s not for example about poverty, or rich and poor, or not having, or having, or access or not. It’s more complex than this. Social change or development cannot be solved from outside, or be taught even. It’s something that has to be nurtured, or grown, from within. So, in this practice you go into a community and you don’t see poverty, you see so many things – so many diferent aspects of that community and then you see where there is life, and you see things that are rich in that place, what people have . . . . As a phenomenological practitioner we work from this space of life, where people are already in movement and there is some inkling of momentum. In a sense Ana is giving some crucial clues. How to cultivate a relationship with life ourselves as practitioners – for what we do not ‘know’ within ourselves will be impossible to see and sense elsewhere; and then the correlate, how to discern such aliveness made manifest in social and ecological process.

Disappointment with prevailing practices For many of the practitioners I encountered in this research, it was their disappointment with the prevailing practices within the social and ecological fields that

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made the discovery of this life-enhancing practice so very appealing. Most people had originally come to the social and ecological fields filled with a passion to really make a diference, yet what they found was a system which was ultimately dissatisfying – for them personally and professionally, as well as for the people supposedly being supported by the social interventions. Ana echoed the lament of many when she said: I imagined the social field would be more human and more compassionate, and that there would be more connection between who we are and what we do. I thought there would be congruence between how I imagined the social field and the practices. But there wasn’t – I saw more and more corporate practices; I saw issues of ego and power arising in the same way as in the corporate world; I saw NGOs not listening to communities. . . . Others shared how their work in the social field had left them feeling depleted, drained of energy and vitality as they found themselves working against the grain of their soul, in practices often devoid of humanity and love. My own soul-drain is described well by philosopher Bayo Akomolafe who talks of the flattening of the modern world, a deadening incarceration that arises from being separated from life.6 I hold an image of Rilke’s poem about the panther, walking up and down trapped by bars that do not actually exist. It’s to become incarcerated by our own abstracted perception, alienated from life and aliveness, departing from the compost of living process. Implicit in this discussion of aliveness is its opposite – deadness. Ana had earlier contrasted living thinking with mechanical thinking, but deadness is another contrasting viewpoint. This practice is enfolded within a philosophy or worldview that is focused on aliveness, a way of thinking that is sensitised to discerning life – to the flow, the invisible energies, the connections, the diversity along with the patterns, the whole. The opposite is thinking that deadens in that it only allows us to see objects and discreet parts, which in turn fosters separateness, blinding us to life. For John, part of this feeling of depletion within the social field was caused by a ‘technocratic and deficit orientation’. He shared some of the complexities experienced by NGOs: the problem is their grand ambition – and yet the need to go about their work in a responsive way that is less grand, recognising little things, that can be important. You really see that the ‘little’ can in fact be more, the finesse, the nuanced, the right question, the new question.

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Here, the importance of paying attention is again stressed, as it is often in the seemingly small details where the real shifts happen – something easily overlooked when focus remains solely on the vested interests inherent in what John refers to as the ‘grand ambition’ – or the larger goal – of the practitioner or social purpose organisation. These ‘grand ambitions’ can be very seductive, couched, as they often are, in powerful ideologies. No matter how well intentioned, commitment to such ideologies means any intervention, by default, has an agenda regarding the outcome, thus blinding practitioners to any other possible – and perhaps more appropriate – outcome. In fact, blinding us to seeing what’s alive, instead focused on what we want. Sue Soal and Tanya Lane both spoke to this issue, reflecting how – prior to coming to this practice of aliveness – their allegiance to their particular ideology had contributed to their practice feeling somewhat manipulative at times, and certainly instrumental, which did not sit well with them at all. For Pilar, too, the discovery of this practice was a great relief, and enabled her to see how much of her previous experience of the social field had been ‘bullshit’, how the organisation she worked with had really done little more than ofer, or impose, ‘[social] packages’. She also added that: I thought to myself, ‘this is really hard’, because it [the new practice] asks of me responsibility. That old way was not really hard at all [just selling a social package]. This new way is really hard – and yet it’s much easier too, because it’s real. Of course, there are lots of questions, and I always think deeply about what I do – such as, is what I’m doing making any diference? This question of making a diference is very important; it is one thing to argue for a diferent way and contrast this phenomenological and Goethean practice with other ways, but the question of making any diference is pertinent. While this question of efectiveness is not really a focus of this book, it will be touched on in Essay 8.

Getting into a relationship with aliveness For Ana, foregrounding aliveness in social practice means one is able to look for places and spaces, people and relationships, where energy and connection are moving, generative and creative. It is a practice that follows the movement and 82

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connection of life, and lessons learned from nature that can powerfully inform how practitioners think about growth, nurturing, ‘development’. She goes on further: This practice is about getting ourselves conscious in relationship, but primarily in relationship to life. We’re developing the ability to be in balance and in movement – to see what’s also alive in ourselves – and so we see with a sense of life, the processes of change and development within ourselves. When this happens in a group, or a process, or a community or organisation – [that is] when people are starting to see with this consciousness, to then balance things, and to move around with ideas and perspectives, and go deeper – this completely shifts the issue of power of the community or organisation being in the process. This doesn’t deny issues such as poverty, but it includes it within a bigger scenery. From this it becomes apparent that it is this relationship with aliveness which is a clue to this elemental of the practice. In our role and identity as practitioners, we are looking for what is alive – the formative generative energy, what is in movement, where the connections and interactions are within phenomena, and what is emerging – in a group, a process, a community or a social situation. Ana insists that this relationship with aliveness, both for the practitioner, but also people within a social process, comes through a growing consciousness – a growing ability – ‘to see’ this aliveness. For otherwise it eludes us. Consciousness is explored more fully in Essay 7, but what can be commented on here is that when one begins to notice and recognise this energy, this movement, within a social process, then there is, as Ana puts it, ‘movement around’ ideas and perspectives, and also a process of ‘going deeper’. These movements ensure that people within a social process expand their consciousness because they are participating in a process of living thinking, which means they are no longer stuck, or rigid, or falling asleep even. This is the phenomenological way of thinking. From this, there is attentiveness to new, fresh possibilities.

Seeing living process This idea of ‘alive connection’, or ‘relationship with aliveness’, as Ana put it, gave me much to consider. Like the rainbow, or community, it seems it has to do with the diference between seeing ‘a thing’ or ‘a process’, seeing something as ‘static’ or something as ‘becoming’. I gleaned some more insight into this diference as I sat 83

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on a beach near Haarlem, close to Amsterdam. Observing the turning of the tide, the sea appeared settled; I could give it some characteristics of being settled, some state of being, such as calm, or still. Yet, by seeing the ocean as a process rather than an object, I was able to see beyond the apparent stillness to the already initiated flow of the outward tide. Rather than seeing the ocean merely in terms of tide in, or tide out, I was able to relate to it as ‘in-movement’, as a living phenomenon. A moment with Tiao in Sao Paulo comes to mind. We were both looking at a book sitting on a table. ‘Peter’, he said, ‘you can either see that book as a thing, or as a story.’ He didn’t say anything else, leaving me to ponder. How easy it is to see a book merely as an object, but in truth, every book is alive with ‘story’. Not only the story inherent in the physical production of the book, such as trees being felled to make pulp and paper, the printing and the binding process and so on, but the invisible story too. Every book emerges from the full and complex life experience of the author, as well as the team who help in its publication. It may pass through many hands; it may be read by many diferent people – some may scribble notes in the margin, or perhaps turn back the corner of a page where something important has touched them – and each reader will bring their life story to the reading of it and be somehow changed in the process. So, while a book may be said to simply be a book, it is also so much more.

Phenomenological living thinking This way of thinking intrigues me daily, and challenges me, as I often still drift back to ossified and abstract thinking. To help me in the challenge, I often return to thinking about the phenomenon of a rainbow, particularly as Owen Barfield explores it in Saving the Appearances.7 Barfield says, ‘Look at a rainbow’, and then asks, ‘Is it really there?’8 In one sense of course it is there. I can see it. Yet, it’s not there as a ‘thing’. If you go and try and find it, you’ll be disappointed. Instead, it is there as an emergent phenomenon only under certain conditions – a particular kind of light, a singular combination of sunshine and rain. This simple shift from thinking of a rainbow as a thing to an emergent phenomenon under certain conditions gets me inside a rainbow as a living process, which is always in movement. And yet wondrous to behold. When I try to teach my students to re-think community as a living phenomenon, I also invite them to think about the rainbow. What then does it mean to not think of community as a thing, something that we have, but as an emergent phenomenon under the conditions of activity, dialogue, responsibility, care and so 84

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forth? It turns community into a verb, a living process, and our thinking into a living thinking process too. Which begs the question of how to see all ‘things’ as a verb, a living process, and to then go deeper to see the formative generative force within living process. Yet, this living thinking isn’t just a viewpoint, a way of seeing living process – it’s to be receptive to the process – to be in a diferent relationship with what’s unfolding. As such, the point of this ‘work’ is to not avoid the challenge of encounter that a receptive relationship with a living phenomenon can enable. It is easy to avoid, or postpone the encounter,9 and move into an abstracted relationship with a thing – whereby there is no mobilisation of senses to be open to the presencing of the phenomenon (to see the sea becoming, the book as a story).

Discerning what is alive in a social situation It’s not only about participating in life, but discerning aliveness in a social phenomenon. Ana Paula spoke to this idea of ‘finding’ aliveness, suggesting that there are several discerning processes at play – within the practitioner, group, community or organisation, and ‘between’ the two. She also brings clarity that a big part of this practice is enabling groups to see for themselves what’s alive, to bring people to what I often say is ‘the edge of their chairs’, leaning into noticing what they’ve not noticed before. Earlier in my sabbatical I had spent many hours in the world-famous Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens in Cape Town with Tanya Lane, a practitioner deeply involved in the story recounted in A Delicate Activism, by Allan and Sue.10 Tanya reflected, ‘We worked in a way that looked for life in communities. The actual activities were not much, and didn’t look diferent to other ‘failed work’, but we worked with life and as partners.’ This notion of aliveness brings to mind Allan Kaplan’s book, Artists of the Invisible,11 where he eloquently explores how seeing what is alive involves seeing the invisible, the intangible, that which is in movement; it is seeing the spawn becoming tadpole, and then becoming frog. How do we see aliveness? The leopard tree outside my former Yeronga townhouse front door gave me ample practice. I try to see it as a living activity, bounded in its identity as a tree, and yet only possible through the complex relationship with so many other elements of the ecological fabric that holds, nurtures, gives to, takes from it. It is not so diferent from the rainbow. In the social sphere my sense is that this seeing of life often entails surfacing the invisible as the ‘cultural’, recognising that there will be sub-cultures and sub-altern 85

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cultures too. However, within the culture/s of a group, community or organisation there are signs of life – people connecting, caring, noticing not only other individuals, but the ‘whole’, bringing attention to what’s unfolding, what’s not working; or signs of death and decay – routines as ruts, lack of attention and care, no sense of the whole, people only working on their individual activities or initiatives. Attention to aliveness within ourselves and in the ecological world sensitises us to attending in the social sphere as a holistic endeavour, in relationship with other, the context, which is also always in dynamic movement.

Aliveness as on the edge of order and chaos While emphasising discernment in terms of what feels alive – that is, the efect and afect of aliveness, there’s also a structure to aliveness. Alexander has given this the most thought in the context of architecture and the social sphere, recognising that we feel alive in certain social and architectural spaces for structural reasons.12 It’s not just subjective; it’s elemental and archetypal. This work reminds me of Alison Gilchrist’s work on complexity and community,13 recognising that communities that are alive with exchange, innovation and participation tend to be on the ‘edge of chaos’ – that is, between chaos and order. Chaos implies too much conflict; order alone implies rigidity. Both undo the possibility of living community. This sense of aliveness makes sense in the ecological sphere too – between the orderliness of a manicured garden and the chaos of a space out of balance with regards to a sustainable system – layers of canopy, pioneer trees, understory trees and bushes, groundcovers – the right mix of natives and exotics, of growth and decay (which enables renewal). In terms of a phenomenological reflective practice, this edgy space between design-order and chaos-disorder implies a particular kind of structuring of living social processes. It’s to plan, but also be willing to let the plan go. It implies intention, yet a willingness to respond to what’s unfolding. Structurally, this living practice involves order and chaos.

Aliveness, noticing and seeing life expressed in its singularity14 Part of the nub of it, the crux perhaps of aliveness, is the particularity or singularity of seeing and sensing. Recognising the uniqueness of each moment, and the 86

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accompanying work of noticing. Without noticing, everything can easily become black and white, bland, lacking granularity – that flattening of the world that Bayo talks of. In contrast, noticing implies being receptive to how aliveness arrives in a singular moment. It is to engage attentively with the world, with the concrete world (what Heidegger called ‘the factical life’)15 which gradually discloses itself as it is noticed. As I notice it! As something is disclosed. Think about this. Perhaps this practice is about a loving respect that is willing to take care and notice. In contrast, familiarity can easily bring contempt, and no noticing, no desire to notice. I am taken back to the interviews and am reminded of Merrem’s thoughts about aliveness: two courses [at Profides and Towerland] have helped me to see how the group [in a community setting] is living as an expression of diferent life, the pulsating life. We usually use the image of instruments and tools a lot, to think about intervening, but it’s not a good image, because the processes are living, they are in diferent phases of life. Here, he is also highlighting not only how social processes are ‘pulsating’ with life’ – but that each and every social process is then unique in its own life. Later in our conversation, he told me how he is very rigorous in deleting any preparation he has done for one group, to ensure he does not re-use it with another group. To re-use is to risk repetition in the sense of ossification. No longer living thinking. He insists this way of preparing ensures he is fully present with each group he works with, and therefore freshly open and available to sense into their nuanced, singular expression of life. Merrem’s story reminds me of my own teaching practice, one alluded to in Essay 2. Grounding that in the particular, during 2017, I taught most Tuesdays in my university. On that day I’d leave home about 7am, walk along the Brisbane Corso, through the Gabba cemetery and then over the Eleanor Schonell Bridge. It’s a good way to start a day. I’d walk into a room at about 9am to the buzz of about 30 students. I cultivated a discipline on those days. I’d ask myself, ‘What’s alive within me today, and also, how do I love my students in the sense of being fully present, being the best that I can be as an educator and somehow inspire them?’ I’d usually have prepared on Mondays, but during this walk I’d let that preparation go. Instead, sensing my way into where I was at, what story was alive within me, I’d move into a ‘presencing’ to the students and myself. Then when walking into the room, I’d check-in with students, asking where they were at, and attempt to see, sense and discern what was alive within them as individuals, but 87

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also as a whole group – consciously also attending to the margins as well as I could (intentionally listening to those who rarely give a voice to their desires). It was from this space of intimate singularity, sensing what’s alive within me, within the group and ‘between us’, on this particular day, that real living teaching could take place – it was to sit ‘on the rim’. It is teaching as a living phenomenon.

In conclusion Even as I consider a conclusion for this essay, I am tempted to reach for a finalising comment, a kind of closure, a settling within the re-search. An essay as a chapter. Yet, my true sense, an authentic closing (as verb, not noun), and therefore opening too, is to keep living with the question of what the elemental of aliveness means for, and within, this practice. Like Bayo’s philosophy of post-activism, my quest implies avoiding a clear answer, and instead staying with the ultimate question (remember Alexander), even ritualising the question, ‘What is it to see life, and work with that aliveness within the social field?’ I ask myself, ‘Am I okay with feeling somewhat lost, looking for that “thing” that is a no-thing?’ Within all my explorations and musings, I am still left with the question of seeing and sensing the invisible generative force of life in the social and ecological fields – the assemblages that make up the social world and make ‘us’ (‘us’, not ‘me/I’) what we are constantly becoming. These assemblages are often the invisible force of life. In our Cartesian categorised worlds, it’s so tempting to see the social and ecological fields in a being kind of way – racist people, settled gender identities, activist organisations, opponents or even enemies to beat, non-responsive governments – those states of being, and fail to see the living assemblages, the patterns processes, the whole that are all of us (human and non-human worlds) becoming, being made, self-ing, body-ing, talk-ing, creat-ing, patriarchy-ing. To be alive is to be on the edge of every possible verb, every possible assemblage, never settled nor stagnant.

Notes 1 2 3 4

See Story 2 of Part III for a portrayal of daily walks in this forest. Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, ix. Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, x. Maybe German philosopher and poet Friedrich Schiller got it right when he argued we are only fully human when at play. One of my early readers of this manuscript suggested – and also assured me she was being serious – that perhaps we all need to take a sabbatical to experience aliveness afresh.

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Elemental Two 5 Weber, Enlivenment. 6 Bayo Akomolafe, These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home, (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2017). 7 Barfield, Saving the Appearances. 8 Barfield, Saving the Appearances. 9 Jullien, The Philosophy of Living. This book ofers a profound reflection on the encounter, the collision and our tendency to avoid life through procrastination, absence in our presence and so on. 10 Allan Kaplan and Sue Davidof, A Delicate Activism: A Radical Approach to Change, (Cape Town, South Africa: The Proteus Initiative, 2014). 11 Allan Kaplan, Development Practitioners and Social Process: Artists of the Invisible, (London: Pluto Press, 2002). 12 Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings and Construction, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). 13 Alison Gilchrist, The Well-Connected Community: A Networking Approach to Community Development, (Bristol: Policy Press, 2005). 14 John Caputo, Hermeneutics, (London: Penguin Press, 2017). Here I am using Caputo’s idea of singularity in a way that is subtly diferent from particularity. 15 Caputo, Hermeneutics, 65.

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Interlude

2

Andreas Weber and a philosophy of enlivenment

In my thinking, I move between ‘thinking about aliveness’ and thinking about ‘seeing in a dynamic way’. Just as Bortoft’s work casts light on this practice, so too can the writings of Andreas Weber.1 I first read Weber’s work in February 2016, while on sabbatical, and was profoundly inspired. Both biologist and philosopher, Weber argues eloquently for an emerging paradigm he calls enlivenment. Considering it an ‘upgrade’ of the prevailing paradigm of Enlightenment, with its reductionist, rational view of humans as outside nature – and which sees the material world as inanimate and devoid of living process – the idea of Enlivenment speaks to the empirical evidence new research in the life sciences is discovering: namely, that every organism is a ‘sentient, more-than-physical entity’, and that human beings are part of ‘a web of dynamic, living and unfolding creative relationships’.2 Such a viewpoint deeply afects how we, as practitioners, approach our social and ecological interventions. In a prevailing culture that generally tends to see the world as inanimate and devoid of living process, it is little wonder that typical social processes tend to be stultifying, and ultimately unhelpful in the long term. If we fail to see ecological processes as living and animated then it is almost impossible to participate in life. Instead, we end up intervening in a way that is deadening, not attuned to the movement of living process. As providence would have it, I was fortunate enough to meet up with Andreas later that same year. I had been very keen to meet him. I am always intrigued to discover more about the person behind any writing that inspires me, curious to see whether they ‘walk their talk’. I wonder if there is true congruence between their propositions and their way of being in the world. I was not disappointed. Weber was open, strong, yet also vulnerable in the personal stories he shared; we danced a conversation of delight late into the evening. 90

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Andreas Weber

We spoke of the ‘deep cleft of separateness’ that the philosophy of Enlightenment, with its inherent idea that we can simply appropriate nature for our own needs, has resulted in. The urgent question for our times is: Can it be healed? Weber believes it can and sees the shift to a quest for an enlivened reality as the way forward, with a new attention that ‘attunes us to the odyssey of the world’.3 Within this quest is the need for a non-dualistic way of working with the material and the meaning-making world, the objective and subjective; a shifting from ‘being’ to ‘process’ thinking, and focusing on relational thinking (as opposed to things). He dreams of ‘a biology of wonder’, based on the new ideas of ‘poetic biology’, where we can again be amazed at the complex emergent phenomenon that comes from relational thinking. Importantly, he also foregrounds the ‘centrality of the other’, the ‘Thou’, in a culture of enlivenment – the ‘other’ as the source of enlivenment, and he argues this is the case in biology, politics, economics and so on. It was a rich evening, and I could have spoken to him for many more hours. After we had said our goodbyes and I made my way home on the train, reflecting on all we had shared, two particular thoughts were uppermost in my mind. Weber’s commitment to only work with ideas that felt right for him – in other words to only engage in work that was both poetic and evoked feeling in him – resonated deeply with me. This is a commitment not only to intellectual rigour, but also the rigour of taking afect and emotion seriously. The other idea was his conviction that ‘the main thing is letting go, because we always want to be in control’. Letting go, now there’s an invitation! He left me with a poem from Rilke, Death is Great We are in his keep Laughing galore When we deem ourselves deep In life he does weep Deep in our core.4 Why not let go, as death is laughing anyway?

Taking afect and desire seriously I walked away from this encounter not only musing about Rilke’s poem, but about the significance of afect and desire in living from the perspective of enlivenment. 91

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My mind wanders to an exchange some years ago with Mexican scholar-practitioner Gustavo Esteva, one of my favourite post-development thinkers. Inviting him to contribute to an edited book on ethics and community development he replied suggesting he needed a few days to see if he was up for it. About a week later, he replied with something like, ‘Dear dear Peter, I have tried my best to find my way into a part of myself that could write for this, and for now I cannot.’ I was deeply moved by his reply – it gave me a glimpse into the life of someone (an elder, for he is in his 80s), who takes afect and desire seriously – who was determined to pause and consider whether he can engage in an alive way, from the inside-out. Even in writing this, I am ever aware of my own disposition to responsiveness often at the expense of getting in touch with the golden thread of my deep desires. In the polarity between ‘I’ and ‘Thou’, I am often so sensitised to my interpretations of the Other (about my presence, what’s unfolding) that my own energy is diverted from my own inner life-stream. Desire becomes opaque. That age old question, ‘What do you want?’ becomes obscure. From such a space – ‘stuck’ would be a shorthand – it’s hard to respond to the Other from a potent place. Unlike Esteva I might have said yes, and then when trying to put pen to paper found myself lacking energy (a sure sign of not working from the inside-out). Lacking wholeheartedness, I might easily have withered. Within the social field this is surely evident. How many organisations are no longer operating from their space of desire and enlivenment? Lost from their initial impetus and motivation, their collective ‘I’ is not in a space to respond authentically to the collective ‘Thou’. Caught up in the instrumental pressures of outcomes, impact, audit, such organisations have often lost their way, more interested in their own organisational survival or expansion. Eros is missing; the spectre of empire present. A deadening, flattened, greyish world percolates and workers feel depleted and distressed. An enlivenment perspective, made active in this phenomenological reflective practice, provides an opportunity for people in the social and ecological fields to pause, notice these feelings, the afect, and reconnect with their personal and community desires. It reconnects the past – the originary impetus, hopes, social or ecological purpose – with the present and re-anticipates the possibility of futures.

Notes 1 Weber, Enlivenment.

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Andreas Weber 2 Jay Kshatri, ‘Andreas Weber and the Concept of Enlivenment – Nature as a Model for Optimizing Human Systems’, Think Smarter World, accessed November 21 2017, http:// www.thinksmarterworld.com/andreas-weber-and-the-concept-of-enlivenment-natureas-a-model-for-optimizing-human-systems. 3 Weber, The Biology of Wonder, 64. 4 Weber, The Biology of Wonder, 66.

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Essay

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Elemental Three – working with the phenomenon – ‘From the “inside-out”’

While ‘aliveness’ as a concept makes total sense to some people, for others it is hard to penetrate, seeming to be a little too abstract, too subjective, even esoteric. When people ask me what my current research is about, and I reply, ‘I am exploring, with a network of practitioners, a reflective practice focused on aliveness, a living social practice’, they often look at me blankly. After all, science has spent centuries trying to uncover the mystery of life and still has little idea. Aliveness works in poetry but can seem incongruent when it comes to reflective practice in the social or ecological fields.

The gestalt of a phenomenon This idea of aliveness can, however, become clearer by thinking about working from the inside-out of a phenomenon, or with a phenomenon.1 To do this means to work with the energies, flow/s, ‘will’ and gesture/s – the gestalt – that is active within any social situation. Or to put it another way, the ‘work’ is to enable a social phenomenon to become more of what it wants to become, with a sense of integrity to its intention, aspiration, hopes – with full recognition of the diversity and multiplicity usually at play. Imagine an organisation or a community becoming more of what the people really want ‘it’ – this particular and singular ‘it’ – to be (recognising the inevitability of diversity, diference and the necessity of dialogue); or imagine a public space reflecting what citizens insist it should be such that they can thrive. This in turn requires careful observation, attention, consciousness and fidelity to the social situation and context. This approach is the complete antithesis of Pilar’s notion of bringing a ‘social package’ designed from the outside and brought in – an outside-in way of thinking 94

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and practising. It is aligned with a profound radical philosophy of freedom too, which is another way of thinking about fidelity to the social situation (rather than the laziness of bringing a pre-designed social package).2 This shift in approach to thinking about social phenomenon is mirrored in new ideas in biology, as very much attested to in the work of Andreas Weber. Such biology is starting to understand that ‘living beings . . . are able to unfold an individual autonomy in dialogue with external influences only because they follow specifications encoded in their bodily structures’.3 This is a proposition that upends the traditionally oriented biology that focused on how the external world shapes the internal world. The revolution is to recognise that ‘every being . . . becomes a sort of creative epicentre of its own world . . . . An organism interprets any influence – whether through the genes or the environment – in the light of its desire to preserve itself ’.4 In a nutshell, biologists have underestimated the innate intelligence and lifeforce within each cell in our body – their desire to live, to complexify, to expand. It seems the same mistake is made in the social world – focusing on the external, rather than understanding the internal structures, cultures and desires of a group, community or organisation – which then raises the question as to how we might begin to see/sense or be receptive to perceiving what a social phenomenon desires on its own terms. This is not an easy shift, as Liz confirmed: I’m still only catching a glimpse – letting go of what I think I know and catching a glimpse of being ‘inside a phenomenon’. It is counter-cultural – to ‘get inside’ – because the mainstream cultural impulse is to look on a thing from the outside, caught in our own subjectivities and impulses, our own perspectives and quick interpretations, and then we also often get stuck in those interpretations of the ‘Other’.

Working with the formative image Rarely do we take the time to listen or see the other on its own terms. In terms of her own challenge of finding a way to a new engagement with her community, Liz posits a question, one highly relevant for this practice, ‘I started asking, what’s the formative activity, the “no-thing” that is everything; it’s not a thing, but an aliveness, the force alive in a place?’ There is power and potency to this question; Goethe was always trying to see this ‘no-thing’ that creates the aliveness within nature. Here, Liz has beautifully contextualised this question to social practice in a 95

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community context. But what is this ‘no-thing’, this activity, that is ‘within’? And how do we get ‘within’, get ‘inside’ so we can work from the ‘inside-out’? In exploring this question, one of my ah-ha moments occurred through my conversation with Danna, who, as a jeweller, does not professionally work within the social field in the same way as many of the other practitioners. However, it was still relevant for her: I’m doing pottery because I want to see and feel how you can see the image that wants to come from the clay. Within my jewellery business I bring my image, as I need products I know can sell. But I’ve also started a new art class to shift my creative energies – to create from the inside again. This beautifully describes the potential social practice from the perspective of a craftsperson. It’s to let go of what the social craftsperson, the reflective practitioner, wants to do to a social group, community or organisation – which is their own ‘image’ of what should happen. An inside-out practice requires letting go of the image, indicative of the ‘social package’ that is implicit within outside-in oriented social practice. Thinking of Danna, some months later, the understanding of this is embodied in a new way for me. In the process of carving a walking stick from a piece of driftwood found on a beach walk, I become aware that in whittling this piece of wood, with its character of knots and gnarls, something unique is being created that emerges from the singularity of the piece of wood in my hands, the specific tool I am using and my own personal gesture and make-up. As I work both with what I have, and who I am, so I understand what it is to work from the inside-out of what this stick ‘wants to become’. In recounting Danna’s and my own story of whittling, it’s important to not focus on the creative work of the person/practitioner as this practice isn’t so much about the creativity of the practitioner, but the openness of the practitioner to an encounter with the other – the metal or the wood – to be receptive to what might be disclosed from the phenomenon. I’ve reflected on this for many years and have also learned much about this gesture of practice from poets, musicians and artists. For example, Leonard Cohen talks about how ‘it takes me a great deal of time to find out what a song is’.5 His labour as a song writer isn’t so much about the creative impulse, but the work of listening and discerning what a song wants to be, and in this he recognises that each song has its own fidelity. Expanding on this, Cohen recognises that the barriers to this include his own opinions, interests and what he calls ‘slogans’ – words that come too easily. Real song writing, much like Danna’s take on the practice, requires letting these go, 96

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getting to the heart of the matter so to speak – the energies and images that come from real attention.6 This way of thinking about practice was further elucidated in a conversation with Keith, an architect who, like Danna, does not carry the primary identity of a social practitioner. Keith, a non-conventional architect interested in alternative building methods, explained how: Architects generally are not working from within. I’d say there’s a diference between relying on copying a style of architecture in a formalist way and intuitively sourcing forms and design from your own sensibility. This is about the inner and outer reflection, a process. Keith spoke of the importance of being able to hold uncertainty, of not making decisions, but rather waiting and listening to discover what was emerging from the architectural process itself – again not just about creativity, but receptivity. This implies a kind of attunement to the social situation as it is in a singular moment, in context. It implies a capacity for discernment, to judge well in the situation as it unfolds.

Active receptiveness to what is emergent During a six-day workshop in Auckland, New Zealand, an afternoon was put aside to work with clay. I’ll never forget it, and I remember at least two companions on the journey in this practice experiencing the exercise as their gateway into the moment of discovering what working from the inside-out could mean. We’d each been given seven pieces of clay with instructions to work the first into a sphere. With the second piece, we were asked to work it into a similar sphere to the first, and then find our way into what this sphere wanted to become next7 – a possible indent here, or push there, a careful carving or moulding – we could transform it into something else. For the third piece, we had to work it to a sphere like the first, and then into what the second shape had become, and then from that place, feel our way into the next iteration. And onwards for all seven pieces. Additionally, after the third and final clay shaping, we paused and wrote some prose about what the clay had wanted to become or was wanting to become from the perspective of the clay – an imaginative exercise of writing from the clay’s perspective. Here was a sensuous and embodied way of understanding what it is to work from the ‘inside-out’, to not intervene wilfully into the clay, making it in an image we might have predetermined, but instead becoming present, through kneading, 97

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moulding, caressing, to what we sensed the clay wanted to become. Not a rational cognitive exercise, but a sense-oriented, embodied, intuitive one. It was a similar discovery to whittling the piece of wood. And in that process, we were able to touch metamorphosis, or ‘metamorphic thinking’ rather than ‘object thinking’, to use an idea of Goethe. Each of us was living between ‘constructing’ something, and ‘allowing’ something to emerge; there was also uncertainty about who was leading and who was following (the clay or the hands). Through writing about the experience of the clay, the clay became a ‘speaking partner’ in a living relationship and at some point there was a letting go of control of the creative process. The creative process became the life-stream, and the clay-shaper was participating in creation. Or that’s how it felt, and how the group articulated it in reflection.8 With the group reflecting on the clay-shaping, we also discovered that we were in a state of ‘active receptiveness’, somewhere between knowing what we were doing, and not-knowing – allowing ourselves to become open to what was emergent. And this spoke to the practice in a way that moved an idea from the head to embodied consciousness. Most of us were on the edge of our chairs in that very alive discussion. But, even as I write about it I suspect the story is hardly alive to the reader – it really must be experienced to become an ah-ha moment of discovery. In reflecting further on this story of working with the clay, and at risk of repeating what I have said above, what’s important is not to be seduced into imagining that the practice is about ‘our/my’ creative response to the clay. This would be to then imagine that this practice is about turning up in the social or ecological space and responding creatively to the situation – with the focus on the authoragent, the ‘I’ as practitioner. Creativity is delightful, but it’s not the practice. To sit with a group of citizens struggling with their marginalisation in the world doesn’t require a community or social practitioner to turn up with a bag of creative tricks, but requires a deep presencing to their worlds, an allowing of an emergent voice, story, narrative thread to become present. This phenomenological reflective practice invites a responsivity to the emergent social situation as it really is. Quoting a friend and colleague, Mark Creyton, ‘It’s to not so much be an agent or author in the world, but to be an object being verbed by the world.’ What is this stance of ‘being verbed’? It’s what can be understood as the hermeneutic reversal, an idea explored in depth in the next essay.

Working with the emergent This idea of the ‘emergent’ echoes Merrem’s radical practice of always deleting his preparatory work from previous social processes to ensure that he comes to a new group 98

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open and available to what is present, rather than what he thinks is present. Merrem also explained this inside-out or phenomenological approach, in the following way: Within a group process we create a climate, and I help with this. There’s an energy in every group, and I can provoke it, stimulate it, but it’s not mine. I catch this. It’s not rational, it’s a diferent knowledge; it’s intuition, imagination, and connection with the life stream of the moment. This is a vital concept in understanding this practice. Practitioners are trying to ‘honour’ what is present, or what is trying to unfold in a group, and here Merrem is highlighting the part practitioners can play in assisting the group discover its own ‘lifestream’, that which it is trying to be or bring to the world. Merrem’s wisdom aligns with the stories told in Essay 2, my being attentive to working from the inside-out of a day with students at university, or even being inside a particular email exchange. Returning to the clay exercise, this requires an attentiveness, a noticing, a receptivity to that no-thing that is aliveness – on the edge between crafting and being crafted, or translated to social process – on the edge between moving a group and being moved by a group, or stimulating energy and being receptive to the existing energy.

In contrast to working instrumentally For Carly, this emergent or ‘inside-out’ practice is explained as a contrast with instrumental practice, and in a generative conversation she explained how in her work, ‘We came to community with what we felt they needed . . . “we’re bringing what you need”.’ But, in engaging with this new practice she shifted to realising the necessity: to really sit with ‘we have no idea what’s coming’, and she added that this needed ‘the ability to sit with the uncomfortable’. When I asked her further about the new practice, she mused on how, ‘We’re learning to watch change, be attentive to it, which in turn helps us be responsive.’ This coming to the social sphere with clarity about what’s needed – that pre-determined image – is underpinned by an instrumentalism. Instrumentalism, even if usually unacknowledged, is a norm for thinking about social and ecological development interventions. It is assumed that the practitioner’s ‘will’ is exercised ‘in order to’ achieve something desired. In conversation with Allan around this very point, he had this to add: The essence of this practice is the recognition of the bogey of instrumentality. Reaching for soul is to recognise that the phrase ‘in order to’ always 99

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abstracts and drives us to abstraction. And extraction. And the first victim of abstraction and extraction is the soul. Here, I particularly like the use of the word ‘soul’ to contrast with instrumentalism, because in my work and world ‘soul’ is the emissary that best carries this ‘inside-out’ way of being in the world, living from a place of depths.9 Yet this instrumentalism is deeply ingrained within practitioner’s psyches and souls, as we extract everything possible from the world. Carly highlights a diferent approach, one that is about responsibility to what is emerging (even though she does not use that word). Her gesture of being able to hold the process even amid having ‘no idea of what’s coming’ illustrates the stance of the practitioner, the human being, within the emergent process. It is a place of soul and soulful seeing. There’s something tricky here because when a practitioner approaches a social or ecological phenomenon ‘in order to’, then there is an intervening that might not be aligned with what is actually emerging. Yet, in the phenomenological tradition of thinking, there is another kind of ‘in order to’ that sits at the heart of understanding a living process. For example, Heidegger, in his seminal writing ‘What then is the table?’ explains that partly ‘a table is for sitting in order to have a meal’ [my italics for emphasis]. In this sense ‘in order to’ is inscribed from the start – there is no pure dis-interested consciousness that sees the table as an impersonal thing (like the ‘book’ sitting on the table that also exists ‘in order to’ be read, loved, shared). It is to see the table from the perspective of deep engagement in the everyday world. In turn, to see a social or ecological phenomenon from the inside out is to see its authentic ‘in order to’. Hence, two kinds of ‘in order to’, one from the inside of the phenomenon, and another, often our own ‘in order to’ (conscious or unconscious), that is about intention, or our instrumental will to do something.

The rigour of being open and then responsive Once again, there is no simple way to see this other ‘in order to’, the soul of a social process, but there is a rigorous phenomenological practice. Here is a story that might help in understanding: I used to sit almost daily in what was my local Yeronga shopping village. I’d often walk the 100 metres from my home and settle in for a cofee. It is a semi-circle of shops – bakers, bottle-shop, butcher, fruit and vegetable store, sushi, a gorgeous Thai restaurant and a few others. It’s a quick stroll to the train station. It could be perfect. But I’d sit there 100

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observing, noticing and sensing, sometimes in conversation with others, and I’d reach for an accurate ‘seeing’ of this social phenomenon of the village, from the inside-out of its ‘in-order to’, its soul you might add. And, of course, it is hard not to see what is unfolding. At the centre of these shops is a car park. It is a chaotic space of cars moving in and out, around and through. Those of us sitting around this centre get to breathe the fumes and struggle to converse over the noise of machines. It is tough going to be in this village if you desire conviviality! The ‘in-order to’ gesture is clear – a place of efcient commerce, designed for cars, quick shopping and meagre human exchange, perhaps indicative of a broken culture, colonised by capitalist logics. That is simply what it is, an open seeing. It is quite shocking to see: a true diagnosis of a society’s social priorities. And only this shocking seeing, not shying away from what is, is the pathway towards healing. It’s then interesting to consider how to work with this shock, from the inside-out of myself so to speak. For here is another of the keys to working phenomenologically – to not only see but work with a renewed freedom and consciousness, having seen. It is only in seeing accurately that we can make choices about intervening in the social or ecological field in a way that accompanies the energy of change from within. If a group of people together can see – be conscious of the ‘in order to’, they can then touch some part of themselves that wants to bring something diferent. John, from Johannesburg, put it like this: Phenomenological means being open . . . and in the reflective practice a big question is, ‘Can we work with what people bring?’. . . In a nutshell, for me it is about, ‘What do we see? How can we be responsive? What’s already happening? Later in our encounter, John shared how the practice requires that we ‘proceed with what opens – stay open and wholehearted. Process means, stay open to what’s going on, and ask “what would this like to show me?” The phenomenological thing is, “allow it to reveal itself in the process”.’ Many people interviewed explained how, when they discovered this idea, this perspective, it was their ah-ha moment. At risk of over-repeating myself, they spoke of how, previously, they had so often come to a social situation or phenomenon with their pre-determined ideas, their models, their plans and projects, their ‘good’ (or even worse, ‘best’) practices, and approached the social situation from this ‘outward-in’ stance. The pre-determined image. It has seemed so normal, so unquestioned, to intervene into the other from the perspective of their own ideas, 101

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models and practices. They had not been able to step back, look, observe, see, pause, see again, look at the detail, see the connections, patterns that made up the whole; they had not been able to see the ‘thing’ that was a ‘no-thing’ reveal, or disclose, itself from this inside-out. And it’s from being inside each of these moments of seeing that practitioners can respond, or/and resource what is active, or wants to be active. It is to accompany social change from the inside-out. As the recognition dawned of what they hadn’t done before, so they experienced a powerful shift in their approach to their work. In my experience as a social and community practitioner I have been witness to so many stories of work in which this kind of accompanying of change ‘from within’ has been at the heart of work. Some of my favourite stories include the collection from Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze’s Walk Out Walk On,10 along with the many documented in Theory and Practice of Dialogical Community Development.11 Check them out.

In conclusion – a poetic practice Poetry is not synonymous with this poetic practice, yet poetry is loved by most observers of life. Poetry is one way of being intimate with life, transforming event into experience, sequence into pattern, the apparent settled into movement. A good poem, like a good story, enlivens the soul because the portrayed moment – usually gained by powerful observation and sensing – resonates with something inside, it touches that thing which is a no-thing, that vibrating energy that is a part of every cell that is our being – which is in fact, a becoming. This is also true of the social body, of any form of social organisation – a relationship, group, community, organisation. It, too, is a living social process, also always in movement, either alive with energy and expanding consciousness, and in decay, deadening, soul-destroying, lost. This phenomenological reflective practice attunes us to this movement, and in the process of attuning we are invited to get ‘inside’ the phenomenon, discerning its intention, its gesture, its gestalt – even its ‘in order to’. From the inside, requiring a radical social participation, while also ‘sitting on the rim’ looking in, we can work with the whole, not just an atomised part. We can touch the whole. We can encounter the whole because we also come to the phenomenon of which we are now a part (not apart from)! Living-thinking requires letting go of a metaphysics of Being, and instead embracing the processivity and poetics of Becoming.12 Letting go of a deadening, 102

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repetitive, model-loving and mechanical way of living and thinking requires a profound unlearning, a vigilant and diligent returning to the present, to process, to phenomenological practice. Expanding our practice, we now turn to the fourth elemental, ‘expanding consciousness’.

Notes 1 See the 2003/2004 CDRA annual report titled Emergence – From the Inside Out. Published by CDRA. 2 This idea of radical freedom is discussed further in Essay 9 on ethics. 3 Weber, The Biology of Wonder, 50f. 4 Weber, The Biology of Wonder, 51. 5 Leonard Cohen, Leonard Cohen: Interviews and Encounters, ed. Jef Burger, (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014), 265. 6 Cohen, Leonard Cohen, 267. 7 I should note in subsequently facilitating this exercise with some people in Brisbane, Australia one person initially reacted to the instruction ‘what this sphere wanted to become next’, asserting that clay is not sentient and desiring. However, after a short discussion, the person was able to shift to an activity of sensing and imagination. 8 One participant in that Brisbane process shared with me how, ‘For me, when I did this exercise, I had become the clay. My personal story became intertwined with it and it gave me a direction about what was next for me. Me mentoring younger community development people and then stepping out of Community Development Queensland, for example. The clay’s metamorphosis showed me the way that day!’ 9 See my work on soul – Westoby, Soul, Community and Social Change and Westoby, Creating Us. 10 Meg Wheatley and Deborah Frieze, Walk Out Walk On: A Journey into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now, (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., 2011). 11 Westoby and Dowling, Theory and Practice of Dialogical Community Development. 12 See Jullien, The Philosophy of Living.

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Interlude

3

Hillman, Watkins, ‘Ensouling the social’ and Notitia

James Hillman and ‘ensouling the world’ James Hillman, one of the key inheritors of Jung’s work, drawing deeply on the phenomenological tradition, gifts us with a deep exploration of ‘ensouling the world’. Hillman initiated a revival of what he understood to be a broader and deeper view of ‘soul in the world’, first in his seminal book Re-Visioning Psychology,1 and then in his essay, ‘Anima Mundi: The Return of the Soul to the World’.2 For Hillman, Jung’s notion of the soul, linked to his theory of individuation, had been captured by an ever-increasingly narrow psychology, which over-emphasised a turn inwards. Hillman was rescuing or unearthing the deeper and broader perspective of Jung’s theory of individuation. In a nutshell, the argument is that not only are people alive, animated by the life-force or soul’s ‘acorn’,3 but so is the world, the cosmos. Hillman called this ‘ensouling the world’.4 Ensouling relocates the soul outside the narrowing perspectives within psychology that see life as only an inner-oriented subjective and psychologising process of the Self. He wanted his phenomenological depth psychology to engage more with the world – to equip people to see the ‘images in events that give rise to meaningfulness, value and a full range of experiences’5 and that are mostly entangled within culture. ‘Ensouling the world’ invites people away from any perspective that drifts towards a focus on individuation as predominantly an internal process. Instead, ‘ensouling the world’ insists on recognising both that the world is alive to its own healing, and that humans bring meaning and healing to the world, particularly to culture, alluding to Hillman and Shamdasani’s suggestion that Jung was a ‘physician of culture’.6 Importantly, a perspective of ensouling the world starts to see soul outside the solo Self, and re-orients towards the profoundly diferent and alive Other – whether that is the Other of the unconscious, nature, the world of politics, economics or 104

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-11

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urban planning, etc. Here, there is a way forward in thwarting, or reversing, the eclipse of relationality. A deadening world can be filled with fertile life again.

Watkins – towards a phenomenology of the social Drawing on Hillman’s work, a significant contribution is made by one of the authors of Towards Psychologies of Liberation,7 Mary Watkins, from Pacifica College, California. She also wrote the influential essay ‘Breaking the Vessels: Archetypal Psychology and the Restoration of Culture, Community, and Ecology’.8 She explicitly introduces Hillman’s ‘soul of the world’ into the social field – hence she is important for this book – particularly asking people working in the social sphere to refrain from quick intervention, and enter a much longer process of observation, listening and imaginative participation in the social phenomenon in which they want to intervene. I should add that this invitation eschews the mad addiction to rapid solution seeking that is self-evident in the social field. Instead, a stance of learning is a necessity, to see more ‘deeply’ into the causes of our social and ecological catastrophes. She invites people to listen to more people connected to whatever social or ecological issue is being explored, whether it is a local social problem (homelessness, drugs) or a socio-creative challenge (such as urban design). In that listening, she insists on more dialogue and then the waiting, likened to discerning the ‘soul of the world’, for images to arise that ofer deeper meaning, and deeper diagnostics about a way forward. Such listening for images also recognises that it is the heart that can be an ‘organ of perception’ and sees the world in aesthetic ways.9 This is the tradition of thinking that Arnaldo is referring to when explaining his take on ‘seeing the invisible’. In a sense, Watkins and Hillman are intimating that the listening, presencing and dialogue enables someone to potentially get inside what a social phenomenon is suggesting, the invisible gesture that is unfolding. In some ways I imagine her work, like Hillman’s thinking, as psychologising the social, ‘discovering the soul within it [the social]’.10 Mary Watkins has developed a useful framework for thinking about how people engage the social (and we can add ecological) world in a soul-oriented aesthetic way, which includes practices such as: •

Notitia – a term of Hillman’s that pushes people to notice, and keep looking, listening and noticing, but then doing it more with all their senses, but 105

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•

•

•

prioritising sensing over ‘feeling’. I quote here, that the noticing needs ‘the gift of careful attention that is sustained, patient, subtly attuned to images and metaphors . . .’.11 ‘Multiplicity and dialogue’ – recognising that the soul wants multiplicity and complexity, and so there is a need to ‘bracket’ the ‘domineering ego’ (albeit, almost impossible) and listen to the un-listened and silenced voices (in the social field this is the equivalent of finding invisible people who rarely have their voice heard on an issue). Listening to such voices also requires a capacity for dialogue ‘Seeing through’ and ‘the imaginal’– which for Watkins refers to Hillman’s warning that ‘we are always in the embrace of an idea’.12 The point is that ideas are often abstractions, or quick leaps to interpretation and judgement. Aligned to the manic addiction to rapid solution finding, fuelled by a gesture of control, quick interpretations and judgements undermine a gesture of humility and learning (and unlearning), which requires a deeper quest for understanding. In contrast, seeing ‘the imaginal’ requires social practitioners to pay attention to the images of the world as presented through stories or unfolding stories within a social phenomenon, therefore letting go of pre-determined fantasies. Of course, many images or stories that present themselves are not necessarily welcome as they might penetrate to the heart of our cultural darknesses – addictions to efciency, convenience, hyper-consumption to name but a few ‘Reflection and action’ – here are spaces of real re-search, being in the world in action, yet reflecting on that action rigorously. Both reflection and action, as embodied activities can enable what Paulo Freire insightfully called ‘praxis’.13 Watkins is pushing for a depth here, asking for a combination of this Freirean action and reflection and a Hillman-like ‘love and observation’.

Stories of what such a framework means in practice In Essay 6 I tell and finish a story about noticing a shopping village by suggesting: The ‘in order to’ gesture is clear – a place of efcient commerce, designed for cars, quick shopping and meagre human exchange, perhaps indicative of a broken culture, colonised by capitalist logics. That is simply what it is, an open seeing. It is quite shocking to see: a true diagnosis of a society’s social priorities. 106

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In this perception of the heart – an aesthetic response – I also experienced a yearning. I yearn for something like an Italian or Spanish piazza. I long for their equivalent beauty and imagine what such a centre could induce from local residents, to have a real ‘centre’ – a hearth, honouring the mythological Hestia figure in our collective culture.14 Such honouring would be healing, re-fostering a warmth in our culture that is fractured by too much Hermes energy, mythically caught in exchange, movement and efciency. In seeing that village in a new, fresh way, drawing on Hillman and Watkins’ suggestions, phenomenologically – through noticing and through allowing images to arise – implies a seeing through senses, aesthetically, which moves towards a possible encounter of intimacy. As such, Hillman and Watkins want practitioners to re-cultivate a phenomenological – or what they sometimes call a poetic or aesthetic – perception to engage more with the world, to equip people to see the ‘images in events that give rise to meaningfulness, value and a full range of experiences’.15 Hillman saw a particularly powerful role for the arts, symbols and other archetypal ‘readings’ of the social. An approach that takes the wisdom ‘ensouling the world’ seriously leads away from any perspective that either experiences the world in a distant, objectifying way or perceives it purely analytically (using the intellect rather than say, imagination, usually drawing on metaphor and myth). Instead, ensouling the world insists on bringing meaning and healing to the culture, or more broadly to the world – the world as efcient ugly shopping villages, sick mono-cultural farming, deadening urban landscapes and so forth. Strolling through down-town Sao Paulo During my sabbatical I spent time in Sao Paulo, Brazil; I find myself at Patio de Colegio, the place where the Jesuits arrived in 1554, a hill in a vast jungle. Here the city was born as first a hut was built and then a church, ‘seducing’ the forestdwelling Indigenous people to leave the forest and join the church, resulting in a significant human movement from forest to village. They named the place Sao Paulo, and I try to imagine this past village and compare it with what I am seeing now. I use the word ‘imagine’ intentionally, because seeing living processes, connections and patterns requires this act of imagination. To see Sao Paulo as living, evolving as social process and forces in motion, and not just as a static postcard, requires imagination. Standing there some 500 years later, in this huge urban jungle, old buildings that ofer a glimpse into an ancient glory stand amidst towering modern ones. There 107

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are the old churches, the banks, commerce galore, old and newer hotels, ruins and half ruins, theatres, government ministries and endless more. In between these artefacts of Moloch16 there is endless movement of cars, buses and people. And yet much of the people movement appears to be a purposeful meandering, because it’s mostly the walk of the poor, walking, looking for any opportunities. Alongside this bustle of movement are literally hundreds, probably thousands of street sellers, peddling their cheap goods. I try to imagine the movement from that 1554 jungle on a hill with a small wattle and daub hut, to this – the movement of ‘Progress’ and ‘Development’, and what I see is dispossession and decay and the terrible legacy of the Enlightenment dream. Of course, I see much more, and I do have a real love for this place, the enlivened madness of the hustle and bustle, and yet . . . . Seeing the whole, the gesture I find myself reflecting on the 2015 photograph of the Syrian boy dead on the beach that captured the world’s attention, and in turn shifted the world’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe. What was it about that photo that so captured the ‘whole’, that moved people because it spoke to, showed, the truth? Some months later, in this search, I am staying in Amsterdam and visit both Rembrandt’s House and also the Van Gogh Museum. Gazing at the artwork I am captivated. Both Rembrandt and Van Gogh powerfully captured some ‘thing’ symbolic and potent in terms of what they were trying to portray in paint. For example, Van Gogh’s portrayal of peasant life in The Potato Eater perfectly depicts the delights and yet tragedy of peasant life. This is what that photo of the Syrian boy also captured – some key to the refugee plight. There is something here about the ‘work of this practice’ I am exploring – to keep seeing, sensing, experiencing and seeing what arises – an image, a gesture, a whole (even if fleeting, but perhaps enduring). After all, while that image of the Syrian child might have captured an imagined symbolic essence, one that triggered a global shift in sentiment, it also obscured, or rather a deeper looking was needed to see beyond or beneath the first interpretation of the image – the invisible that would help us to see the causes and possible consequences of the refugee movements. I also start to suspect that this is why I am travelling with both Franz Fanon and Hannah Arendt on this research journey. Their phenomenological inquiries into fascism, totalitarianism, racism and colonialism led them deep into the issues they were trying to make sense of.17 They were both fully participating in the inquiry (as participants) while also looking in (as writers), and in this sense of being right in it, their eforts were living inquiries. I think it is why their work is so powerful; 108

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through careful observation, rigorous analysis and participation they found their way to the very heart of the issues. And the efectiveness of their analysis is revealed in the enduring portrayals they made. Burton sighed. ‘You see . . . that’s why I don’t like to talk very often. Listen to me Mac. My senses aren’t above reproach, but they’re all I have. I want to see the whole picture – as nearly as I can. I won’t want to put on the blinders of “good” or “bad”, and limit my vision. If I used the term “good” on a thing I lose my license to inspect it, because there might be bad in it. Don’t you see? I want to be able to look at the whole thing.18 Amsterdam – an ugly beauty It was late May 2016, and I’d been in this enchanting city of Amsterdam for seven weeks, and already I was awash with experiences and encounters, memories and moments. I had walked many of the same streets over and over, trying to see more carefully, feeling myself become more curious. At other times, I had explored new nooks and crannies and enjoyed the surprise of the new. The city disclosed itself – as I saw more, as I studied more about its history – and in this historical curiosity I could see more. I talked to locals and new friends and colleagues and they told me more, and in their telling I was also able to see even more. The work to see is a living inquiry, only made possible through ‘work’ – of study, conversation, looking, bracketing quick judgements and interpretations and then renewed attention. One night I came home late, after visiting a family on the other side of the IJ. A fresh seeing was made possible in a moment after locking up my bike. I choose not to step inside my foyer, but instead to pause, and sit on the canal bank. I breathed in and opened myself, I became receptive to what is outside me, avoiding the impulse towards the subjective; I made myself present to the street. I saw the falling blossom afresh, as for the first time, carried along by evening breeze; I enjoyed watching the flow of people on their bikes or on foot, moving between and around one another, an amazingly complex movement of people. I saw the light fading and felt the potency of the day gone. I knew it would return with fresh energy tomorrow. I see beauty. The next morning, I awoke early, avoiding the routine of cofee brewing and breakfast, and instead follow an instinct to go for a stroll in a nearby forest. The day unfolds with the delight that sometimes betrays the sleepiness that enfolds other days. It is this presence of delight that enables me to see afresh the lazy, sleepy way I often live, to be over-settled, in a routine and therefore not attentive to the inner and outer movements, invitations and instincts. 109

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But today, for some mysterious reason, I see this city in its utter paradox. I first see the many groups of men – because it is Saturday morning and so the tourists have arrived – and many of these tourists are groups of men who have come to Amsterdam for sex, or at least to gaze upon a space rife with the lure of sex, and drugs. I stop often and watch these men. They, in the swagger of their mob, swill masses of beer, tossing their empty cans into a canal, along with the cigarette butts that they endlessly produce. They appear to care nothing for nature, for what is alive. They move on the narrow street as though they own the space. And it is so ugly. I try to enter their world, stretching myself into graciousness, but I fail, and only see this ugly manifestation of the white man’s world – a toxic masculinity, alcohol, patriarchy, with a brewing violence just at the surface. But the paradox is that in this ugliness I also walk past many markets, with people selling all sorts of goods – organic fruit and vegetables, cheese, vinyl records, second-hand books and so many flowers. And here’s the rub, because to assuage the wound caused by the ugliness that has threatened to undo my day, I am drawn to buy flowers. I need to have beauty accompany me into my apartment. And I realise that beauty is the measure of so much – of ethics, of grace, of truth, or a form of civility that makes me alive and hopeful. Ugliness and beauty alongside one another – side by side – this is one imagined essence of Amsterdam.19 Witnessing Berlin, boundaries and fallen walls A recent reading of The Diary of Anne Frank, followed closely by a visit to the Jewish History Museum in Berlin, both had an extraordinary impact on me. I had walked the three axes of Exile, Continuity and Holocaust in the museum, and then went into the Holocaust Tower where, surrounded by concrete, darkness and a steel door that felt locked, I caught a glimpse of the terror of captivity, the void of being destroyed as a people. These feelings of Anne’s diary, of the Tower, sat with me heavily, and yet again I try to avoid moving quickly to the subjective, to my feelings. I want to sit with what these experiences mean in the world, of the warnings they remind us of, of the courage they call each of us to. For as the Jews sufered terribly then, now Muslims do too, and in my own country, even as I write I am ever aware of the camp conditions of asylum detention centres. How will history look back at this period of policy-making, indiference and the banality of evil? How will history trace the subtle but powerful shifts from individual prejudice to institutionalised racism, to state-led violence against ‘a people’? How complicit am I? What diary of a young

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Syrian refugee girl, or a Hazara-Afghani asylum seeker, might be read in years to come, and will I be seen as one of the oppressors, marked simply by my inadequate action?20 These are questions that sit with me. I am reminded of a young Afghan friend of mine, sharing stories of being spat on in Brisbane, and of a Muslim man I know who hides his name Mohammed from other Australians, for fear of so much. The stories of Jews in Germany in the 1920s/30s are not so diferent. But, what I also feel powerfully, amid holding the stories and these questions that arise within me, is the story of the Berlin Wall – of its creation in 1961, and then its destruction in 1989. Throughout this sabbatical I had never been quite sure why Amsterdam called, but Berlin I knew I had to visit. It was one of the places that had come to me early – I wanted to visit a place in the world where a wall had come down, particularly in a time, historically, that appears to be set on building endless walls: literal walls in India-Pakistan, Mexico-USA, North and South Korea; or symbolically through naval power in Australia. So, I set out on the traditional pilgrim journey to the East Side Gallery and Checkpoint Charlie, and then stroll to Potsdamer Plaza and the Brandenburg Gate to imagine this city, this nation, divided, and what it does to a people, to families, to lovers. I wonder how borders and boundaries, sometimes spacious and elastic, become so linear and sharp? Why do we do this to one another? What is the assemblage of prejudice and power that leads to these divides, the invisible forces at play? Of course, the Berlin Wall story is the story of the initial triumph of ideology over fraternity – a Cold War playground – and most walls seem to have such a story behind them. But there’s the second story, in this case, of the triumph of people’s power as they ‘bring it down’.21

My old leopard tree I have already spoken of the potency of observing the leopard tree just outside my old home. At times, I’d be tempted to see it as beautiful. But there’s a risk in that because a definition of beauty carries with it the legacy of Being. A beautiful tree, as some kind of ideal, coinciding with a moment in its life-journey, which at any moment seen as beautiful is already moving, possibly towards depletion or decay, turning away from a perceived beauty. The seeing then of such ideal beauty also implies its disappearance. And perhaps even riskier, our no longer seeing, because we have settled on beauty as a state. Instead, I look to see the process by which there is a constant ‘springing up’ of and inexhaustible bursting fullness of beauty.22

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This is to get inside beauty, that no-thing which is everything, enlivened by what is efective in making it that. Each story that I’ve recounted of seeing holds some of the wisdom of the observation elemental, re-made in the Hillman-Watkins tradition as notitia. The interplay of being and doing, thinking and feeling, observing and meaning-making; of a systematic rigour of observing, interpreting, bracketing judgements as best we can so as to see freshly again; of seeing the parts through close, careful participation, inquiry, research, and then stepping back to see the whole. It is a seeing that enquires about history, relationship, dynamics, patterns, and therefore has a depth and breadth; it is focused and yet expansive, centred and yet draws on peripheral perception. It takes seriously the inner and outer, an intellectual rigour and an emotional deftness. It requires being inside a place, participating in the local life, and yet also ‘sitting on the rim’, able to look at a place, seeing its contribution to the world, while also seeing a place as it’s shaped by the web of connections that help make that place. It is what Barfield calls entering a participatory worldview, one in which participation is ‘consciously experienced’, or ‘participation must itself be raised from the potentiality to act’.23 In a nutshell, it’s a living inquiry, never settling on having discovered a place. The practice keeps reaching for a new seeing of Self, which enables a new seeing of place. In this we become present to how we see and we become conscious of the place we are creating through participatory perception. There is a beautiful inversion here, because often I set out to find a place, yet in my attentiveness and observation I most often find myself. And in that finding I find the places I have re-created – a diferent Sao Paulo, Amsterdam and Berlin. A real hope beneath, or within this practice, is that by opening myself up to being changed by my encounter with these places, possibly they too can change. Step back to my story of seeing my local village Yeronga, of seeing the image of efciency, and dreaming of a Spanish-like piazza. In that seeing, I have created a particular village. Yet, this practice of observation invites me to penetrate more deeply, to become more present to how I have seen the place, and therefore created it. Maybe I have arrived at a truth too quickly, shutting down any possibility of seeing. In seeing and interpreting, we are doing more than meaning-making – we are also creating the world. Can I then not choose to see it diferently, and create a diferent place?

In conclusion The stories suggest to social practitioners there are diferent kinds of noticing or perceiving. Attuned aesthetically to issues such as beauty and ugliness, being open 112

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to images that arise that depict the ‘whole’, or the ‘gesture’, invites a diferent set of feelings, longings, yearnings and also analysis (an analysis of the heart and imagination). Such practice also eschews a view of practice that bifurcates the social from the aesthetic. Instead, ensouling the world tries to perceive where aliveness and beauty are present in all things – in the story, a shopping space, but, also many other places – and brings this perceiving into our work.

Notes 1 James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology. 2 James Hillman, The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World. 3 James Hillman, The Force of Character and the Lasting Life, (Sydney: Random House, 1999). 4 Hillman, The thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World. 5 James Hillman, A Blue Fire, ed. Thomas Moore, (New York: Harper Perennial, 1989), 15. 6 James Hillman and Sonu Shamdasani, Lament of the Dead: Psychology after Jung’s Red Book, (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013), 145. 7 Mary Watkins and Helene Shulman, Toward Psychologies of Liberation, (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan,, 2008). 8 Mary Watkins, ‘Breaking the Vessels: Archetypal Psychology and the Restoration of Culture, Community, and Ecology.’ in Archetypal Psychologies: Reflections in Honour of James Hillman, ed. Stantan Marlan, (Los Angeles: Spring Books and Journals, 2008), 414–437. 9 James Hillman, The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World. 10 James Hillman, The Force of Character and the Lasting Life. 11 Watkins, Breaking the Vessel, 6. 12 Watkins, Breaking the Vessel, 6. 13 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (London: Penguin Books, 1972). 14 Ginette Paris, Pagan Meditations: The Worlds of Aphrodite, Artemis, and Hestia, (Thompson, CN: Spring Publications, 2017), 185f. 15 Hillman, A Blue Fire, 15 16 Reference from Ginsberg’s poem ‘Howl’. 17 They were both drawing on the ‘fashionable’ methodologies of their era – existentialism and phenomenology. And, of course, their living inquiry led to conclusions that are not contested, a part of the debate. Nothing is settled. 18 John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle, (London: Penguin Books, 1936), 149. 19 I am conscious of later comments in this interlude about the ‘ideal beauty’, and could re-write this as something like, ‘I need to feel the efects of beauty that can accompany me into my apartment’. 20 In editing this interlude some years later, I am reminded that such a piece of writing was penned – and highly recommend Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountain: Written from Manus Prison (Sydney: Picador Press, 2018). 113

The elementals of the practice 21 I am not suggesting naively that the bringing down of the wall wasn’t a confluence of people’s power and large economic-political forces as the Soviet Union started to crumble. But people’s power played a big part. 22 See Jullien, The Philosophy of Living, 48. 23 Barfield, Saving the Appearances, 137.

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Elemental Four – expanding consciousness

From asleep to awake Alongside being alive, consciousness signposts the archetypal energies of being awake. Alive and awake, entwined within one another, yet distinct. Nevertheless, the idea of being awake is limited, often contrasted with asleep. Yet within this essay consciousness isn’t so much thought about as moving from being asleep to awake, but about shifting perception – perhaps ‘to be awake’ in a subtly diferent way – to have rolled over in the bed so to speak and focused on a new perspective. In previous work I have written of depth, and in many ways the ‘soul’ tradition of thinking and practice is James Hillman’s depth psychology – peering beneath the surfaces. In a parallel way phenomenological reflective practice could be called depth social practice. Depth implies expansion, an ability and agility to move between focused and peripheral, narrow and broad, finitude and infinity. Consciousness involves both increasing our repertoire of seeing – to see how we are seeing and to be able to shift our seeing.

Expanding consciousness Yet, as a scholar-practitioner of the Freirean tradition of social practice I cannot ignore his take on consciousness, which involves being awake in a particular way. Within that tradition consciousness is described as conscientisation and is a process of learning through dialogue with the purpose of people becoming more conscious of the social-economic-political-cultural forces shaping their lives. To be conscious is to disrupt taken-for-granted perspectives, unravel so-called ‘common-sense’ views, what Gramsci referred to as the hallmark of hegemony. It’s usually a realisation that

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-12

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what is felt to be natural (‘this is my lot in life’) is a historical and social product – that is, not natural at all, and can therefore be changed. Embedded in Freire’s notion of conscientisation is expanded consciousness, yet what is this consciousness that Freire talks about? For aren’t we always conscious; isn’t it human to be conscious? The problem with the idea of consciousness is that some people think they’re conscious but others aren’t. It can easily be swamped with arrogance. As such, I prefer to think of this elemental as about expanding consciousness – to become more aware (a journey rather than a state) in a way that was not previously possible. It’s to unlearn how the world was previously viewed (that recognition that all perception is participatory), and to learn of seeing in a diferent way (the rolling over in bed). It’s to have assumptions disrupted and transformed. It often entails significant ah-ha moments as lights come on for people. It is similar in this phenomenological reflective practice. As an elemental of the practice, consciousness signifies that our whole way of viewing the world shifts through the kinds of practice I have outlined. If the brain is characterised by neuroplasticity, then consciousness is characterised by expansiveness. We can adapt how we perceive the world and expand our horizons, our assumptions, our taken-for-granted commonsenses. We can sense in ways that are not so commonly used. We can actually, through a participatory perception, consciously create new worlds.

To see historically and holistically . . . I sometimes imagine this expansion as one that also reaches backwards in time – doing the historical work required for shifting consciousness – while also reaching holistically to see both inwards and outwards, combining a rigorous precision with a panoramic overview. Expanding consciousness isn’t just about waiting for a mystical ah-ha in the present, it requires efort – mainly because efort is always needed to shift habits, re-structuring the tributaries of perception. Historical work is part of the stretching. It could mean doing archival work and talking to First Nations people or those who’ve lived there for a long time about the history of a place or bioregion. Such work implies seeing a place diferently, perceiving it historically, as always in movement. Again, it also calls for that holistic consciousness – focusing on parts, being precise and rigorous. Yet also opening up to see edges, overlaps, connections between – which implies a curiosity and wandering that sits alongside precision and rigour. Both/and. 116

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The necessity to see ‘with others’ It’s also worth repeating that within this phenomenological reflective practice expanding consciousness isn’t just the work of an individual. In many ways it’s a collective practice of bringing people into processes of seeing and conversation as groups. This practice actually pulls people into humility as they gradually start to realise how little they see alone, and how much more can be seen with others. We often go deeper with others, depth and breadth enlivened by the expansive and disruptive perspectives of others.

Derrida and the passion of not knowing is part of it . . . In the reaching for expanded consciousness, a humility flows through our souls infusing us with a gesture in the world of being comfortable with not knowing – or putting it in a slightly diferent way, being comfortable with a never-ending conversation with the world. Most social packages and social technologies are deployed in the social and ecological fields within a frame of ‘to know’, aspiring to some kind of certainty or control. It’s a worldview of seizing the world.1 Yet, in contrast, this phenomenological practice is enfolded in an attitude that Derrida calls the ‘passion of not knowing’.2 Our desire to expand consciousness is actually energised (that passion) by a constant curiosity in which we know there’s always more. It’s an understanding underpinned by curiosity, patience and discernment. In fact, our understanding that there’s always more is what keeps us open, curious, passionate even. To know is to close down, to settle, to imagine the issue is ‘settled’. It’s actually a place of ossification rather than living thinking.

Consciousness and the (social) body Yet this field of consciousness is beyond the mind. I suspect many people associate curiosity and consciousness with the mind, reinforcing the mind-body split of Cartesian duality. Yet, this phenomenological practice is alert to what is imagined as embodied consciousness, foregrounding what I called the ‘body’s intelligence’ in Essay 2. After all, as Andreas Weber reminds us, for Jung, the unconscious is the body, and so embodied work brings to the outer what is often of the inner 117

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unconscious.3 There is a clear sense that the body intrinsically knows what is good for it and conversely what will be devastating. Consciousness then requires perception of the body’s signs and signals. In fact, consciousness is often made possible through attention to the body. The body is the clue to inward emotions, in the same way that inward emotions shape the body’s gesture. As Weber reminds us, ‘there is fear that renders the body stif and immobile . . . there is care when the body opens and tenderly receives the other. There is play in its contagious, bouncing lightness.’4 It’s an intriguing thought to imagine how consciousness is linked to the social body – particularly the culture that makes up the fabric of the social body. What does it mean to think of the unconscious social body in the social realm? Does a capacity to see what the social body’s (a group, a relationship, an organisation, a community) unconscious is revealing tell us anything about the real desire for the social organism, it’s cultural gesture? Cultivating such a capacity points to the recognition that a social group cannot know itself just through talking because access to the unconscious is usually via feeling, and sensations, and giving attention to them. The mood of a group will almost definitely tell us more about its deep desires than what is being said. The feelings invoked in a place might help us be conscious about the spirit of a place more efectively than anything else. The way a group sits together, gives form to its culture of togetherness, might reveal a great deal. Such thinking highlights the difculty of consciousness. After all, the whole point of the unconscious is that it’s not easily present to us. Dreams, feelings in the body, imaginative work – all pathways into ‘reading’ the unconsciousness – thus become part of this practice.

Stretching consciousness – the parts and the whole in the ecological world Five of us had gathered at Stradbroke Island, of the coast of Brisbane. We’d gathered for two days of reflective practice and some days of writing. The Indigenous name is Minjerribah, meaning ‘place of mosquitos’, yet it’s also inhabited by a plethora of wildlife and during that wintery week, I would rise before dawn and pass several kangaroos as I made my way to the clifs overlooking Frenchman’s Bay. As the sun rose there was always a crescendo of bird and insect life and, if I was lucky, I’d spot a pod of whales passing by, and sometimes the day would also gift with dolphins, turtles or rays. 118

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I love winter because I rise daily before the light and can therefore experience dawn’s beckoning. In a Brisbane summer, a 4.15am dawn is just a little too early. But what is it about those wintery dawns? For me, there’s something about both the intensity of life that is visible, or making itself present in the rising of dawn, and my expanded consciousness of that aliveness. At dawn, intensity invites consciousness. The intensity isn’t so much about the crescendo or sheer numbers of creatures. It’s about being more conscious of the movement, the almost ‘silent transformative’ that is ever-present in life – of an obscuring darkness shifting to a candescent light, of a potent quiet transforming to, at times, deafening noise. During the pre-dawn and dawn movements, I can more easily sense my way into a world in movement, into aliveness. I say more easily, because this movement is always present, even if felt as absent. The absent-present foundations of a philosophy of Being actually collapses under a consciousness expanded philosophy of Becoming. In fact, the dawn, because of its intensity, appears to simply highlight this absent-present polarity. In this transition time of each morning, my consciousness is sharpened and expanded. In turn, I reconnect with the aliveness that is within me. I can even feel it now, as I write about it. For each of those reflective practice days on Minjerribah, the five of us put an hour aside to sit on a clif edge and focus our attention on the waves moving below us, moving towards us and then crashing onto the beach. We practised observing, writing down notes of what each of us could see and then talking together to make sense of what we’d observed. The exercise not only stretched our observation skills, but also expanded our consciousness. Moving between the polarities of focused and precise looking at the waves below, crashing on the beach, and peripheral and panoramic looking, aware that the waves were simply a visible manifestation of a movement from far away of-shore, each of us was stretched. Our consciousness expanded and opened to the parts and the whole, to see this part below us, a bounded bay, with a name, an identity, with particular characteristics that make it ‘this singular beach and bay’; but also, the whole – this bay as simply a manifestation of the whole, a whole ocean in which everything felt connected and in constant movement, recognising the beach will be diferent in form tomorrow. And then there was a moment when I experienced myself as not only separate, bounded as Peter, observing these waves, this beach, the ocean, but also as part of the whole, in relationship to everything else, as connected with waves, the bay, the beach, the ocean. To realise that this sense of connection is always potentially there, but is somehow blocked by a shrinking consciousness, is mind-expanding to me. 119

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Unsettling consciousness – the hermeneutic reversal The world of hermeneutics – the art of interpretation – has grappled with this relationship between the parts and the whole for some time. Think of when we read a book carefully. A good read encompasses what the seminal philosopher of hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer, refers to as a hermeneutical circle. A careful reading of the part – words, sentence, paragraph; the piecing together of a story incrementally, and with some rigour and attention. But then, as we do this, there’s also a sinking into, or a surfacing of a reading of the whole – you could say that a sense of the whole emerges. As long as the reader remains open – and is not reflexively in a critical mode – there’s a receptivity to what the author is trying to convey, or at least an interpretation of that. The reader is reaching for the key point, the narrative thread, the gesture of the book. This whole can most clearly be sensed when someone asks, ‘What’s the book about?’ Perhaps someone else ofers a diferent interpretation of the whole, and in turn particular parts are re-interpreted. It’s a circle, a relationship between parts and whole that is invigorating. In the process a reader’s consciousness shifts, is stretched. And with new readers, new interpreters, a collective read, even more so. Consciousness also shifts, not only with new interpretations, but also a new metaphor – which opens new possibilities, or a simile, which creates bridges to new understandings. As Rebecca Solnit reminds us, ‘It’s the reader who brings the book to life’,5 so again, we return to that theme of aliveness, and perhaps it’s the presence to reading that really matters, the only true place of being in an authentic hermeneutical circle, or a number of them. We can take the idea of presence a bit further. Derrida, that already mentioned and most fascinating French philosopher of deconstruction, never explicitly into hermeneutics, but most certainly an inheritor of that tradition,6 helps us in this, suggesting that there are at least two readings of any text. The first reading, as reading for the Truth – a movement through the hermeneutical circle, part-whole – coming back to the text, reaches for the author’s intent. In contrast, the second reading is a reading for the contradictions, fissures and tensions within any text. For Derrida, they are always there, undermining, or bringing more complexity to the so-called Truth of the first reading. Importantly – and here’s the thing about presence, and also the phenomenological step, this second reading is also an afrmation of something new, something that can arrive from a fresh living encounter with the text – the ‘reading-yet-to-come’. My key point is that a Derridean reading of text – as encounter – will not only stretch consciousness, it will also unsettle and disrupt 120

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to be potentially transformative. A true encounter with a living text, only possible through presence, stirs imagination, inviting or inciting a conversation with text and life! Bortoft refers to this encounter and process of receptivity as the hermeneutic reversal. Whereas, in the orthodox hermeneutic circle it’s still the reader, as subject, wilfully trying to interpret, make sense of and understand the text, the reversal invites something diferent. Bortoft adds that orthodox reading often involves assimilation (taking something and integrating it into what we already know) or appropriation (taking something into the field of what they already know and expanding it). It aligns with what philosopher of reading Michelle Boulous Walker suggests is an extractivist mode of reading, always extracting information, mining, scanning . . . for our instrumental purposes of knowing.7 In contrast the hermeneutic reversal leads to a transformation of understanding, an encounter with text that leaves the reader with a failure to understand. As such, the encounter with text is disruptive, potentially transformative. In this reversal the reader is not a subject wilfully trying to understand the text but is instead active in a receptive way. As Richard Palmer puts it: It means a reversal of direction from that one is accustomed to; it is not we who point to things; rather, things show themselves to us. This is not to suggest some primitive animism but the recognition that the very essence of true understanding is that of being led by the power of the thing to manifest itself.8 Clearly, this kind of reading of text (and, as we shall explore, ‘reading’ the social) requires a change of attitude. It is about becoming open to being addressed by the text. Open, receptive, on the edge; the reader not as the interpreter, but perhaps the reader as being interpreted.

Receptivity in the social field Let’s further consider the idea of a hermeneutic reversal in reading the social and ecological fields. What does it mean to approach a social phenomenon with an attitude of receptivity? How do we ‘read’ the culture of a social body so that it discloses itself? In a circular way, we come back on ourselves, for the ‘reading’, that is, the seeing and sensing, is the art of the invisible. It’s to unlock the elemental of observation – seeing and imagination – to see the cultural fabric that is creating the social. It’s to 121

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bring rigour to seeing the parts – listening to what people actually say, ‘the facts’, people’s text (not shifting to interpretation/commentary); noticing how people set up a room, lines, a circle; the aesthetic of the place; the place or centrality or marginality of technology. And then the whole – sensing the intention/s of the group, the social impressions, the social moods. Such practice also implies slowness, such that we are hesitant to leap to quick interpretations. What does it mean to position ourselves with a conscious willingness to not understand, to fail to see even, such that we remain receptive, open to disruption of our perceptions? I use slowness here carefully, not so much in contrast to speed (sometimes a necessity), but as a diferent mode to haste or rush. It’s really the cult of haste, linked to an attachment of efciency that undermines our capacities to perceive social phenomena accurately – particularly in the context of increasing complexity. Slowness in reading the social then is a purposeful approach to be more efective, aspiring to accuracy of seeing what’s unfolding combined with a humble awareness of our constant failing. Much like actual reading, if we reach to read social situations with a gesture of extracting information, accumulating ideas, then we are less able to listen deeply, without prejudice, suspend judgement and sink into a space of receptive discernment to new possibilities of what might be revealed.

Consciousness and ethical encounter with the Other There’s a tension here, because, on the one hand, expanded or renewed consciousness is something that appears to arise from a receptiveness as ‘we’ bring attention to the parts and the whole; but, on the other hand, it occurs in relationship with something. We come back to this challenge of the transformative encounter. In this sense, often there is something Other that triggers expanded consciousness. Our identity has always been more of less formed as both an expression of our imagined Self, but also in constant communication and relationship with an Other. It’s the state of inter-being. Think of the earlier stories – observing the ocean, experiencing the dawn. There was my desire to be in those places, and then some encounter, some relationship with ‘some-thing’ else. This too is true in the social sphere. Mostly this encounter occurs in living conversations with others. Not dead conversations, which can be characterised as lacking a quality of deep listening, 122

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of dialogue, a flow of connection, a movement. Not ones that are extractivist in nature, seeking something – information, love, friendship, a gateway, a resource. This is why we need one another, to dance to the ‘between-space’ that Martin Buber called dialogue. In this in-between space is the dance between the conscious and unconscious, the possibility of something fresh – what I’ve described as dialogue arriving, consciousness arriving, disruption or transformation unfolding. We cannot force it, create it, make it. We can only be receptive to this arrival, like conversation, like friendship, like anything alive that we do not seek to control. It’s in our ethical encounter with another – one infused with openness, not extraction – that we are enlarged, expanded. The shadow side of an ethical encounter is that we can also diminish one another, do violence. As such, expanded consciousness is an ontological event that disrupts who ‘we’, or the ‘I’ is through engaging the Other – refusing to suppress all forms of otherness into sameness, assimilation or appropriation. But encountering the Other, another, in an ethical way, is not always easy. During one of the Long Bay intensives I was sitting with Brad and Glen. We were reading Bill Bywater’s ‘Goethe: A Science Which Does Not Eat the Other’.9 Some of the article is tough going, not only intellectually, but emotionally. If read honestly, it takes the reader into shadow spaces. Drawing on the African American author bell hooks’ idea of how mainstream white consumer culture is hell bent on ‘eating the other’, thereby commodifying African American culture, Bywater invites the reader to reflect on how those of the mainstream can instead apprenticeship themselves to those on the margins. Brad, Glen and I shared stories of being ‘othered’, that is, pushed to the margins, and also of when we had othered others first. For me, it was somewhat confessional, aware of dark times during some of my youth, and on-going prejudices that are present within systems of racism and patriarchy that are both made by me and make me. But what the article points to is a way of expanding consciousness by being in purposeful apprenticeship-like relationships with those who experience the world from the margins, who are experiencing structural or cultural violence. Bywater is probing for that Levinas-like ethic here of ‘responding to the other’ – ethics as other.10 If we are not in relationship with, and responsive to, those who experience the world diferently, then our consciousness will not be stretched, our identity will not expand. It is probably why most people prefer to live in relatively homogenous neighbourhoods or networks surrounded by people who are similar. Linking to the previous elementals, if we can ‘see’ someone who is diferent, see them in the deeper sense of giving them attention, inquiring, understanding their history, patterns, ancestors, life-stream, then we have a small chance of ‘getting 123

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inside’ their world. Here, the place between what Buber called ‘I-Thou’ is a transformational space of expansion. It is a place where this observational and living thinking practice overlaps with dialogical practice. They are enfolded within one another. In their meeting, we can expand our consciousness, one that is supported by practice, ethics and rigour.

The Other of haunting histories Going a bit further and linking this exploration with what I said in Essay 4 about seeing the invisible, particularly the invisible traces of social movements such as socialism, feminism, intersectionality and so forth. I talked about being on the edge of seeing the present and the haunting histories (that these isms make visible and give voice to), and particularly being present to the appearance of those lines of oppression in the present. For me, acutely aware of the complexity of this work, I hold to several key practices. Some examples include: •

•

•

Making visible the history of atrocities against First Nation people, thereby acknowledging this history at the beginning of any social or ecological process. In Australia this is called ‘acknowledging First Nations People, Country and the ancestors’. Explicitly discuss the dynamics of the mainstream and margins in any social process, surfacing the reality of their existence, and giving permission to collectively notice what might be unfolding at any time. The mainstream might simply be those who at any time feel aligned with what’s going on, attuned and have a voice. They feel confident to speak, share, be themselves. They might, if unconscious also be dominating, filling space. The margins, in contrast, are those who feel less aligned, less attuned, are perhaps in disagreement or confusion, but don’t feel they have a voice. They’ve felt silenced by someone or the facilitator. Occasionally I step in and ask the group to step onto the rim of any social process, step out of the actual discussion or analysis unfolding and give attention to the process, the dynamic, the invisible gesture of the group. It’s an opportunity for the group to become more conscious of itself, where it’s going and therefore potentially shift the culture (usually the manifestation of the invisible).

However, and this is a key point in phenomenological reflective practice, despite the potent usefulness of what social movements – Indigenous resurgence, feminism, 124

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intersectionality – have taught, there’s always a moment when we think we have seen something. It is important this seeing and thinking is acknowledged, yet it’s ofering should be made humbly, tested in the social field through dialogue with an ethical openness that sits between seeing and uncertainty.

Consciousness and a social ‘system’ Probing further into this idea of consciousness and the social, particularly when we shine the light on our shadowy histories, I find myself in spaces where there are bruises. It is not easy. For example, as part of my sabbatical journey I kept alive the question of how I, as a white, heterosexual and cis-gender man could more inhabit an ethical expression of power in a world shaped by the violence of patriarchy? Here’s a strong question – one related to power, efectiveness and a system of patriarchy. The question returned to me some months later as the #MeToo campaign went viral around the world, sharing afresh stories of women’s experiences of sexual abuse and harassment. Power and efectiveness are deeply personal questions partly related to the internal soul dynamics of being in touch with the deepest creative parts of ourselves and making them manifest in the world. Yet, on the other hand, any question of power and efectiveness is laden with layers of privilege, complicity and systemic distress. Expanded consciousness in the social sphere has to be able to penetrate such layers. I give my attention to the ‘idea’ of patriarchy, after all it’s an idea that has a long history and legacy and has deeply permeated our beings and thinking; and yet at the same time right-wing nativist populist reactions are occurring around the world reversing movements towards the emancipation of those who’ve experienced structural oppression for centuries. Social justice and human rights, assumed as compass points for social ethics in my 20s and 30s, now in my 50s, are not ‘given’. I find myself fighting for them in the same way that I now see people again fighting to make patriarchy visible. And in this musing on patriarchy I also want to acknowledge the ancestors of the feminist movement, recognising their work, honouring the struggles, with literal blood spilt in the service of social justice. And perhaps more importantly, I acknowledge the blood being spilt daily by women in what Rebecca Solnit calls ‘life during wartime’.11 I write with deep respect. Yet, at the same time, I want to explore this elemental of consciousness in relation to patriarchy, using the idea of patriarchy as a way of thinking into ‘the system’. I’d like to think this is helpful because it helps penetrate the many complex elements of society that have historically, and still do, privilege men – women experience 125

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more domestic violence, manifest in their battered bodies and regular murders, they are paid less, have less savings and I could go on; conversely, I swan about in a state of complicity enjoying the fact that I can walk the streets with relative safety. However, the focus on patriarchy as ‘a system’ could easily misstep us into the ‘categorical trap’ – naming an abstract phenomenon rather than seeing a daily lived process – that becomes convenient for not thinking. It then becomes something ‘out there’ that I am not responsible for, blinding any obvious or subtle complicity. The word system is also a noun, masking patriarchy from being seen as an activity, or as a set of conscious and unconscious practices and patterns that are created by everyday activity. Consciousness, when shaped by abstract and ossified noun-like thinking, only sees patriarchy as a ‘thing’ (Goethe’s ‘object thinking’). Yet, this phenomenological practice, foregrounding the faculty of seeing movement, can help us become conscious of patriarchy as an activity, as living process (Goethe’s ‘metamorphic thinking’). Expanding consciousness certainly requires ‘seeing’ such everyday activity, and, for me as a white male, seeing my complicities, particularly in my silence, or my inattention to women’s silences or their voice (do I listen/ hear?). Am I aware of how much space I take up as a man? Is there a subtle pandering to male leadership in institutions I am a slave to? In what subtle way do I see women’s oppression and exclusions as primarily women’s work, or mine too? However, pushing further, even seeing patriarchy as an activity can lead to the rather mundane focus on activities that seem to miss the real issue at hand. Activity can still be located at an everyday, individual level, and I can avoid any sense of complicity by simply thinking that I am actively respectful of women, reflect on my behaviour and so on. I can feel good about myself. Kaplan, talking of another topic, argues that ‘focusing on the intention . . . not the ‘intention of the system’ but ‘the intention forming the system’ – is to focus on living activity; such intention is a verb, a doing, which produces the phenomenon, which becomes the phenomenon’s gesture’.12 Here the challenge, returning to living thinking, is to expand consciousness through this practice, into seeing the ‘coming-into-being’ of patriarchy as a living social-political phenomenon (not just an individual one). As already said, patriarchy does not exist as an abstract thing that sits ‘out there’ afecting all of us, creating us. To do this would be to get stuck with an ‘onlooker’s consciousness’, outside the phenomenon, looking in. Patriarchy becomes a noun, and then potentially a thing to knock people around with, a tool of violence in and of itself. This is not to say that the noun cannot be potent in women’s emancipation, after all, as Rebecca Solnit reminds us, one of feminism’s key contributions to women’s lives is the phrase, ‘it’s not you, it’s patriarchy’,13 ensuring women do not internalise blame for what men do and a system enables and sustains. 126

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In Essay 10 I will discuss the sensitivity of theory and particularly critical theory, but for now it can be said that theory both helps us see but can also ossify and disable us from seeing. The theory of patriarchy is a good example, for it helps us see gender relations, patterns of power and violence. But, as an abstracted idea, it can conveniently obscure or disable thinking our way into the phenomenon from the perspective of rigorous observation, radical freedom and full responsibility. Instead, consciousness in the social field requires us to step into reading the world, in this case, the world of gender relations and power, in a living way, the world as verb, but also from the perspective of seeing the ‘parts’ and the ‘whole’. What has unfolded in the ‘coming-into-being’ of a system of gender relations ‘as a whole’? What’s the gesture of patriarchy; what is the intention forming the system’ of patriarchy? Some questions arise: in everyday life think of a situation when you other someone of a diferent sex to you? Think of a situation when you compromise your sense of integrity around gender relationships? What is the ‘invisible intention’ of patriarchy as a coming-into-being system? When do you feel that you come into contact with that invisible intention? When does that invisible intention lead to a sense of activity that forces you to be less of yourself? When was it, perhaps in an unspoken way, that you felt you were working to an agenda that was not alive with respect and love? Significantly, there are diferent questions for diferent groups – as a white, heterosexual male, some of my questions are: How do I take responsibility for working with other white males to eliminate violence? How do I support men’s emotional literacy such that they can move beneath the surface rage and feel other emotions that can be made sense of? How do we build platforms, not for shame, but for conversation, full responsibility and accountability? Such questions aim to penetrate the usually unconscious gesture that is informing the system of patriarchy. I am not suggesting such a gesture can be defined, but the questions would lead to an awareness, a consciousness, of what is shaping us. Such consciousness in turn helps us resist any compromise, and turn towards the everyday, subtle and not-so-subtle violence that creates this system. The arising consciousness helps us each take more responsibility in guiding our own intentions, actions, attitudes and behaviours. What I sense, inquiring within myself, answering such a question, is that one of the intentions (and I’ll explore a more plural answer below) of patriarchy, an invisible intention, is to take me away from vulnerability. Even anger and rage, when it arises, blocks me from my own vulnerability and finding a true voice. Clearly men have a voice – this cannot be denied, but I suspect voice when aligned with violence is not 127

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authentic voice, but the voice of men shaped by a damaging patriarchy. No excuse. Full accountability. But helpful to see. Patriarchy forms a dry crust and hard shell around me, protecting me from others, separating me, barricading me from perceived, and occasionally real, violence. Men, caught in a toxic masculinity, manifest this most acutely. Unable to be vulnerable around thwarted desire – a woman says no to a sexual advance; or myself, as a young 15-year-old boy, turns my face away on the street from a man who clearly wants any reason for violence, and I don’t share that want, so I flee – such men have turned the shell into armour, an armour they are willing to bash others to death with in order to maintain it. Within this raging I can also discern not only a lack of willingness to turn towards vulnerability, but something else – something that mixes patriarchy with hyper-capitalism – that is, a thwarted right to act on desire. Naomi Klein names the invisible formative intention of hyper-capitalism Extractivism,14 and I wonder how much of this explains the rage of thwarted desire. Men, whose desire is entangled with their sense of rights to extract what they want – sex, a woman’s desire, her attention, her acquiescence – become weaponised armour. I always remember a phrase of Australian essayist Don Watson, they ‘let the iron into [their] soul’.15 As such, patriarchy seeps into my soul and, in the same way that instrumentalism corrodes all human relations, so patriarchy corrodes authentic, vulnerable, mutual relationships. Its intention is to separate, to alienate, to support silences, to prop up charged masculinities and deflated silenced femininities. Its intention is to soak into the flesh, desensitising the cells of our individual and social body, ensuring we react to one another, unable to listen, feel, perceive the ‘other’. It undoes vulnerability and promotes violence and white heterosexual men’s power over others. There’s a sense that we all fall asleep regularly. We look at the ocean and see a thing, not a living ecological activity, connected to the whole universe, one that we in turn are deeply connected to (after all, are we not mostly water ourselves?). We look at patriarchy and see it as a thing. We fall asleep. Consciousness implies awakening, and living thinking insists on staying awake, or on the edge of being awake and asleep, with more porosity between the two. Consciousness implies exploring unconscious bias, arrogance, unlearning, a willingness to see what we don’t know. Consciousness insists on expanding ourselves into the social logic and love of vulnerability. Ironically, here’s a place of personal and social power. At diferent times of writing this book, I have wondered about many other categories – trauma, climate change, class – and wonder what it might do if people, alerted by the noun, could see some ‘thing’ (object thinking), on the one hand, but then attend to the phenomenon with living thinking, expanding consciousness of the phenomena ‘coming-into-being’. 128

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In conclusion Consciousness is about opening up choices in the world: consciousness creates choices in how people interact in the world. Without consciousness people tend to go with the flow of habituated unconscious practices – subject to the political economy of attention without any awareness – or simply fall asleep. As such, consciousness is a crucial pathway to change. And there is a sense, from a holistic perspective, that if we are not conscious of the ‘whole’ when working into a social phenomenon then we only act in atomised ways. Our intervention does not work with the flow that life is demanding in a social situation. Transformative processes work with this holistic frame, trying to discern and support the intention already at work within a social situation, or at least, from an ethical perspective, making interpretation conscious, so people can act freely and responsibly, shifting direction. I like to think of transformation as flourishing. There’s a sense that to stop transforming is to stop flourishing, which is to actually be stuck. This resonates with my approach to thinking about ‘development’ and social-community practice. When students ask me for my definition or understanding of development, usually expectant of a sophisticated or academic answer, I usually pause, and suggest it is to ‘get un-stuck’. To be stuck is to be ossified, or settled, moving towards decay. If a group is in such a space, there’s no development. In contrast, to be alive is to be transforming, to be in touch with and working with the flow that comes from the inner desires of the group, community or organisation (or parts of them), or/and responding with agility to what’s happening to the group, community or organisation. Intentional and disciplined social practice requires a consciousness of this inner desire and outer forces, such that a group can be supported to get unstuck. It’s a simple, yet profound thought. To be conscious of stuck-ness and, in turn, find or sense the movement again, the energy of aliveness.

The coda: the four elementals and an ethical and anticipatory practice In some ways, all these practices, the elementals, are moving towards what I like to imagine as an ethical and anticipatory practice. To see aliveness and feel it within ourselves; to work from the ‘inside-out’; to see and sense ourselves into a social phenomenon, and to be on the edge of our seats, expanding our consciousness. This is to be anticipating all that is possible, to be birthing new ethical possibilities. 129

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To accurately see a living social phenomenon means we can start to see a pattern, an ‘in order to’ that is in the social patterning. And then, we can work with that in order to. The social situation has its own kind of integrity, which from an ethical perspective might be awful and violent, yet, our work is at least respectful of what is unfolding, and we can work ‘with it’, not ‘on it’, given the best interpretation made visible. As a practitioner, more than anything, this requires opening our heart up to what is, without pre-judgement and preconceptions. It’s rigorous of heart as well as head.

Notes 1 And in some ways this seizing the world mentality makes sense, as a maladaptive strategy to deal with the anxiety of climate change, pandemics, growing inequalities, biodiversity collapse, the decay of democracy. A control paradigm can be appealing. 2 James Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997), 338. 3 Weber, The Biology of Wonder, 106. 4 Weber, The Biology of Wonder, 127. 5 Rebecca Solnit, Recollections of My Non-Existence, (London: Granta, 2020), 114. 6 See Caputo, Hermeneutics, for discussion on this. 7 Walker, Slow Philosophy. 8 Bortoft, Taking Appearances Seriously, 105 9 Bill Bywater, ‘Goethe: A Science Which Does Not Eat the Other’, Janus Head 8, no. 1, (2005): 291–310. 10 Bill Bywater, “Goethe,” 291–310. 11 Solnit, Recollections of My Non-Existence. 12 Allan Kaplan, ‘Emerging Out of Goethe: Conversation as Form of Social Inquiry’, Janus Head 8, no. 1, (2005): 325. 13 Solnit, Recollections of My Non-Existence, 215. 14 Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything, (Melbourne: Simon &Schuster, 2014). 15 Don Watson, The Bush, (Melbourne: Hamish Hamilton, 2014), 5.

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III

Two stories of practice

So far, several vignettes, aka short stories, intertwined with ideas and theory have been written – about 50,000 words in all. Now it’s time to rest easy and engage two stories of this practice and a fourth and final interlude. The first story focuses on the social field; the second the ecological. Both stories have been held with much fidelity to what has unfolded, checked with others and are, hopefully, accurate. And again, more of a portrayal of the practice than any definitional explanation. Some readers might even have opted to start the book here. The final interlude rifs of François Jullien’s work and considers both COVID-19 and climate change. Enjoy.  

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-13

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A story and portrayal of practice in the social field – Hummingbird House

Introduction I am sitting at one of the two long dinner tables in the dining room of Hummingbird House. A dusk orange paints the sky outside, with beautifully tended gardens – loved by a few volunteers – bathes me in rest. I am relatively new here, on a steep learning curve. I’m wondering how community development can play a role in supporting families and communities navigating the pathway of palliative care, through end-of-life and after their child has died. Families are already my teacher. Introducing myself to a mother and father, their children in a complex looking chair beside them, a nurse nearby, I mention I’m new here, a community development practitioner. They ask what that is, and I explain that we’re not sure yet, but our intention is to work with families in ways that they are better supported or/ and connected in their neighbourhoods, their community. There’s an immediate resonance, and the father talks of the significance of a dad’s group he’s a part of, all with children living with profound complex disabilities. He talks of the space they have as dads, meeting perhaps monthly over a meal and beers, as a social lifesaver. I feel a warmth, an opening, a connection.

This is both a story of community development (CD) practice and a portrayal of phenomenological reflective practice in the social field, particularly the social field of paediatric palliative care and bereavement using a community development approach. The story and portrayal are about a tradition of work – understood as participatory community development, which I explain below – amplified, made more visible and alive by the phenomenological reflective practice. DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-14

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I intend to hold both the story – my story of what unfolded over a year of intensive practice, ‘full participation’ you might say, ‘right inside the work’; and also a portrayal of stepping back ‘onto the rim’ to try and see what we’re doing, what’s unfolding in the organisation I work for – Hummingbird House – and in the community development work. Clearly this is explored with full recognition of the limits of what one person can see, and therefore the limited perspective ofered in my story.

Background The story and portrayal are intimately linked to the work of a relatively new organisation, called Hummingbird House (HH). Opened in 2016, by a couple who fostered a child living with a life-limiting illness, HH was established as a hospice for children, the only one in Queensland (QLD), Australia; one of three in the whole of Australia.1 It’s a pioneer organisation, bringing together palliative care, paediatrics and hospice work. Located in one of the hub suburbs of Brisbane, Chermside, built purposefully on land owned by Wesley Mission Queensland (a large NGO), the hospice provides eight suites for guests (the name given to families who come to the hospice), providing a mix of in-house care, end-of-life care (holistic care in the hospice) and after-death care (participatory approaches to family-led afterdeath care, rituals/ceremony, care of the body) and on-going bereavement support. With a mix of 24/7 nurses, family support workers and access to specialised paediatric/palliative care services, the place is a welcome respite for many families and children. By children we refer to anyone 0–18 years old. Importantly, HH is located within the broader organisational umbrella of Wesley Mission Queensland and is also in partnership with the Queensland Children’s Hospital (QCH), which services children across QLD with life-limiting illness (about 5000 according to the most recent research).

A mandate and the challenge HH started a journey in thinking about community development as far back as 2017. I was first approached in my academic role as an associate professor in Community Development at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) by the Family & Community Support Manager, Elham Day (a friend and colleague in previous youth work). I was asked to be a listening ear as they ventured into a CD 134

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approach. An initial experiment stalled with an employed CD worker resigning shortly after starting. However, in providing some mentoring for that worker, and dipping into the literature of CD and palliative care, I became more and more curious. Here was a social field new to me, but it also seemed to be stirring some part of my soul. In 2019, Community Praxis Co-op, a cooperative I’ve worked with since its conception in 1998, was approached and hired by HH on a short consulting contract to help them understand what a CD approach to their work might look like. This required six months of intensive listening and dialogue, reviewing of literature and reports, analysis and synthesis into what we called an Issues and Options Paper, including key recommendations for moving forward. At the heart of HH’s desire to take a CD approach was: •

•

• •

Recognition that the current service approach could only reach a small number of families (with some 200 guests ‘on the books’, yet there were 5000 families with children living with life-limiting illness across Queensland) Recognition that HH had an ofcial state-wide mandate, and yet the hospice was seen by many as ‘the house’ in Chermside, with many accompanying issues of access and equity for those living at a distance (and not so far) Realisation that we couldn’t build more AU$10 million hospices across Queensland, so another approach was needed to reach that state-wide mandate Most importantly, a growing awareness within the palliative care space, informed by public health and health promotion approaches, that ‘community’ was a key component of care. This awareness was informed by analyses that the ‘professional’ management of end-of-life had been helpful to a degree but that it had in some ways undermined community capability in dying well/end-of-life. There was a growing insistent call for a ‘community turn’ – a reinvestment in nurturing community in people’s end-of, and after lives.

Adding to this analysis was also Community Praxis Co-op’s analysis – learned from deep listening – that many families who had a child living with life-limiting illness were overwhelmed by the medical and National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)2 necessities and that they were profoundly isolated socially. Friends, even family, either lived far away or sometimes retreated because they didn’t know how to be helpful. Research from La Trobe University, particularly their Healthy-Endof-Life Project (HELP) model,3 reinforced what was being learned – that community social norms often meant people neither knew how to ask for help, nor how to ofer help to people living in such situations. Analytically, a CD approach 135

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also suggests that needs can be linked to resources more rapidly and efectively when people have webs or networks of social relations (which is what ‘community’ is functionally) whereas if people have no or few social networks, then the only resources they have to meet needs are provided by professionals. Hence, also an over-reliance on transactional (those who are paid to service) rather than non-transactional relationships (friends, family, neighbours, others).

Positionalities As already shared, I started my relationship with HH as an academic, which then morphed into being a consultant with Community Praxis Co-op. However, in May 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic I resigned after 15 years in the academy and took on a 20-hour-per-week, one-year contract as a community development practitioner starting in July 2020 (now extended until June 2024). Importantly for this story, one of my first tasks was to recruit a second, part-time CD worker to form a team of two. Paul Toon joined in that role in September 2020, and the story of this work is one held by myself and Paul in partnership with Elham Day (our team leader) and other key staf across the organisation (some of whom are mentioned, and apologies to others who are not).

The community development work – drawing on a tradition and framework Paul and I structured the work according to a tradition and framework of community development practice with which we are both very familiar. Rooted in both a Gandhian tradition of non-violent, ethical practice, where means and ends are deeply aligned, and a Freirean tradition of dialogue, the framework (that is, a conceptual guide), is best articulated in the book Participatory Development Practice.4 At the heart of this book is a framework nested in five levels of practice. These comprise of: •

•

Implicate-level work – which is to bring ourselves, our souls, our creativity and gifts, with awareness of our own complexes, frustrations, motivations and so forth, into the work Micro-level work – characterised as ‘joining’, or one-on-one relationship building in which deep listening, story, dialogue and listening for generative action themes are key practices 136

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•

•

•

Mezzo-level work – sometimes characterised as ‘together’, which involves nurturing relationships into participatory action groups, small (small is beautiful), in which the private is made public (through public collective action) Macro-level work – involving more organisationally oriented practices, leaning towards sustaining and structuring the work through internal and external partnerships Meta-level work – which we will hardly touch on in this story, but refers to the network, federation or alliance building work that moves work ‘beyond the local’ into regional, national or/and international movement building work.

Phase 1: July–October 2020, listening, relationship building, internally (HH), externally (families and other stakeholders) – sense making . . . Drawing on this framework, during the second half of 2020 Paul and I engaged in implicate and micro-level work. The implicate involved coming to terms with the reality of this kind of palliative care work. For example, for myself, this necessitated attending a grief practice, doing some personal work linking this public work at HH with some of my own personal journey through losing family (a three-year-old brother) and close friends (just recently to cancer). It involved building a more conscious relationship with grief and death and recognising the personal and professional motivations of being in this kind of work. More is said on this below in the interlude on a grief practice. The micro-level work involved reaching out to community and the organisation to meet people, listen to their stories, dialogue and hear possible action themes. For myself, this meant being at the hospice a day or two per week meeting workers, sitting at lunch or dinner to meet families who were guests, going out and meeting people in their places (neighbourhoods and workplaces). This level of work is not just about building relationships. Importantly, it includes listening for generative action themes. As practitioners, our questions included: Where does there appear to be energy that might generate collective joining and momentum?, What seeds can we see that are already growing, that we can simply water and tender? In a sense, this is where our community development work intersects with phenomenological reflective practice. We attempt to discern, or see and sense, what’s already alive, from the inside-out. Certainly not imposing any kind 137

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of model, programme or innovations onto the energies/seedlings that are already emerging, or could be. Partly, it involved sensing what’s also alive within us as workers, what energises us, what inspires us. I am about to drive hours and hours west of Brisbane, accompanied by Hiroshi, one of the personal care workers. We are taking a young man and his mum home – and fitting them both, his wheel chair and all their gear requires the HH van. I arrive early Saturday morning and as I wait for the mother and young man to be ready, I notice the beautiful practice of nurses and Hiroshi attending to details. Food, sweets, water, medications, strapping down the wheel chair with profound attention to safety – and so much more. There are conversations around toilet stops, and smoko breaks (for the mum). The nurses and personal care workers are deeply present, their practice one of care. It feels good to be part of the caring world.

Reflection One Building on this early seeing and sensing work, August–October 2020 involved a huge learning curve, learning new language (particularly in the health sector), understanding a whole new social field or intersecting ones (palliative care, grief/ bereavement work, disability-related work). While I could focus on many aspects, this first reflection names four key noticings. First, in attending one of the ‘annual education days’ – which included all the HH staf – the general manager, Fiona Hawthorne, opened what is known as ‘town halls’ with the words, ‘we are now wanting to move towards a community development approach, and “The Hospice is not the House”’. Her words held two key things: one, that here was the mandate from the top so to speak, giving Paul and I some legitimacy in generating a new way of working, alongside the service-world of on-the-floor nursing. And second, the mantra – which has continued to serve us well – ‘The Hospice is not the House’ provides a useful lever to invite our colleagues to shift the gaze of practice beyond the walls of the building (which has provided to be difcult – discussed below). Second, the Community Praxis Co-op recommendations had already brought to attention the possibility of re-thinking what has been known as holistic needs assessment (HNA). On intake, all families are invited to a 2–3-hour process of needs assessment which enables HH workers to understand all 138

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sorts of dimensions of the guests’ lives (the medical, social, economic, educational and so on), as well as to formulate some priorities. However, within community development, needs are a difcult and somewhat debilitating starting point for any discussion. Informed by both narrative approaches and more assets-oriented CD approaches, Paul and I, in collaboration with other key staf, noticed that this could be done diferently. A dialogue was initiated which involved shifting both the language and the techniques and tools to do this assessment. As such, a more participatory holistic assessment (PHA) process was co-designed across teams. A shift from HNA to PHA. The removal of the word ‘needs’, and inclusion of ‘participatory’. Technically, the starting point for the PHA became social mapping with a family, using a visual tool that all could see and work with. The visual mapping process was participatory in the sense that there was a shift from professional workers at HH assessing family social networks (something done ‘to them’) to both parties – families and professionals ‘seeing’ in a visual way what social resources people had. Third, we noticed that, in alignment with the predominant language of needs, people talked a lot about ‘helping people’. Classic service-delivery language. ‘We’, the professionals are here to ‘help’ the clients/customers/ guests. In the course of a short dialogue during an educational day, Paul and I suggested that from a CD perspective we avoid the language of helping, and prefer the word helpful and the accompanying question, ‘How can we be helpful?’ (in contrast to ‘How can we help?’). A subtle yet significant noticing and invitation to shift energies and intention. From ‘for’ you to ‘with’ you. Fourth, we noticed a certain kind of urgency within the culture of HH, driven by emergencies and a culture of genuine responsiveness to crisis/need, particularly around end-of-life care. This was most manifest in the many attempts by Paul and I to collaborate with some colleagues – failing, simply because scheduled meetings failed to take place. The urgency of crisis-oriented service demands in people’s jobs meant that a principle that Paul and I had wanted to enact – that we only move forward on initiatives if some colleagues work with us – was proving to be a challenge. People’s work was full with those service-demands. You could say that we started to notice that movement, flux, flexibility was the predominant gesture of the organisation. In December, in a state of frustration over point four, Paul and I felt that the only way forward was to adapt our practice, that is, let go of the principle of only 139

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forging forward on initiatives if colleagues would work with us. The principle was proving to be a barrier for generative work, and so we ‘let it go’. We shifted our practice to moving forward in our work, and ‘inviting’ colleagues to join us in the work we were doing. Again, a subtle yet significant shift. In doing this, we were aware of the risks of moving too fast, not bringing other workers along on the community development journey. These first noticings are still living within us as we work to see and sense the organisational gesture – what language, energies, metaphors, intentions are enfolded in what people do – their ‘practice’. In a sense we were trying to see the invisible, which in the social and organisational field is often the culture of an organisation – that which we rarely make conscious or see. It is remembering day, a tradition that has evolved since the beginning of HH. It is a full Sunday put aside for those who are bereaved, who have lost their children, to come and pay respects. To ‘lament the dead’, as James Hillman has put it.5One of the old trees in the garden has been tended carefully in a way that individuals or families can come and hang postcards or letters they write to their lost ones. Spaces have been curated at the tree to put pictures of the loved but lost ones. Some 30 of us sit in a circle and Elham holds the space, inviting people to sing a small song in another language, a rhyme, and he speaks some words of welcome. A sacred space, a community of the bereaved is forming. It is a hospitable space for parent, carer, a grandfather, a young sibling. Each, or most, in turn speak into the space saying some words, naming the name of the dead child. Someone says, ‘I put this day aside each year to come and remember, to say her name to all’. Many cry, a few weep. There is a solidarity of mourning. It is deeply moving.

Phase 2: November 2020–April 2021 – conceptualising and implementing a Community Development Programme Framework This phase, only noticed in hindsight, started when we realised we’d been listening, connecting and learning a lot. Now we did some sense-making – which is always present, but we did it with focused intention. Hence, we stepped back and conceptualised a community development programme framework based on what we’d heard – a programme aligned which accompanying the pre-existing energies of change as it was observed – ‘held lightly’ but which provided intentionality and 140

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directionality to our work. Our directions aligned as much as possible with the germination of seeds planted in Phase 1, based on what we’d heard from families and internal/external stakeholders. Part of the felt need to conceptualise a community development programme – or version 1 of it – was both to give order to our practice and communicate more intentionally and explicitly with other stakeholders what we were doing. This fivefold CD Programme Framework consisted of: • • •

•

•

Programme 1 – working with clusters of families, where we had noticed people lived close to one another (neighbourhood level) Programme 2 – working across geographies (that is, non-locality), but with families who had shared concerns/issues, such as NDIS, access to hydro-pools Programme 3 – working at local government authority (LGA) level, both in family and community-centred ways within the LGA boundaries, but also working with other stakeholders in those LGAs – particularly local government CD ofcials and local neighbourhood/community centres, to sensitise them to the issues families linked to HH were dealing with Programme 4 – identifying key partnerships at a regional, state or national level that would be essential in progressing the work. For example, links to the QLD Neighbourhood/Community Centre Network, or/and Community Development Queensland (CD QLD) where we could find other centres/workers keen to collaborate with us, or Palliative Care Queensland (PCQ) Programme 5 – importantly, we realised we needed to organise a set of projects that supported our conscious and intentional engagement within HH itself, an internally oriented set of projects re-oriented towards a CD approach.

Within each programme area we identified possible projects that could emerge if energies continued to match necessity or interest. For example, in Programme Area 5, projects included: • •

•

Reorienting the HNA to PHA (as discussed above) A monthly internal newsletter about community development where we could share stories and pictures of what we were doing with nurses, family, support workers, etc. Input in team/educational days about what CD could bring to HH.

Importantly, this programme framework also enabled us to start reporting to management about our work, that is, meet some key performance indicators (KPIs) in 141

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a transparent and accountable way. This included accounting for our hours on all projects, ensuring our work didn’t become ‘invisible’ to the organisation. Projects started to be formed. I have been in a long phone conversation with a mother of a young child who is connected to HH. She was happy to talk with me, share her story. She’d preferred not to meet with me in person. The mother shares how her young daughter is so immune-compromised that they stay home – occasionally her husband, herself and the child go to a café to get out. Otherwise, they work on-line, at home. They’ve just purchased, with NDIS funding, a special beach wheelchair, and that makes her heart sing. We talk of their social connections, and yet there are none with the extended family living interstate and COVID amplifying all sorts of distances and porous borders made more concrete-like. I am aware I’m in my practice, listening deeply, sharing stories, attending to possibilities, yet in my soul I feel a profound sense of uselessness. I am useless to this family, this mother. I clamour for words that might seem helpful, yet the truth is I feel overwhelmed. Opening a door in my heart, I start to wonder if this longing for community in my life colonises my worldview, and others do not have this longing. Perhaps this family are okay as a solitary unit. Yet, even in that opening of the heart door, I find myself saying to the mother, ‘you are living with this duality – on the one hand loving your daughter to bits, and yet also, already mourning, something that started from the moment of realisation that she will live a short and difcult life’. She replies that ‘this is exactly right, and thanks for naming it, saying it’. She is silent in her grief, as am I.

Reflection Two Two points are highlighted in this second reflection. First, building on our noticing of the excess of flexibility and responsiveness within the culture of the organisation, we started to reflect on the implication of the polarity of flexibility versus structure. Our noticing was that there was so much flexibility, a responsiveness to the necessity of the moment (a family in need, an ambulance arriving with a child about to die) that it was hard to structure up intentional work that was more pro-active and non-crisis oriented. We also noticed the powerful centripetal forces inwards. Energies of workers were constantly being drawn towards the House despite the growing awareness that the ‘Hospice was not the House’ and the implications 142

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of this – such that families who visit the House or/and stay on average two weeks per year, still live 50+ weeks of their year in their communities. Fortunately, as part of reviewing HH’s work in 2020, alongside the CD recommendations made by Community Praxis Co-op, there had been the formation of a Hummingbird House @ Home (HH@H) team, led by the first clinical manager of HH, nurse practitioner Kelly Oldham. This team, more or less aligned with the CD approach, is committed to visiting families in their homes, and exploring how better services could be provided in-situ. Second, Paul and I also noticed that despite our long experience in CD, the work was proving to be very complex. I will share a few stories of actual practice below, but within one piece of work, in which five parents and carers sat in a circle with Paul and I sharing their experiences of the NDIS, a key word for them was ‘complex’. Their children have complex illnesses, disabilities, needs. Their lives are complex: 24/7 caring roles, navigating a bio-medical world that is all consuming, alongside a draining NDIS system. Their social worlds have mostly collapsed, and they shared how ‘we are totally isolated’. Yet, complex was their keyword. And for Paul and myself, this reality of their children’s lives, flowing into their family lives, also percolated into the work accompanying them. Quite simply, for example, to enable this gathering of five parents and carers, there was the need for nurses to be attentive to their children so they themselves could be fully present, alongside volunteers and other workers, to attend to siblings of the children. The space needed to be accessible and welcoming. It certainly isn’t just a case of invite people ‘to a meeting’. As such, the complexity of the work – together with the complex issues for children and families – is slow, fragile, careful and resource-intensive. This kind of experience of gathering of families also highlights a fuzzy edge or complex relationship between a community development approach (underpinned by capacity building) and service delivery. What is clear in this reflective practice is the necessity to build a regular rhythm of stepping back and observing what’s going on at every level of a complex system. Further reflecting on these two noticings, the practice involves: • •

Observing/sensing what’s happening within the work of groups of families, in the House itself, and then the broader system (of partnerships) Making what’s unfolding as a social gesture more conscious (the metaphors and language used, the practices of decision-making, responsibility/intentionality) enables an adaptive social practice that is also aligned with aspirations 143

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•

Being attuned to what’s alive, what’s growing from all the seeds being planted, and then tending this in ways that enhance the possibility of social efectiveness (consider the image of too much water (efect) on a plant which can undermine efectiveness).

Interlude within the interlude – a grief practice I have already mentioned the implicate method of community development – to understand self in relation to the work. This implicate is aligned with a reflective practice that doesn’t separate our private and public worlds with any harsh line, that recognises we come to ‘the work’ as human beings, a mix of vulnerable and strong, frail and resilient, conscious and complex, professional and bounded, yet porous. As such, wading into this work of community development and the world of the dying, I found myself encountering a new kind of practice. Early in my new job as a CD practitioner at HH I was invited to participate in ten two-hour sessions of an on-line course on grief, hosted by Dr Jo Cacciatore.6 Well, I thought it was about grief, and then realised it was about grief work, but discovered the idea of a grief practice. In this book I have already talked of the characteristics of a ‘practice’ – an intention with an idea behind it, a regularity and rhythm (that is, it’s not a practice if done as a one-of). A practice needs practise. Through my work at HH, I discovered the necessity of a grief practice – not to just work efectively at HH, but to live a full life. So, my reflective practice led to an acknowledgement that in my CD and palliative care/bereavement space there is a need for a new intentional practice – a bringing to consciousness to what I see in my soul, my personal-familial history. Practices, bounded, yet connected, a thread of aliveness coming from within myself. A grief practice with ritual space, not a model (of how grief should unfold, a kind of stuck Kübler-Ross imposition of grief norms), but an intimate, open, hospitable responsiveness to the inner grief world. This grief practice – that I would attend to regularly – meant stopping, heading to a ritual space to again honour the dead, say their name, cry tears of sadness, talk to them with a sense of profound connection and embrace a world where we cannot control anything to do with life/death.7 I also started to notice that this grief practice was not only about my own story, but an expanding conscious awareness of a broader and deeper grief, a solastalgia for the planet and wildness being destroyed – the millions of animals killed during 144

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Australia’s terrible 2019/2020 bush fires, grief in relation to a natural world being eaten alive by the claws of huge, hungry, insatiable machines. I sensed a layer of rage and anger that lived just below my cellular emotional surface that was about grief, easily pricked, and now conscious enough for me to dialogue with. I started to notice that rage and anger were often expressions of grief and I could come unstuck by turning towards my grief. Stepping into grief, noticing what was wanting to be felt within my body (for again, isn’t the body the unconscious?) was a necessity of this world and my life. Grief as a practice. I am accompanying one of the long-term community development ofcers of Townsville Council. She’s a champion of bringing a growing awareness of palliative care into the community development work in the region. Today, we are in her four-wheel-drive tracking through the dusty paths of the huge local cemetery – called the Belgian Cemetery. She drives to the far-end, and believe me, on a winter yet steaming hot tropical day I am glad we’re not walking. We arrive at a space that has been dedicated for burying children, and we wander the small plants and shrubs that have been planted to make the place beautiful, acknowledging the headstones memorialising short lives. We notice the small artefacts hanging from a tree or placed among the roots – something that usually the tenderers of the cemetery don’t allow. We walk towards a covered area painted beautifully by First Nation artists – and the worker tells me the story of the First Nations community creating this special gathering space – for they are here regularly saying goodbye to their dead. I sit there wondering what it is to dialogue with the dead – a conversation that is slow, careful, gentle, so that the final encounter is not a big shock or surprise. I am heartened that in this big city, a playground for those wanting to visit the dying Great Barrier Reef, a heartland of Australia’s military bases – the dead are honoured, and their place of burial is cared for.

Phase 3: embedding the programme framework – nurturing mezzo-level work; and intentional regional development work By March 2021, we were seeing some seeds of micro-method grow. Two stories are worth sharing, as examples in Programme Areas 2 and 3. Story 1 is about us bringing together some families who have the shared community of interest around their experiences of NDIS. Our ‘practitioner analysis’ was that it would be useful to bring some families together who had done 145

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reasonably ‘okay’ with their NDIS (the actual text we used was ‘okay’) – a small group – and to engage in a collective narrative process.8 This involved the five parents/carers sharing what is known as Story 1 – the story of pain, sufering, difficulty in relation to the issue at hand – NDIS. Paul and I documented what people said with rapid note-taking. Then we opened up the second story – the story of people’s capacities, learnings and ‘practices’ that enabled them to access an okay package from NDIS. As such, we unearthed the rich wisdom that these people had learned that they might not even be conscious of, surfacing profound lessons. Again, we documented what people said. As part of the group conversation there was also an agreement that Paul and I would document what had been shared, check it with the group (validation) and then we would share it with other families and invite them to a larger gathering on the experiences of NDIS. As such, we were now importantly in a partnership with this group of families/carers, planning a larger community education event. Subsequent meetings have been co-facilitated by myself and one of the parents from this initial group. Importantly, this mezzo-level work led to two key things. First, this shift to partnering with families in co-design, planning and working. This signified for the rest of HH a clear diference between service-delivery land (nurses working on the floor helping/dealing with immediate and real needs; family support workers responding to psycho-social needs) and community-development land, one in which people’s resources, not just needs are surfaced, and where decisions are made together where possible. Story 2 is focused on the LGA area of Toowoomba with Paul leading a process, and intentionally collaborating with one of the family support workers – Taki Langlasse. This involved several months of micro-method work with families living in the region, workers in an adult hospice, Toowoomba Regional Council CD ofcers, local community centre workers and many others. Gradually things came together as Paul nurtured agreements and purpose around bringing some families together who expressed an interest in meeting one another, sharing their experiences and doing some asset mapping around how inclusive Toowoomba was for their children and how they were doing socially. Here is a genuine step away from the ‘Hospice as the House’ – to have families meeting in their own communities, engaging in collective conversations and building collaborative webs of connection that link the many resources that exist in Toowoomba for families. Both stories are indicative of normative, mezzo-level work, intersecting with macro-level work within the CD framework articulated early in this chapter. As already mentioned, our experience of this work is of the complexity and resource intensity that is necessary to be in partnership with families and relevant stakeholders. 146

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During this phase, based on the observations mentioned above, we also forged ahead in regionally oriented work, visiting the four regions in our ‘Listening, Learning and Connecting’ initiative. I am inhabiting my role as a practitioner, a grassroots practitioner – not an academic anymore, not an associate professor, nor a consultant. A worker, yet a worker who finds his work bounded by some notion of professional yet realising the porousness of this identity marker. To encounter dying, to journey with the bereaved is a human endeavour. I find myself opening to the journey of being a human professional, decolonised from the language and worldview of a professional. To re-find the solidarity and sociality of a humanity sharing in the inevitable – death and grief.

Reflection Three Crucial to this reflective practice is ‘fidelity to the actual’, that is, noticing what’s actually happening – ‘the facts’ we might say – rather than being stuck in a world of either the conceptual or the aspirational (what we’d like to see happening, in contrast to what’s actually happening). Hence, importantly in mid-May we noticed that we spent a lot of time planning and operationalising regional visits. However, this work was invisible in our CD Programme Framework. Pausing and examining what we were actually doing led us to replace ‘Programme One: Working with Clusters of Families’ – which we noticed had not produced any generative projects – with ‘Programme One: Developmental Work in Regions’. It’s a typical ah-ha moment when you realise the conceptual needs to change to align with the phenomenal – the actual. Again, it is to work from the inside-out with an integrity of practice that honours the work unfolding rather than imposing a model on the phenomena of practice. We also started to be aware of the importance of patience and the need for an investment of significant worker energy. First articulated by Paul after a meeting with one of our colleagues located at Caloundra Community Centre,9 acknowledging patience was a way of making us more conscious that this work seemed to be slower that what we were used to when working with other population groups. The complexity and resource-intensive nature of the work required patience because the pace of the work was initially thwarted by frustration, a sense that things were not moving, or were going backwards. In some ways, patience was a way of expressing how we, the workers, could become a problem unless we were attentive to our inner world and motivations. The noticing of the necessity of energy investment was also helpful, recognising that to support families – through 147

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community development – it wasn’t enough to send an email or a text, but required very energetic, pro-active engagement. People’s lives, overwhelmed by multiple burdens (a phrase used by several families), wouldn’t easily change.

Discussion: reflection on reflective practice First, focusing on the elemental ‘observation’ within phenomenological reflective practice, I pause and wonder what it means to notice some things, some processes. Inevitably it means not noticing others. Recognising that perception is an act of participation, and that we therefore either consciously or unconsciously foreground and background certain ‘things’ is to acknowledge that we rarely see the whole. But it also means acknowledging many other things. For example, that one person, or even two (Paul and myself) will only notice certain things. Other people would see other things. Observation’s purpose is partly to make people, groups, organisations more conscious of their own practice (what they do), the organisational gesture (their language, metaphors, energies, directions, explicit and implicit intentions). More people engaging in observation, then, enhances the possibility of consciousness. To see is to then have choices, bring agency into the sense-making seeing of what’s unfolding, or could possibly unfold. This portrayal of a reflective practice in a newly emerging community development programme only highlights a glimpse of possibility – what Paul and I have noticed. This of course begs the question of what might happen if two or three more people bring intentional observational practice into their work of reflection. But what if more time was put aside, with more people to not only plan activities and projects, but to reflect on what’s going on – the language used, the blockages, the spaces of aliveness, growth, adaptation? Secondly, what of the elemental of aliveness, working from the inside-out? To be alive is to be in movement. Movement in the living world is often understood through the lens of polarity – growth and decay, levity and gravity, the polarity of flexibility and structure already mentioned. Too much emphasis on structure leaves a living plant vulnerable to strong winds. Flexibility alongside structure enables a tree to sway and stay strong. So, it is in the social field. Observation and intervention as a key polarity – one and the other. Yet, a world awash with action, activity and intervention, with little time, space or care for observation, is non-aligned with living process. Hence many action-oriented organisations, which lack intentional reflective space that is aligned with core values, end up undoing the very world they long to make.

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Yet, the polarity of observation and intervention can mask the irony of observation as an intervention. To see is to shift a relationship to something; ‘to be seen’ invites the same profound shift. Many of us know that feeling, to be seen. To witness or be a witness to something builds a solidarity, an intimacy, which in turn changes things, for to shift the thread and quality of relationship is to shift the social phenomenon. Quantum physics, at a microscopic level, while hardly understanding this phenomenon of observation changing everything, has revealed it to be thus. At a social level we are yet to understand how relationship and entanglement, amplified through intentional observation of what is unfolding, shifts things in subtle and yet profound ways. Nevertheless it appears to do so. And so, I am left wondering how this writing, as an act of reflection, documenting observation shifts the practice. It highlights the possibilities and risks of bringing attention and reflection to what is going on. That act in and of itself shifts things.

A conclusion Perhaps it’s presumptuous to write about a story of work that is just over a year old (at the time of writing). But perhaps it’s even more important because how we start something often determines how we finish it. Paul particularly loves the mantra, ‘your first day on the job is the beginning of planning for your last day’, recognising the interplay of beginnings and endings. Therefore, to bring intensive reflection alongside action during the formative phase of initiating a social programme that has a community development focus is to give it a greater chance of efectiveness. In a sense, too much efect can undermine efectiveness (e.g. again, imagine too much watering of a plant killing the plant), and in the same way, too much activity can undo the work. To integrate action with reflection, alongside a dialogue between the ‘actual’ (fidelity to what’s unfolding) and concepts (ideas/theory) is to enhance the possibility of us working with an integrity of practice (community development practice, reflective practice, grief practice and so forth) that is considerate of both efectiveness and ethics.

Notes 1 Opened in 2016, Queensland Kids was established in 2011 to start the process of forming the hospice. 2 NDIS is the Australian social policy that provides support for people with disabilities.

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François Jullien, climate change and COVID-19

Some years ago, while in a cofee shop conversation with me in Oxford, David Harding – a friend and colleague of Allan and Sue – mentioned the work of François Jullien. Somewhat excited, we both wandered over to Blackwell’s bookshop and there was a copy of one of his classics, Silent Transformations.1 Ever since, I have regularly returned to and immersed myself in his ever-expanding opus. Jullien’s work is dense, filled with beautiful imagery and commentary depicting the limits of Western or Continental philosophy while always disrupting that trace of thought with the alternative of classical Chinese thinking. After all, Jullien is a Sinologist. At the heart of his argument is the idea that Western thought, consumed with a state of Platonic Being, has given up on understanding life as process – as Becoming. Life has therefore got stuck in the contrast between a life here and some idea of the afterlife, or ‘perfect life’ or ‘true life’ – as if our lives are a dim reflection of that perfection; and whereby the ‘theme of “true life” will now endlessly project its shadow over “living” and darken it to the points of closing access to it’.2 Unable to think about living as process, Western thinking struggles to grasp life as a verb. As such, Western thinking tends to get stuck in those ‘states of being’ (Platonic Being) as oppositional binaries such as life and death, absence and presence. While not against such concepts as absence and presence, Jullien likes to think of them as one and the same ‘thing’ in a state of ambiguity, as unfolding process, and polarity – a constant becoming. Taking the presence and absence idea as an example, Jullien’s argument implies that living life through the lens of processivity and polarity is to understand them as being enfolded within one another. They are not oppositional states of being, or if conceived in that way there is an inevitable crisis – like thirst or hunger returning after being satiated with water or food. However, to think with processivity and DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-15

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polarity is to understand, in a nuanced way, that life is strategic and vital when we can hold the ‘in-between state’ that comes from awareness of the ambiguous interdependence of them. There is, then, a need to not lose sight of this relational and processual way of strategically being in the world. With Jullien’s thinking in mind, I have often wondered about being strategically in the world with a relational and processual worldview during this historical moment where so many processes that were invisible have now become visible. _______________________________________________________ Climate change is the huge one, the now ever-present shadow of catastrophe for humans and so many other species. Jullien’s Silent Transformations explores what it means to see climate change as a process of becoming (not being) over many decades – which was invisible until it wasn’t. For Jullien, climate change has been like ageing, where there’s a silent transformation of ageing, hardly noticed in everyday life, and then one day – perhaps experienced as an ‘event’ – that process becomes very visible. To look in the mirror and suddenly ‘feel old’. Jullien suggests it’s much the same when ‘falling out of love’. Falling implies a state of being – from one state of being in-love to another state of being out-of-love. But, of course, the sense of those two states disguises what is process over time, silently ‘sneaking up’ on a couple perhaps, and then reveals itself as ‘I am out of love’. Such is the case when observing the process of climate change. Seeing climate change, not as a state of being – for example, a crisis (like an event, which is just the seeing) – but as a process of becoming enables us to bring more consciousness to seeing/sensing what has been and is unfolding, and how we’re participating in this unfolding. Seeing climate change through a phenomenological reflective practice that takes process seriously involves understanding it as living process, always in movement, contextual, adaptive; understanding it through the lens of parts (increasing extreme weather events – collapse of biodiversity, all our daily actions and activities, fossil fuel companies’ resistance to policy change) – and the whole (the emergent phenomenon), from finity (now) and infinity (past-presentfuture), can potentially bring new wisdom. And of course, this practice insists on us not seeing/sensing from the perspective of outside looking-in – some distancing scientific endeavour – but understanding as full, embedded participants, such that we can step into ethical relationship with ‘the earth’ (which feels almost too abstract, for the earth is trees, animals, birds, the mycelian world of fungi and in fact is particular trees, animals, birds and so forth).3 If we can see nature naturing (which is all that is happening) – responding to what humans and nature are doing – then we can step into the rigour of freedom and responsibility.

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Returning to that originary question ‘Can a practice that foregrounds observation bring healing to the world?’ is to step into the question of how this practice links to the globalising and localising climate justice struggles. What is its relationship to local and global change movements, and what is its contribution? However, before answering that question, I’d like to risk exploring how this practice might also inform our thinking about COVID-19, for I suspect the phenomena of climate change and COVID-19 are linked. _________________________________________________________ Let’s start with COVID-19. A crisis: indeed, real, material, quite literally undoing our worlds almost overnight. I cancelled a trip to the USA in mid-January 2020, sensing something serious was unfolding. New discourse – for example, lockdowns, social distancing – and mind-blowing decisions emerged, such as closing whole economies and mobilising massive government interventions from governments that were previously committed to a ‘small state’. Clearly, COVID-19 is a diferent kind of crisis to climate change, springing up at us – more like an event – insisting on fast change. At first glance, the pandemic appears diferent from climate change – which is experienced as a slow silent transformation. Reflecting on what’s unfolded during the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of this phenomenological reflective practice, I remember early on in 2020 being on a somewhat wild ride of sense-making. People were quick to develop viewpoints and perspectives; people rapidly became attached to positions. I was one of them. I was voraciously reading all I could – essays, news, social media opinions. Along with a friend and colleague, I was relatively quick to step into the fray with a publication titled ‘Community development ‘yet-to-come’ during and post the COVID-19 pandemic: from Derrida to Zubof’ in the Community Development Journal.4 Then, in joining a global on-line programme over several months hosted by The Proteus Initiative, I started to slow down. To become less hasty to form opinions, take positions, provide analyses. I was drawn into this practice again, exercising those sensory muscles and sense organs – to move between observation and interpretation with more consciousness. Ideas, analyses, positions formed, yet held lighter, again returning to observation, sensing more clearly into all my moving feelings, sensations, thinking. Time started to stretch, and I realised with a new humility that in many ways I had no idea what was going on. How to make meaning of this profound new phenomenon that was biological, yet making waves through the economic, social, political, psychological and cultural landscapes with devastating efect. Yet, something that is emerging in my thinking, that I am increasingly curious about, is how both the climate and pandemic crises are manifestations of nature

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naturing. One a virus, the other climate change. One rapid; the other slow. The virus, a ‘rough god’ as Stephen Jenkinson puts it, the other, sneaking up on us slowly but surely, ofering a vanishing future. Yet, even as I write about both these gods, I am present to the delusions that I carry with a sense of hope, or at least that fuzzy, fudgy hope that is more about hope as feeling – as opposed to hope as ‘concrete’ action. For example, in Queensland, as I write this we are living day-by-day in a supposed COVID-19 free space, getting on with our lives, almost ‘normal’. Yet, COVID-19 is rampant just across the geographical and political border in New South Wales where they have given-up on eliminating the virus. Yet, that imaginary border gives a sense of safety, while we all know it’ll be ‘breached’ (and yes, the war metaphors, like ‘defending the border’, ‘fighting the virus’ are plentiful, and abysmal in their non-attention to nature naturing). But, I live with this delusionary defence of the border. It helps me live each day, somewhat aware life is going to change any moment (and I am equally surprised at how often I suggest this and friends say something like, “we’ll be right”). The illusion-delusion of some sense of control. But what of these borders in relation to climate change – in contrast to the fast violence of COVID-19, a slow violence, a silent transformation? I am aware of the same border mentality. I live in Maleny, a higher, wetter place in south-east Queensland; I hear my inner voice, ‘I’ll be alright’. I imagine fires won’t come here like elsewhere. Or I hear my partner and I talk of moving to New Zealand as an escape – an elsewhere that will be okay. Any which way to escape the truth that there are no places to escape to. It’s too hard to lean into the profound vulnerability that is present when facing that there is no border defence, or real ‘elsewhere’. Familiar with a paradigm of control, this kind of vulnerability is beyond me really. I avoid it at almost all costs. ____________________________________________________________ And in a full circle, alive to this practice I return to Jullien. He talks of a form of knowledge as connivance (contrasted with connaissance – which is scientific knowledge), which is a ‘knowing that remains tacit, which barely reflects or explains itself, and by tenacious coupling, is maintained in an intimate relation’.5 As such, I notice the intimate relations with this unfolding new world COVID-19 has brought upon us, one that is a portent of climate change. COVID-19 is intimate, or at least the efects of COVID-19 are. It impacts, or afects, my most intimate being. Suddenly, due to government and public health orders, I a human without a face, covered in a mask, distanced physically. I can hardly recognise masked people I know; I have no sense of their mood, unable to see their face. It’s as though we’re 154

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now muzzled. The face, so crucial to empathy, is unseen. Likewise, for much of the era of COVID-19, bodies can rarely be touched. During some weeks of 2020, I resided at home alone, only able to enjoy a convivial beer with a nearby friend placed at two ends of my driveway – many metres apart sitting on chairs we’d each brought, our own beers – with no embodied exchange. I talked to friends who longed to be touched; a hug was remembered as something beautiful yet nearly forgotten. There was fear, grief, endless uncertainty. There still is. Yet I, with many other privileged and lucky ones, fell in love with a new quality of quiet – a brief withdrawal from the world of machines. Instead, I could hear afresh nature naturing with its own cacophony of mating, calling and god knows what else. For some, there appeared to be a profound awakening to re-seeing and sensing nature. People’s lives slowed down. Attention, at least initially, was freed up from the mad-piggery of work-life, commuting, endless social connectivity, and people found new foci. Yet, people seemed to be longing for a return to ‘normal’, whereas it seemed to me normal had gone, and here was a chance in the cradle of grief, the rubble and ruins of a control-oriented modernity, to reimagine our lives, society. This pandemic can be learned from surely, befriended, even if not loved. I started to wonder if our technology – a quick development of a vaccine – was almost too good, undoing the possibility of deep reflection. And I say this with deep respect for scientists who’ve worked so hard, and with sadness for those who have lost loved ones or who live with empty bellies.6 As the 2021 August Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) panel releases its report on climate change, arguing for much more significant change by 2030, an interpretation of how we could make-meaning of the phenomenon of COVID-19 is that it is a process of nature naturing such that we could increase our intelligences – that we are in an opportunity to really see and sense a world in which we, as humans, have little control. A portent of what is to come. And what should we do about this? In observing what has unfolded under the rapid impact of COVID-19, I have discovered within myself some faith in humans and even some leadership. Some leaders took strong action, and people mostly abided. Many people appeared to act not only in the interests of their personal safety but to be concerned for others – the more vulnerable in society. Not an easy thing considering 40 years of globalising, neoliberal policy that has eroded much social solidarity. Yet, here it was, manifesting itself during the pandemic. I found myself daring to dream that if leadership took strong global action on climate change – actions that would limit our lives profoundly (as they are during COVID-19) – then many citizens would participate. If we were, for example, given an annual carbon ration that limited our 155

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transport, one that was demonstrably fair, perhaps we’d take it. Strong government and ethical leadership would summons the ethical souls of many citizens who’d take more interest in the vulnerable citizens-to-come – future generations, our grandchildren. I wonder what it would be like to align our lives, reorient our habits towards the necessities of life for humans in seven generations time? I have been awed at the speed of action in response to the event of COVID-19. We have turned our lives upside down. Yes, we clamour for a return to some imagined normal. Yet, this interruption, devastating as it is, could be given meaning as a wake-up call, a huge opportunity. From noticings, to contributions – what can this phenomenological reflective practice bring to the social and ecological phenomenon of climate change – other than ‘noticings’? First, this practice can support elements of the global climate justice movements to see and make sense of its activities, intentions and the forms it brings to its own work. In this first contribution – in much the same ways as I have said that this practice enlivens and brings more consciousness to my community development practice – so it can do the same for the climate justice movements. This consciousness could be at any level – individuals, groups planning action, people’s organisations involved in local initiatives and national or international movement organisations creating campaigns for a just transition. It involves bringing attention and consciousness to the social dynamics within the climate justice movement, as well as strategies for efecting socio-political-ecological change. As will be clear to any attentive reader by now, a significant contribution of this practice is an insistence on carefully observing what is unfolding with a less hasty leap to action-intervention. Careful re-search, rigorous examination of the challenge from the perspective of parts and whole – understanding how many elements – scientific, social, political, economic – intertwine. Readers could draw on the likes of Otto Scharmer’s Theory U7 – also infused with a Goethean sensibility – as a guiding framework of practice that includes: bringing a wide array of people together linked to the challenges at hand; letting go of previous ideas and avoiding the repetitive downloading of assumptions; sensing into ourselves as sources for change; opening ourselves to new ideas through re-search and presencing; and, prototyping new initiatives. Furthermore, this practice summons each of us – through participatory observation (not observation as distant observer) and encounter with the unfolding transformations that climate change is a portent of – to rigorous reflection on our own personal practice. How do I live, and can I live diferently because of 156

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this encounter? What do I feel and how do I live with an ever-present spectral grief, and at the same time participate in collective ceremonies that enable us to transform grief? How do I let go of or re-examine the image of what makes a good life, and consider new images? How does the corruption endemic within the socio-political systems that collude with fossil fuel interests sink into our own souls corrupting us? How does a passion-of-not-knowing invoke a humble human approach to this crisis?

In conclusion Our lives are short, a passing in the night, ‘food for the worms’ (a phrase whispered by the teacher/poet played by Robin Williams from one of my favourite movies Dead Poet’s Society). Yet, we want to make meaning of them. Meaning is the place and space of symbols, myths and metaphor and I wonder what images and metaphors arise as we bring a practice that is both careful in rigorous observation-sensing, slower to bring quick analysis-judgement, less addicted to manic solutions – giving more space for meaning-making through a disciplined imagination. I like Stephen Jenkinson’s image – this plague as a ‘rough god’. What others arise for the pandemic? What of climate change? How might new images shift our language, our living-thinking, our slightly diferent nudge of action – our seeking the crack that might become a crevice, then open chasm?

Notes 1 Jullien, The Silent Transformations. 2 Jullien, The Silent Transformations, 165. 3 I recommend Danielle Celermajer’s Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future (London: Penguin Books, 2021) as one of the most courageous and honest explorations of those particular relations 4 Peter Westoby and Verne Harris “Community Development ‘Yet-To-Come’ During and Post the COVID-19 Pandemic: From Derrida to Zubof”, Community Development Journal 55, no. 4 (2020): doi:10.1093/cdj/bsaa026. 5 Jullien, The Silent Transformations, 212. 6 I have journeyed closely with friends and colleagues in Africa for whom this pandemic has mostly ended up being a hunger pandemic. 7 Otto Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges, (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, 2009).

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2

A story and portrayal of practice in the ecological field – the bioregion of Maleny

While the previous story focused on the social field – a community development initiative at HH – this second is oriented to the ecological field. It tells the story of arriving and dwelling at a new home just at the onset of the 2020 COVID pandemic. I use the term ‘dwelling’ in the Heidegger way,1 referring to making it a home – being in relationship. So, while ecologically oriented, it’s intimately social, relational, dialogical even. While visiting this place for 30+ years – for friends who live here, and work I have done here – I have only previously experienced it from the outside-in. Now a profound shift moving to an inside-out place, inhabiting. It necessitates a diferent kind of dialogue. In sense-making, dwelling in this home has included three dialogues: •

• •

Dialogue with a one-acre property in Maleny, about 100km north of Brisbane, Australia – named Camellia Cottage by previous owners and gradually transformed, by myself, into the Camellia Centre [for Soul Work and Reflective Practice] Dialogue with a forest that I walk in most days, a ten-minute stroll from the Camellia property Dialogue with the bioregion of Maleny, including the confluence of three valleys (feeding the Stanley River, Mooloolah River and Mary River), the edge of the Blackall Range, looking across to the Glass House Mountains, the ocean – and so much more.

The structure of the chapter includes telling stories of the three dialogues – diferent yet overlapping. Mirroring a commitment to phenomenological reflective practice, so I will also attempt to hold fidelity and faithfulness to the portrayal, the storytelling.

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-16

A story of the ecological field

Dialogue #1: dwelling and disclosure at the Camellia property Moving from the city, it is overwhelming to suddenly be a steward of a property. A relatively small one, a mere one acre, but huge compared to anywhere I have previously lived. From the day I moved in it was thriving with life; I could almost see the grass and wisteria grow during the early summer days. Insect and bird life are a constant summer cacophony, a reminder that however I am feeling there is a community of beings all around me. I took a deep breath and sank into that sense of being overwhelmed, embraced it even. I’d moved from city life – the metaphoric urban consciousness – to country life – a contrasting wild-forest world. Water needed to be harvested; power would disappear regularly. Drought meant something real, material, substantial. As would fire. To start a process of dwelling here, I undertook to observe for a year – to hold back on any significant ‘projects’, activity, interventions. I wanted to observe the cycles of life and season, see and sense, love and learn how to be a steward. I wanted to observe for facts – what is actually here on the property (even without the need for names) – my feelings as they move through the days and seasons, and the ‘whole’ – that invisible ‘aliveness’ that cannot be named. What gesture, image, does this land want to ofer, now in a new relationship with myself and other guests, yet respectful and in relationship with past stewards? Such observation requires what Goethe called delicate empiricism combining observation and exact sensorial imagination, a way that Allan Kaplan and Sue Davidof describe as ‘a way of knowing, for an epistemology more in keeping with a participatory and holistic “seeing into” the world than our current technological and instrumental thinking is able to achieve’.2 Summer days meant finding the places where shimmers of shade and whispers of wind could cool me down. I welcomed the distant noise of machines, something I’d yearned for – to be surrounded by nature not Moloch.3 During the initial months I also noticed a gradual invitation to be more responsive to instinct and sensory wakefulness – for example, not to ignore the inner call which suggested ‘go to the waterhole’ – and I did, and started to fall in love with the bioregion. I’d return from those hugely refreshing dips in cold, sometimes icy water, and sit on the back or side deck listening to the whip bird or watch the hustle and bustle of the brush turkeys. That sense of being overwhelmed remained. Observation led to small interventions as the branches of bushes and fast-growing trees moved towards the house, onto the roof. Cutting was required, and I slowly became a gardener, a

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diferent consciousness – to tender, till, toil. The sweat not of walking trails but of land-labour. Autumn days came with a magnificence that would literally take my breath away. Diferent camellia’s blossomed; two rose bushes started to give with generous bloom; three magnolias scented a corner of a grove, each in turn giving their pink, purple and white sensual oferings. On one of those trees was almost the whole metamorphic process – a slowly opening bud; a fully expressive flower and a slow decaying ending – all simultaneously present, disrupting any linear notion of growth and decay. Old Mulberry (as ‘he’ soon became known) started to grow green and sag with heavy fruits. Autumn April invited outdoor fires, under the moon and stars. Star gazing and moon musings became a new evening anticipation. I could feel the arriving of late afternoon and lean into what was coming – to whisper to the moon, talk to the stars, chat with the butcher birds and magpies who’d often gather near the fire, surely in hope of a critter dinner. I truly felt I was in heaven and as the COVID lockdown of 2020 arrived, I spent hours in a space of animal listening, alone, in solitude, yet encountering a community of animals. I started to notice wood as oferings for fire and would often pay thankful homage to the two nearby gum trees that gave plentifully – my consciousness shifted to gratefulness on windy nights as I lay in bed, knowing that plenty of kindling would be available to collect the next day. Winter meant retreat to indoor fires and a landscape of shedding leaves. A new kind of toil unfolded, the setting of a fire, the removal of ash; the cutting and carrying of wood. This daily rubbing shoulders with the rough edges of lumber, removing splinters, tendering burns was a joy to my soul – to be close, in intimate relationship with the granularity of ironbark and gum. A huge oak tree, along with the pecan, transformed into distinct red and ochre colours before shedding all. Leaf-matter carpeted the ground, and daily wanderings in the garden ensured the rustle of memory, taking me back to an English childhood where friends and I would hide in piles of raked leaves. The kookaburras seemed to love these wintery trees – perched on their bare branches they could see more and pounce on a worm or insect. The quandong tree became a favourite, dancing in the wind, ofering its purple-blue seeds as spring started to turn. Focusing still on observation, winter is also the time to really work, not just holding back the abundance of life, but really toiling. Anticipating the sudden growth of spring requires an energetic engagement – pruning generously, shaping carefully, getting among the wildness that needs some taming.

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I start to notice something within myself. When distant from the gardens, observing ‘what needed to be done’, my body recoiled. Nature is vast, never-ending, constantly growing, an everlasting spring of expansion (yes, even with winter slowness). Yet, when I immersed myself within the land, got my hands dirty, rustled among the low-hanging branches, lay on the grass, set an outdoor fire, my body relaxed into that state of dwelling. A feeling of being ‘at home’, ‘in love with’ the property, in relationship with it, a genuine dialogue in which I gave and received and sensed a mutuality. Spring was incomprehensible – such life as I’d never seen. Wisteria boomed into colour; other un-named purple flowers flourished. It was a constant cacophony of life – from the ‘bush-man’s’ wake-up call of the kookaburra at 5am through to sun-down – and then the insects would sing their merry mating songs. And the carpet snakes arrived, along with a red-belly black. Stunning, primordial, awakening some reptilian part of my own self. A collective seeing-sensing – disclosure Yet, my noticing was limited and expanded as others were invited to come and visit the property. Come June 2020, four people spent 24 hours observing the property and then expressed what they’d seen in poetic form. Three rounds of observation, writing and then sharing. In this, I discovered Old Man Mulberry; the sexy magnolias were more alive than ever; small and beautiful camellias I’d never spotted were made visible; even a lonely rose bush was nourished by being witnessed. And the small and the tiny, presumed to be less significant, were also noticed: a spider web glistening in morning dew; a small fern bud unfurling its new tentacles. To see fresh through the eyes of others is to be astounded at the breadth of possibility and also humbled at the limited capacity of one person to see. Yet in this seeing and sensing, in the intentional decision to observe, listen, hold the tension between just wanting to see the beauty of life becoming, unfolding – yet also wanting to know the name of ‘something’ (recognising that to know the name of a plant or bird is to sometimes then fail to see, for in naming we quickly move to seeing the representation – ‘oh it’s a wompoo pigeon’ rather than taking the time to actually see the particular wompoo that has quietly emerged from the bushes) – the property started to disclose itself. In my purposeful seeing more is seen; and more seems to be revealed. What isn’t noticed one day appears the next. My perception, built on a growing memory of the property – a dream-like sound-landscape of life – shifts when the perception is disrupted by new, by anomalies, distinct arrivals.

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Memory expands; the dream gains a granular depth with more stories, senses and seeing. I discover that the property holds the polarity of village and forest mentality – the village consciousness needed to tender a garden, to take care of pruning, cutting back, weeding, ensuring ‘life’ didn’t overtake the village building. Yet there’s space for a wild/forest mentality – I can dwell in a place that nourishes the wild in me, gives permission to be more instinctual. The small rain forest in one corner is also a grove that is un-tended and entering its natural arch-way is to invite a diferent sensory world. Nature is ordered, yet messy; humus mounts up, and decay is clearly many things – habitat and the basis of new soil; fungi flourishes and to pick up a fallen log is to risk encounter with many critters, both small and large. To step into the forest is to step into a diferent consciousness – one needed to be held in our souls to avoid becoming urbane, domesticated and village focused. As my consciousness of life grows and expands, as I see and sense the property I am now steward of from the inside-out, I live with the question of what this place wants to become, what it’s ofering to the world. It, a living, thriving community of beings, in relationship to me, now entangled in a bewildering and bewitching way, is a process of becoming with me. What do ‘we’ want to bring to the world? And so, I listen, not only to myself, my wife Rachael and her experiences of the dialogue – not only the magpies and kookaburras – but also to others. Guests, workshop participants, tradesfolk. I listen to hear what they notice about the place.

Dialogue #2: Ambling and encountering a forest Daily walks, circuits Each day I dwell at home, I also take a 45-minute walk – ten minutes up a road and along a path before entering the forest of Mary Cairncross. Often, I am the first one to walk there each morning and I enter the ofcial gateway with a sense of anticipation each time. At some point early in my dwelling I noticed what became to me the unofcial yet natural gateway, with two larger trees ofering a welcome and an invitation. In entering I am attentive to choosing a sense that I will foreground on the walk. I ask myself, will I listen to birds, or the rustling of the wind? Do I listen 162

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specifically to the wompoo pigeon, or the whipbird? Will I observe light, the shadows and rays as sun penetrates the upper canopy? Or do I observe the endless maze of buttress roots that weave a complex tapestry on the ground? Do I observe for green, or grey, or focus on the paddymelons that live in the forest and chew on the leaf matter? After rain I pay more attention to the worm bouquets indicative of large earthworms gathering food into their tunnel homes. I also notice myself not paying attention – the polarity of attention and nonattention, or presence only experienced also through absence. I smile gently when I notice I have walked much of the forest without noticing – instead caught in thinking. I bring efort to walk with intention, with presence not just to the forest but to my body – upright, attentive, open, focused yet giving space for peripheral vision. I catch a glimpse of my animal self, in-the-forest, part-of-the-forest, anticipating what is ahead, around the corner. I notice that when I walk with my partner, Rachael, we enjoy a flow between walking and talking, and then sink into silence so we can both be present. Yet even the silent presence of another, both mutually entangled in our relationship, changes things. It’s diferent. There are places in the forest that have become more precious than others. A corner where the forest edges onto a creek. Mostly it flows gently, and I love being there silent, quiet, still and watching small logrunners or wagtails land on a fallen branch and take their fill of water. At times it’s a raging flooding torrent, and to walk there as rain tumbles down is like being in a diferent forest. Then the piccabeen palm grove of the forest becomes a tropical mystical place that awakes the primal imagination. If we were 1000km further north, crocs would be just beneath the surface. Carpet pythons are a rare yet blessed seeing, and knowing they’re there invites a slower walk to ensure the possibility of catching a glimpse. In contrast to flood times, the creek becomes stagnant at times and invites meditation on what it is to stop being in touch with that instinctual part of the soul that keeps movement alive within us. What is it to become soul stagnant, attached to a place, relationship, job, perspective that no longer serves? As I observe ‘things’ – trees, birds, paddymelons, roots, light, canopy, creek – I also open myself to seeing the invisible. The movement that is always at play, the life-force that makes the forest so animate. I become conscious of the forest, not as a thing, but a process. Each and every bounded thing is nothing but a process in relationship with, entangled among, the other things. I see myself also as part of this process, made diferent as I entangle myself purposefully with this living process that at a cellular level and an imaginative angle becomes a part of me, shapes me, as I shape it. 163

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Deep listening Walking the forest isn’t just a place where I practise observation. It also invites deep listening. Even as I get stuck in writing parts of this book some part of me is activated when walking this circle with an intention of listening. I wonder about diferent literacies and Rachael and I often wonder about whether we listen with a forest literacy. Yet, I find myself opening myself to some other embodied wisdom and something starts to flow. New ideas arrive. Sometimes I am in conflict with someone and rather than write an impulsive email I head to the forest with the intention of deep listening. I stand by the huge rose gum or the massive red cedar and ask for wisdom. I have to say I usually find it and I arrive back at Camellia Cottage clear. Things become clearer in the forest. Collective noticing when workshop groups walk/reflect I am intrigued by what I keep seeing, the gradual disclosure of the forest. But I am surprised – and I am also surprised at my surprise – at how little I see and sense. This becomes clear to me on three intentional and organised occasions when participants of workshops, held at the Camellia Centre, walk the forest. The instructions are: ‘Walk the forest slowly with a focus on using one sense (much like I choose each day) – try to engage one sense intentionally; and also notice yourself in relation to focusing on one sense.’ I am intrigued as people gather under a tree to discuss their observations after the walk. I find myself really surprised at what people see – or, more accurately, surprised I have never seen their noticings. And I am again humbled by the practice. For an individual sees so little. Yet I am not surprised as people share both the joy of holding to an intentional exercise, yet the difculties experienced. Resistance, boredom, a wandering mind. People notice that their observational muscles, their sense-discipline has atrophied. To not even have a phone for 45 minutes, to be detached, untethered from that electronic world of entanglement and distraction that ‘re-makes us’ in a way that we are yet to know. But people are enlivened by the encounter with the forest. Those who are walking the forest for the very first time are truly grateful that this has been their first encounter. Those more familiar with the forest have seen it in a whole new way. Noticing the forest as a social phenomenon – why people come I am not outside nature looking in, caught in a duality of human-nature. I am in relationship with the forest always. I am also nature. What I see each day is a 164

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memory from previous encounters, a dream-scape you could say, enlivened to the degree that my perception is open to ‘new’, to disruptions from the memory, that is, to the movement at play. The forest then is a social phenomenon as much as an ecological one. They are entangled within one another, of the same. Yet, I am also curious as I observe the forest and myself in-the-forest, what the gestures of the forest are in the social world of humans. Much like the Yeronga shopping village, a place of efcient commerce and potential conviviality, yet colonised by cars and pollutants so the forest is a place of sanctuary. Mostly, as humans in a relationship of dominion over nature, of domination, it seems this forest ofers an alternative vision and aspiration. It feels like this sanctuary – that hundreds of people flock to each week – is anticipatory politics in action, a utopian ofering of a mutual relationship. It’s one in which the pathway is precious, and people are invited to be attentive to both the robustness and fragility of nature. Staying on the path means noticing the edges, those homes of the earthworm or trap-door spider; or the many bird’s nests using the path as their sanctuary against the snakes (for they have learned that if they nest by the paths the snakes are less likely to come in their wariness of humans). People walk the path in numerous possible circles and I can often see the enchanted look on people’s faces. The children are wild, encountering wild; the adults perhaps lean into a forgotten memory of wildness, imagination awakened. Looking across at the mountains Some months ago, sitting around a fire at the base of Beerwah Mountain, an Indigenous elder asks me where I live. ‘In Maleny, just on the range. Looking down on the mountains’, I reply. She looks at me and ofers, ‘Looking across at the mountains, not down”. I listen, for on my walk between home and the forest I do look across at this mountain – Beerwah – Mother Mountain – and the whole range of the Glasshouse Mountains. They are stunning each day – sometimes crisp clear – it’s as though I could reach out and touch them; other days shrouded fully or partly in cloud. They’re mystical and magical, always present. For the First Nations people they hold stories – this Mother Mountain is a women’s sacred space for women’s business and birthing. One story of the whole range is filled with the wisdom of living into responsibility. It’s the one that resonates with me – each day looking across I feel a resistance within me to live my vocation – I’d prefer to sink into solitude or I imagine becoming a recluse. Yet the mountains summons me, ‘To whom much is given, much is required’. It’s a real call, ‘Step forward and do “the work”’. Local stories insist that people get sick if they do not live into their responsibility. 165

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I also learn I am in the soft wet rolling hills of Maleny, on Jinibara country – land of the lawyer vine (commonly known as the ‘wait-a-while’). This ancient hill-land is feminine, sensual, moist country, contrasted with the bushy, dryer mountain country in the valley. It’s a place that people come alive to passions and wild, feminine energies.

Interlude: on moving to Maleny I have yearned for decades to live in a place of my choosing. Brisbane had always felt like a legacy of my parents’ decisions to migrate there in the 1980s. Their chosen life – and my fate. And, then like anyone living in a place, my life became entangled in all that community is. Life, love, relationships, deep connections, responsibilities, obligations. Community as both connection and obligation. Brisbane became my place. Yet, something never sat quite right. A distinct inability to love the place. In that entanglement of community – the normative and necessary obligations of a society and a social contract – somewhere in there, I lost a sense of my freedom. I had become stuck and stagnant, somehow sinking into the swamplands of the soul (as James Hollis puts it), which is beyond ambiguity and uncertainty – it’s another place of pain, anxiety, depression, illness. In such a swamp, questions can arise – if we’re listening – and this for me was about a renewed freedom aligned with fidelity to truth and truthfulness, faith and faithfulness – not freedom as libertarian in the tradition of ‘I can do anything I want’ – but freedom that comes from a deep place of reconnecting with what matters in my soul and the soul-of-the-world. To follow the summons to move to Maleny felt like re-aligning with truth, validated by a sense of rightness, renewed purpose and revitalised energy. And not just a three-month burst of enthusiasm, which would be a short-lived result of any change. No, something deeper, transformative. An encounter not only with the land and forest, but something within myself – that renewed and awakened sensory sensitivity, indicative of soul. To not respond to the summons would imply remaining stuck, stagnant. I realised that, like the forest and land I watch daily in which life comes from death – in which nature is naturing – unless my life would allow what is decaying to die, nothing new can grow. The metamorphic process within my soul, psyche and body required an aligning with life-forces, responding to the nudges of pain and depression. But in my listening, I realise that a big question is ‘What is the relationship between truth, freedom and courage?’ For to be conscious, to see – from the 166

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inside-out – one’s own situated life, in a present place, but patterned by ghosts and memories – requires not only a deep commitment to discerning truth, both the visible and invisible whole, but the courage to then act. Observation and action; sensing and intervention; the rigour of science (seeing/sensing) combined with poetic imagination. A ‘disciplined wildness’ as Martin Shaw calls it.4 In my dwelling here, I notice that Maleny awakens this disciplined wildness. The mountains insist on responsibility, yet the land also insists on awakened sensory intelligence.

Dialogue #3: re-searching the Maleny bio-region As mentioned above, I’ve been visiting the region for more than 30 years – usually crashing for a night or two at a friend’s place or hanging for a week at the old Maleny/Woodford Folk Festival. But experiencing a place from the outside-in, as visitor, is very diferent to dwelling, participating in community-as-becoming – from the inside-out. Nevertheless, as visitor and now dweller, there’s something about the drive up the hill, a 550m ascent to the Maleny plateau, that is enduring. It means leaving behind something of a world of fast-moving madness, machines and madpiggery. Arriving on the hinterland is a portal into a diferent place, pace and part of myself. The swirling mists on the hills and in the rolling valleys can often give the impression of being in quite a diferent world, not a retreat, but a place of rest, renewal, reconnection and even resistance. At risk of missing substantial storylines, the histories of the place go way back to First Nation peoples – Jinibara and the Gubbi Gubbi (Kabi Kabi) groups, weaving their own songlines and trails, gathering at Baroon Pocket for the Bunya Dreaming and resisting the invaders. Their stories of trails and travails leave a heavy burden of responsibility and accountabilities – the necessity to listen deeply and accompany in solidarity. I’ve always been aware of the people in the region – holding a vision of a place that’s diferent, experimental, edgy. The town of Maleny is known not only for its living First Nation people, its milk and cheeses, its timber works and tourism, but also for its artistic and social creatives dwelling alongside the older farming and foresting communities. In some ways, I represent another group of interlopers – new urban professionals taking advantage of the internet age moving to the forest and hill region. Some of these fully import their town/city mentality and want 167

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to replicate that life, advocating for golf courses and other such modern oddities; others adapt, more open to being shaped by the region rather than just shaping it. Yet, even as I write this I am unsure of how bounded these ‘groupings’ are, as diversity is possibly more apparent than unity. Diverse groups often collide, but also collaborate. What I do know is that I am new to living here and undertake to focus on observation and not leap to interpretation and judgement. Change is ever present. The first settlers, as forest fellers (the red gold/cedars) and dairy farmers; the creatives of the cooperative movements, organic food lovers, alternative schools and myriad social groups; then the endless tourists and tree changers. Threats, changes, cycles of nature naturing and we humans as part of nature naturing. Other recent lines include the heartbeat of Australia’s cooperative movement sparked by community leaders such as Jill Jordan; a vibrant Landcare movement now formalised into Barung Landcare; several alternative schools, including the Flexi School and River School; the longevity of one of the first ever established eco-villages (Crystal Waters), still vibrant with life and markets near the Mary River. Cultural groups flourish including a local movie society hosted at the Community Centre, three bookshops and many reading groups. There are literally dozens of active community organisations, including ones I have started to get to know, such as Welcome to Maleny, a refugee advocacy organisation; Tying Up Loose Ends (TULEs), which is working alongside the Maleny Neighbourhood Centre to establish a grief garden and hosts community conversations around dying, bereavement and living a good life and death. There are Maleny Forums that coordinate and support many local groups on issues such as footpath access, internet in regional towns, climate change and renewable energy. The place is vibrant with social life. Mirroring my decision to spend a year observing the cycles of nature as steward of a new property, I also gave myself a year to get to know the local community before agreeing to participate fully in any group. I wanted to give myself time to discern what was calling me, summoning me. I wanted to get to know some of the social dynamics, the ‘temper’ of the town before committing to full participation. I was sitting on the rim you might say, not quite from the inside-out of the social, but on the edge. I delved into understanding the history of Baroon Pocket Dam, originally a gathering place for the Indigenous Bunya Dreaming; I read about community resistance and protests against the Woolworths supermarket and conversations along the still stark lines of division (‘I won’t shop there’). I often sit at Concept Cofee overlooking the edge of the Obi Obi Creek and think of the 168

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platypus exploring nooks and crannies, and love nothing more than a 6am summer skinny dip at Gardener Falls. I could go on, yet in my listening and learning, I suspect the bioregion seems to shape a socially active region. There’s a particularity of the place in which the social and ecological are intertwined. Where social relationships are cared for in a way that mirrors a care for the ecology of the place. There’s fierce love of the place that is indicative of a capacity to love. I am still curious as to how this love forms and what the shadow of it is – aware that love of place and people tend to then also create boundaries – lines of inclusion and exclusion; and I most often catch glimpses of this shadow when scanning the Maleny Chat Facebook page.

In conclusion I have portrayed arrival, dwelling, dialogue in place – a place, three places, bounded yet interconnected. Arriving in early 2020, a place with many memories already, it would have been tempting to dive into activity, strive into action – to live into my community development worker identity, the archetypal approach of my epoch of instrumental intervention. I could have been seduced by a determination to get involved with the right people, stand on the right side of any fences, become activist. Instead, I reached for wakefulness, attention, to seeing and sensing. Not to be drawn into separation, division, lines. I arrived depleted, domesticated by both the city consciousness and an instrumental colonisation of my soul by 15 years of university pressures, and something within me needed to awaken. I became aware it would be impossible to live into a vision of contribution to this living community without being in touch with what was alive within. So, I embraced an activism that takes the inner life as seriously as the outer. I opted not to act on the world – the property I was steward of, the forest nearby, the bioregion – but to observe it, and listen to what it wanted of me, recognising that the ‘it’ was filled with me – the duality of it and me collapses with a holistic observation. More of that below. Aware that my vocational work was also entangled with many places and social purpose organisations – from HH described in the first story, to two universities where I am adjunct, to working with Community Praxis Co-op as a consultant – my focus in my place of dwelling became my practice. I lived into the already mentioned question of how a practice that foregrounds observation can bring healing 169

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to the world. Truly lived into that question. I purposefully leaned into reflection, not endless action; I was attentive to periods of depletion and exhaustion; I noticed when coming to a piece of work I felt a sinking feeling and considered what was going on. I avoided distraction. Of course, failing regularly, I smiled, laughed and spoke to the moon and tended the fire. What I also noticed – amplified during COVID days – is that I live in an era where it’s hard to discern the lines between good and bad, between allies and opponents; borders and boundaries arise and dissipate as quickly as rainbows come and go. Housing prices plunge and then peak faster than ever; inequalities grow exponentially; businesses crash, corporations make record profits; the air seems cleaner while mining companies destroy heritage quietly on the side aware lockdowns marginalise witnesses. Complexity and ambiguity fill my soul and I step into that space only confident in my practice. Nothing else. For in this practice, the intention is observation and reflection, leading to intimacy and love, not bringing change to or on the world, but accompanying change already unfolding in the world. I discover a place of freedom, rigorous freedom, for I am not compelled into action, to take sides. I watch, wakeful, aware of all the limits of doing this alone – and beautifully I am part of a number of communities that bring an intent to observing/sensing. My observations, in dialogue with others – expand the view. In this practice of observation and then meaning-making – for all observation requires this dual process – I bring ideas, concepts, metaphors. Every description of the dialogues above draws on ideas, concepts and metaphors that don’t just depict what I see/sense. They shape a world. Each idea, concept and metaphor reveals the world in a particular way and seeing the world then brings other ideas, concepts and new metaphors. There’s a relational circle of enlargement, expansion – literally a dialogue with the world that makes the world. This is a phenomenological approach to change. It’s beautiful and bewitching, rigorous and reflective. It’s not only a dialogue, but also a creative dance! We are literally dialogued and danced into consciousness by the world, and a practice that helps us in both the dialogue and consciousness is a precious contribution.

Notes 1 Martin Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’ and ‘chrw(133) poetically man dwellschrw(133)’ in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter, (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 145–161, 212–229.

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PART

IV

Discussions, promises and a postscript

My aspiration has been to portray this phenomenological reflective practice in stories and through concepts, while ever conscious that reading about the practice doesn’t mean people have ‘got it’. For those who’ve embarked on the journey of cultivating their observational muscles and sensing into a dynamic way of seeing and sensing in the social and ecological fields I am hopeful that the preceding essays and stories have made things clearer. For those who are now more curious about the practice, I hope you reach out further to others who are part of the emerging ‘community of practice’. The next four essays wander down tributaries of inquiry and consider three important discussions which initially sat at the edge of my consciousness as an inquirer. The first has to do with the efcacy of the practice, the second is a commentary on the role of ethics and the third addresses the question of the role of critical thinking and theory in a phenomenological practice. The final essay ofers what I have called Promissory Reflections – a somewhat bold aspirational dreaming of what the practice can give to people, aware of the ever-present shadow of betrayal (always present within any promise).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-17

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8

Is the practice efective?

The challenge of development efectiveness is a real one. Today many international development organisations have established ‘development efectiveness ofces’; I used to direct a Masters of Development Practice and a review of the programme insisted on including a new Development Efectiveness course. Clients seeking tenders for development initiatives and interventions often insist on certainty about efectiveness and want assurance that the presenting ‘problem’ can be ‘fixed’. So, this question of efectiveness, and how to measure it, is a significant one. I am also passionate about efectiveness in the fields of social and ecological change as I feel the rampant undoing of the world. While avoiding the ever-present emissary of a crisis, there can be an overwhelming sense that ecological, social and economic death is at pandemic levels. With a pulsating heart I genuinely fear for future generations. To give myself to trying to bring change in the world is to invite this question of efectiveness. After all, I do not want to waste my limited life-energy. But it was Allan himself who raised the question of efectiveness in relation to the inquiry about this practice. He, Sue and I were at Towerland, reflecting on the dozen or so earlier encounters I had enjoyed with the South African practitioners. We were excited and energised by what these people had been saying, yet after a moment’s pause Allan asked, ‘What about the hard question of efectiveness? It is so easy to romanticise the practice and avoid this question.’ My response was that the research would not be able to directly explore this question of efectiveness, but that it would be an interesting line of inquiry. Following on from my conversations with Allan and Sue, I began to inquire with the practitioners. A few had significant comments to make, and I take my lead in this discussion from them. For example, Ana, speaking for many in her DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-18

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heart-felt response, and representing a resistance to the emissary of efectiveness in and of itself, shared how: For me, it’s trying to answer a question that is unanswerable, because the concept of efcacy in this regard feels inaccurate – I don’t know if I would use this word in relation to a human being, or development or social transformation. It would be like asking, ‘Is your relationship efective?’ Or, ‘Are you efective in love?’ Or, ‘Please tell me your tea is efective in healing.’ So, it doesn’t fit for me. Yet Ana does imply some sense of efectiveness, or at least efect. She says: it’s very easy to see and hear when interacting with a community. You start to hear people taking responsibility and having a sense of power or authorship about their story or lives. Here are a lot of qualities we start to see – maybe that’s a measure of efectiveness, but I wouldn’t use the word. I believe that a group or a community can see or feel the diference, that qualities shift – there is a new balance or movement – and you could judge it as efectiveness. Probing deeper in our conversation Ana explains why she is averse to the idea of efectiveness, aligning its use with mechanical thinking. She suggests, ‘That [using language] is also how we turn what is alive into something mechanical.’ For her language is crucial, and she argues: when we do not reflect on the question, or the language, and ask ‘where are you coming from?’, we end up adopting other language and then we kill what’s alive and betray ourselves. The words such as ‘impact’ and ‘efectiveness’ could kill the practice. It’s not that this practice is not loyal to social change, but it is not looking at it from the perspective of control or measuring. Why are we so attached to words like ‘impact’, ‘results’ and ‘efectiveness’? We need to ask where these questions come from. Ana represents a strongly argued perspective, one that is resistant to the dominant and somewhat hegemonic paradigm of control, evidence and impact with its accompanying discourse – that seizing the world which I talked about in Essay 7. This argument resonates with a perspective held by a global network I’ve been linked to, The Big Push, associated with the Institute of Development Studies, 176

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Sussex, United Kingdom. Within this perspective, efectiveness is another word subsumed into the ‘politics of evidence’, which foregrounds particular kinds of mechanical logics and measuring. And measuring, as any discerning reader would be aware by now, is a type of observation; we also know that a particular type of observation is an intervention which in turn shapes the practice being measured. Observation is not a neutral disinterested activity. In this tradition of thought, Ana is being vigilant about a kind of observation, as measurement for efectiveness that afects the practice. I share her vigilance and suspicion. While acknowledging that stories of change within people and communities, or a sense of qualities shifting, could be ‘imagined’ as a measure of efectiveness, this perspective also questions the unexamined use of certain words that have the potential to diminish the efcacy of this practice. In this sense, language is always discursive. Words attached to meanings, and part of a capillary-like web of powerful instruments and institutions, are not neutral. They carry power and meaning. The use of the word ‘efectiveness’, much like ‘evidence’, implies an agenda – the idea of ‘in order to’ – but usually coming from the outside-in, as often those who are measuring have a pre-determined model of what they are measuring for. Instrumentality is then part and parcel of the constellation of discursive power linked to efectiveness. However, returning to Allan’s initial question, it’s an emissary that is really hard to avoid. Eduardo, leaning into the inquiry, entered the discussion drawing on François Jullien’s mind-bending and beautiful book A Treatise on Efcacy.1 At the heart of this book is efectiveness as understood through the classical Chinese philosophy of war, or Jullien’s interpretation of it. For Jullien, efectiveness comes from being able to observe carefully to see the ‘fissure’ that will become a crack, a crevice, a chasm. To ‘see’ the potential fissure and then ‘intervene’ into that space, expanding it, is to ensure the goal is reached – which is to be efective. For Eduardo, this is a useful perspective about efectiveness in the social and ecological spheres. We don’t have to do a lot – less wilful frenetic activity. Instead, we need to see, discern and sense our way into what wants to unfold – to see living process (the fissure) and work ‘with it’ (to become a chasm). We need to move away from a position and practice oriented towards active or passive, and instead move towards a practice of discernment, receptivity, responsivity and alignment. I would say, in referencing Jullien’s book, that Eduardo is focusing on how to think about efectiveness, wanting to let us know that this practice does bring change, but without thinking through the lens of what is often talked about as impact measuring. He is very keen to explore what it is that supports practitioners to work with change in a way that ensures – and these are my own words – the greatest 177

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possibility, under certain conditions that change aligned with life will occur. Of course, within the tradition of ‘this practice’, change in alignment with life is tricky. Such change infers transformation, or expansion of consciousness – of a person, group, community or organisation –understanding itself coming-into-being, so it can be more fully itself. In this sense, the measure of efectiveness is that, because of observation and intervention, a ‘thing’ has become more of itself. An efective eagle has fully inhabited its eagle-ness; Community Praxis Co-op, which I work for, becomes more of its singular unique self – no more, no less. In contrast, the norms of thinking about efectiveness in the social and ecological fields imply thinking of what we will to do, the goal we set out to achieve, the ideal we wish to reach. Yet, it is this habitual orientation that phenomenological practice seeks to disrupt or usurp. Instead, the invitation is to let go of such will, goal and ideal, and to instead become clear about what life wants in the social situation. How, instead, can we understand the potential of a social situation or organisation, or the potential of an edge group in a community and organisation that is disrupting decay or unconsciousness, that is life-giving and supports such life having its way? Efectiveness, then, is indicated by a sense of aliveness within the phenomenon, by people feeling more themselves, by a group becoming more of its true self. James Hillman, dialoguing with Sonu Shamdasani in Lament of the Dead, talks of efectiveness as ‘what enables a person to live more fully’.2 Thinking back to Ana’s initial words, could we not, instead of thinking about the efectiveness of love, consider the consequences of love? Thinking this way, like Hillman, does imply a measure of benefit – for if love does not enable us to live more fully then there would be questions about its quality and, by association, its efectiveness. Jullien goes on to ask what is possibly the most crucial question: how and under what conditions is an efect possible?3 For example, when does an art piece produce a particular efect, such as beauty? Would that not imply that the art piece has been efective? Or that there is efectiveness within that piece of art? I am reminded of a story the poet David Whyte tells of entering a dark hallway in a Tibetan monastery in the Nepalese Himalayas. Immobilised by the darkness of the interior he found himself talking to what he thought was a friend standing next to him. But, as his eyes adjusted to the light, he caught a glimpse of ‘a grim, grimacing pair of eyes and aggressive mouth . . .; I went from being in a state of absolute relaxation to a state of absolute panic’.4 This turned out to be a carving of a figure that stands as guardian of the temple. In reflecting on this moment, he suggests that ‘I had seen the guardian figure, by sheer luck in efect, as the carver wanted me to see it . . . .’5 The efect is linked to both original intention and conditions. 178

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Quite possibly, in shifting this discussion from efectiveness to efect I have drifted from the core issue. Possibly, but a few more thoughts because Goethe himself had plenty to say about efect. This became most clear to him when writing his Theory of Colour. At the heart of his diference to Newton was a dis-interest in the question of essence or substance. Instead, Goethe was focused on the efects. For Goethe, ‘in principle, we cannot know anything about a thing’s essence, but only its efect, which in the final analysis means its efect on us’.6 Goethe, in his foreword to the Theory of Colour, explicitly states that: For in truth, it is a vain undertaking to express the essence of a thing. We are aware of efects, and a complete account of those efects would in any case encompass the essence of that thing.7 Much like Heidegger’s view of a table – not as essence, but as an ‘in order to’ – which is its efect on our everyday life.8 It almost brings us full circle to our very first question about whether you can define the practice – aspiring for its essence, instead of exploring or portraying its efects. What does this discussion mean in the social field, and what might it mean for phenomenological reflective practice? Surely, in the same way that an art piece can be measured as efective by the efect of beauty, a person, group, community or organisation, that is, a social phenomenon, can be measured by the efect of it becoming more aligned to life, their real desire. The efectiveness of this practice is to then make conscious that pathway, that patterning, that process of coming-into-being (and possibly support, a question of ethics, further discussed in Essay 9). And to be ever cognizant of the quality of conversations that are a necessity to navigate diferences, and the ever-present mainstream and margin dynamics in the social field. Yet, there is a difculty here because there’s a very good chance that efectiveness is not then easily made visible. As we have been implying throughout this book, aliveness, the ‘coming-into-being’ of a phenomenon is often invisible. Think back to the two stories in Part III – the invisible efect of ‘dwelling’ more efectively in Maleny as a result of this practice; or the demonstrable efectiveness of the community development work at HH enlivened by this practice. In many ways invisible, yet also palatable. Returning to the question of efective practice – take the image of watering a sapling. We observe and then intervene. Yet, it’s hard to know what is the right amount of water that should be added. We are observing for saturation, or avoiding 179

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excess. As Jullien warns, ‘too much efect kills efectiveness’.9 In a parallel way, all that matters is the internal gesture or logic of the social phenomenon, and, in turn, the efect must emerge from the internal coherence of this phenomenon. To ‘force’ into a phenomenon is to potentially elicit the reversal, of weakness, thereby undoing efectiveness. Imagine that a battery-powered spotlight had been highlighting the guardian carving in the temple David Whyte visited. Could it be that the emptiness of this practice is what contributes most to its efectiveness? My sense is that any reader of this book, and all the people I have encountered in this search, would have something to say about the conditions that ensure the greatest possibility of efect and efectiveness. And the big caveat, which has run like a thread of gold through this search, is that ‘we can never be sure’: uncertainty, humility and ‘letting go of control’ – that great big emptiness – are at the heart and soul of the practice. And perhaps, again, are the very qualities that contribute to its success.

In conclusion Efectiveness, having moved from the edge to the centre of my consciousness during this search, has accompanied me as a living conversation. Each conversation, within myself and with others, has been rich, and yet has also led to some bruising moments. There are people who quickly argue for measuring – for example, to ensure ‘we don’t waste tax-payers money’. Some suggest that if we don’t foreground efectiveness we are messing around, not being serious, wasting people’s time. Yet, I’d like the reader to be passionate about ensuring this phenomenological practice is efective, that is, has the intended efect, while constantly reaching for a clearer understanding of efectiveness that is beyond measurement.

Notes 1 François Jullien, A Treatise on Efcacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1996). For a great summary of Jullien’s work in social practice read Chapter Ten, ‘Keeping Us Of Balance – How the ‘Other’ World of Old Chinese Praxis Ofers a Path for an Authentic Practice Today – in Dialogue with David Harding’ by David Harding and Peter Westoby in Soul, Community and Social Change. 2 Hillman and Shamdasani, Lament of the Dead, 16. 3 Jullien, A Treatise on Efcacy, 104.

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Is the practice efective? 4 David Whyte, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship, (New York: Riverhead Books), 239–240. 5 Whyte, The Three Marriages, 240 6 Safranski, Goethe, 419. 7 Cited in Safranski, Goethe, 420. 8 Caputo, Hermeneutics. 9 Jullien, A Treatise on Efcacy, 106.

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The practice and ethics

Ethics and turning up As a practice oriented towards observation – nature, Self, others, relationship, groups, communities, organisations, life-stream – ethics is implicated in the practice. For, as Levinas reminds us, ethics is enfolded in our encounter with the Other. Yet ethics, like this practice, isn’t all about the Other. It’s about us, our sense of integrity and fidelity, our sense of aliveness, consciousness and turning up from the inside-out. Only recently I have noticed that some people write to me loudly proclaiming their ethics, (e.g. ‘I am deeply committed to the ethic of transparency’) and yet as I watch their behaviour, I sense their talk of ethics is a cloud obscuring their real interests – often revealed by their actions and efects. Last weekend, on a retreat with friends and colleagues, I heard a story about a prominent Australian charging $10,000 for a one-hour talk. I baulked, angry at this person who ‘appeared’ ethical; yet this shadowy sense of greed smelled of bullshit. However, in writing this, I am ever aware that I don’t know the whole story. For example, perhaps that income will be donated to a good cause. So, I also take care not to leap to quick judgements. Yet, even while appalled, I had to check in with myself, ‘If someone ofered me $10,000 for an hour would I turn it down?’ The answer to this question, only ever tested in the cauldron of an ofer (of $10K), would reveal whether my so-called ethics are a linguistic mask for my own interests. So, if efectiveness is a difcult topic, ethics would appear to be equally so. Ethics implies both the ‘I’ and the ‘Thou’ of Martin Buber’s dialogical ethic. To turn up truly, no bullshit – with that fidelity of aliveness, consciousness and being inside-ourselves. This coming to a social situation ethically – to be both responsive to the Other, yet deeply connected to our I, requires a commitment to knowing our own deep

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desires. Aliveness is most felt – the efect of aliveness – when we are in touch with what we desire. We can then come to the Other as true as is possible considering the shadowy world of our own blindspots and shadows.

Letting go, encounter and receptivity In turning up alive, as conscious as possible, inhabiting our I so to speak, we can really be attentive to the Other. What then of an ethical relationship between ourselves and the phenomenon of Other? Recollect how I experienced some of this research – at times not fully attuned to an encounter with people I interviewed, particularly when relying on electronic recordings. A fully present, and therefore more ethical encounter invited letting go of my instrumental will to extract data – an academic and dominant cultural ritual – and being alive to what might emerge in a mutual relational moment. The words ‘more ethical encounter’ is key here. What characterises this ‘more ethical’? In an alive conversation with a dear friend and colleague Anthony Kelly, we explored what he considers to be the key ethical element of relational work –be that development practice (which is our shared vocation) or other forms. For us, ethics is understood as what he described as the dialectic between Self and Other, an in-between space that can be characterised as joining, or connecting. As such, Anthony suggests that the ‘development journey is always about people joining’. Connecting to phenomenological practice, this is the work of being able to hold true to that dialectic – being in a space between Self and Other – such that we are alive to what’s new, emergent from the experience of joining and connecting. It could be characterised as moving between the I and Other, to discover a We, characterised by Martin Buber as the ‘I-Thou’ encounter, being on the narrow ridge between the two. I’d like to say something more about Buber’s ‘I-Thou’ because it can easily be misunderstood as only an encounter between two people. Maurice Friedman, Buber’s key biographer, carefully traces his movement towards a philosophy of ‘I-Thou’, clarifying that: Although “I and Thou” suggests at first glance a relationship of two people, it was not the one-to-one meetings . . . that led Buber to a mature understanding of the life of dialogue but this group of eight. The conversation of this group, Buber testified, were marked by an unreserved whole substance and fruitfulness he had scarcely ever experienced so strongly. This reality of

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group presence and presentness had such an efect on all who took part that the fictitious fell away and every word was an actuality.1 Freidman adds that ‘it was not like-mindedness but mutual presence that Buber remembered when we looked back . . .’.2 I cite these reflections, again foregrounding that this phenomenological reflective practice is most alive in ‘group’ reflection, because of the necessity of an exact and exacting quality of presence and presentness. To come as an I, fully present, authentic to our own perspective, yet responsive, open and not withholding ourselves is what is called for. Enfolded in this calling is an eschewing of wilfulness and instrumentalism. Buber is crystal clear that a wilful person is neither up for meeting another, nor able to be present. Caught in their own desires, such a person is not free to listen and hear what is present and unfolding. This can also be the seduction of a psychologising of the world that removes the dialectic of I and Other, falling instead into the atomised world of an introspective Self. Returning to the Friedman quote above, an ethical engagement with the Other is not only about being present. In contrast to the ‘like-mindedness’ mentioned above, Buber also suggests that the ‘more powerfully divided in [our] opinions [we are], the more truly close [we] bec[o]me’. He described this phenomenon as ‘interhuman’.3 The authentic I is up for conflict, is up for diference. This is crucial in Buber’s distinction between group-think-collectivity and dialogue-community, the latter being an ethical phenomenon which holds the dialectic of I and Other in a dynamic living way. Returning to the story of my interviews and alluding to some musings in Essay 7 on consciousness, interviews not alive to the Other are oriented to assimilation or appropriation – to only extract or hear from the interviewee what fits within my pre-existing perspective. It is to be stuck in the instrumental I, unavailable to the You/Thou. Disrespectful. Using someone. Them as resource for me, what Buber called ‘I-It’. For example, to gain wisdom as a ‘community worker’, limited by my own settled identity. Such extractive, assimilative or appropriating relations are hardly ethical. They lack an authentic, reciprocal, transformative edge. They are wilful, with the Self/I withheld. This can be true in observing natural phenomena too. Imagine walking in a forest for the purpose of ‘soothing’ or de-stressing. Legitimate. Is this desire for de-stressing extractive, assimilative? I suspect there can only really be a nuanced answer – discerning the diference between whether the desire is one of seeking connection with the forest, aware that connection is soothing versus a desire to ‘use’ the forest only for our own ends. The latter is more instrumental, turning the 184

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forest into a resource. The former into an alive relationship. However, I am not suggesting some purist viewpoint as probably we often come with a touch of both. Yet it can also be helpful to see nature, which humans are a part of (and a part from) as Other. I think this is why I particularly love Mary Oliver’s poem ‘I go down to the shore’: I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall– what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do. Here the I in the poem is appropriating an experience of the sea into their experience. But instead, surprisingly, there’s an encounter in which the sea discloses – on its own terms – what it has to say. It’s seen on its own terms. It’s an encounter which is more ethical in the sense that the sea is experienced as Other, and as such there’s a transformative encounter. There’s a genuine exposure to the Other, which is what ethics is. This exposure opens the possibility of an ethical space or encounter, one that signals a willingness to be changed. In many ways, a practice that works from the inside-out of a phenomenon, which takes the ‘encounter’ with the Other seriously, which works emergently, is ethical. At least in the sense of Levinas’s injunction of ethics as being about the Other. But this responsiveness and receptivity to the Other requires certain qualities that entwine ethics with empathy and presence. To be awake to an encounter, which is crucial for the practice, indicative of an alive openness to the singularity of a social situation, requires being present, which is an inner practice. The inner mirroring the outer, one flowing to the other. Empathy, in turn, enables an ethical responsiveness that is emotionally astute and sensitive, which enfolds the body too, for empathy is embodied. People often don’t notice what is said, but how the body holds the saying. In summary, my sense is that this practice, if understood as an ethical practice, has three key characteristics: 1. A letting go of pre-judgements/conception ‘as much as is possible’. This is the rigour of observation in practice (seeing what is there – not what we assume to be there) 185

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2. An openness to encounter. This is the ‘seeing as for the very first time’ – encounter as perceiving the other as Other, which is transformative 3. A receptivity to the disclosure of the Other. This is made possible by intimacy.

Ethics as hospitality Hospitality can be a useful way of thinking into the ethics of this practice in a way that takes this letting go, encounter and receptivity to the Other seriously. It orients towards a relationality that is welcoming of the Other, much like Derrida’s injunction of ‘community as hospitality’.4 For Levinas ‘ethics as first philosophy’ draws on what he calls the ‘wisdom of love’, something that can only occur in a face-to-face encounter with another (human and non-human) being that is recognised to be profoundly diferent (as in, everyone).5 Phenomenological reflective practice can then be animated by the idea of dialogue, encounter, but also an ethically embodied hospitable practice of care, listening and being open to encounter. Hospitality can also refer to the ethical practice of the phenomenological practitioner who intentionally welcomes other people, other ideas and other ways of thinking, being open to disruption, purposefully avoiding a stance of assimilation and appropriation. Going further but linking to other ideas explored in this book on observation as opposed to intervention, Mexican post-development thinker Gustavo Esteva argues that hospitality orients towards the principle of non-intervention and ‘co-motion’. The inhospitable and instrumental practices of normalised intervention tend to mean that many professional social practitioners have pre-determined what they are going to do with and for people, groups or communities6 – and are therefore not sensitive to the inside-out fabric that pre-exists. In a sense they work against the grain, against the fabric, tearing, ripping, fragmenting it. A co-motion (in contrast to pro-motion) approach calls for an opening up of spaces with people and to be part of the people, not only with them but among them, again, ofering that nudge, that invitation or insistence, from within and on the edge of the fabric of a phenomenon. This phenomenological approach recognises that the practice is to step into the ‘fabric’7 of a social phenomenon – a symbolic site. The practitioner then makes their ethical decisions about what to do, but in no way can they control what is unfolding in this symbolic site. 186

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The rigour of freedom and ethics Coming at another angle – one already tentatively explored in previous essays – the question of ethics, freedom and responsibility arises. After all, my whole thesis on the elemental of consciousness is that consciousness enables a group, community or organisation to be more of what it wants to be. So, in the context of this practice, ethics is to signal that the purpose of seeing the ‘coming-into-being’ of a social process is not necessarily to support the ‘made visible’ gesture. It is ultimately to ensure that the gesture, that formative intention, that ‘coming-into-being’, enables more consciousness such that the people involved can make a more purposeful and informed choice about that want. And again, none of this practice proposition undermines the reality of diversity, diference and possible conflict. For example, to see patriarchy more clearly, as activity we are all participating in, is not to then support patriarchy, but to support people’s freedom and want for freedom. Which will also necessitate conflict. The key here is that the elementals of this practice – aliveness, consciousness and so forth – ensure, or invite, freedom once a social phenomenon is seen clearly. Clarity equals an element of consciousness, which enables a truer freedom. However, thinking about freedom – alongside life – is a complex thing. In one of our New Zealand intensive workshops, emergent from a long meandering conversation, the idea of the ‘rigour of freedom’ arose – which immediately brought us all to the edge of our seats. People started to consider what it might mean to live without rules, yet attuned to, or in relationship to, life. The idea didn’t feel like a ‘free-for-all’, for there was a deep sense that to live with life’s way requires an incredible rigour of seeing what life is insisting on. I sit here wondering, in line with metamorphic thinking, what it is like to live with a freedom ‘on the threshold of our being’ (the place a good poet speaks from), or always on the ‘edge of tears’, as Camus aptly put it.8 Freedom, from a life-afrming philosophy, is to be alert, attentive and aware of the movement at play within our soul and the soul-of-theworld – to be fully alive to the web of relationships and connections that we are a part of, and therefore responsible within. It is to understand ethics through the Goethean lens of process, relationality and parts and whole. I think of those stories of feeling most alive, inhabiting a freedom born of spontaneity, disruption of routines, norms of behaviour and expectation (from Self or Others). Like not rushing for cover as a storm rages in Sao Paulo, giving generously in response to a need, dancing because instinct insists on ‘letting go’. I think of the practices of being free of pre-judgmental stories or imposing concepts on phenomena; of the freedom that comes within dialogue when we listen to text (what people actually say) and don’t drift to commentary (slip into our own 187

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interpretations); of the freedoms that arise with the rigour of observing a group’s practice and speaking back to them of what you see, enabling them to reflect on it more consciously. This rigour of freedom reminds me of moments in organisations I have worked for, when we ‘see’ or surface that we’re seeking funding because of organisational necessity, not true vision or mission; or that staf are trapped in cycles or patterns of behaviour that no longer serve anyone. The kind of freedom I am thinking about also insists on activity, getting involved – it is based on a relational ethics, not an atomised ethics, hence an ontologically oriented ethics that recognises the destructive limits of only thinking as individuals. It is always to be in an open relationship with the Other, without othering. We cannot easily make ethical decisions from the sidelines. It’s only from being inside, participating in the ‘coming-into-being’ that is alive in the social process that is everyday life; it is to have ‘skin in the game’. Assuming the reflective practitioner is not on the sidelines, they still need to make decisions – hence ethics. What does a practitioner support or oppose? Even if the practice involves gentle nudges into the existing fabric of a social phenomenon, in what way can ethics support the practice? Drawing on ethicist Sarah Banks, I argue for what she calls ‘ethics work’.9 Much like sociologist Nicholas Rose’s refusal of morality at the expense of ethics, ethics work is situated within practice as opposed to abstract principles. Whereas, in an imagined continuum, one end represents morality in which ethics become codified within principles – at the other end is the ‘ethical pole’, where there is a radical openness, resisting codified versions of normal, principles and incontestable ways of being. To live at the ethical pole is to insist on ethics work as opposed to becoming reliant on principles. Everyday ethics work is a way of being, thinking and doing that recognises ethics is ever present in the whole of life and in every moment of our practice, being faithful to care, observation, integrity, fidelity, responsiveness, equity and the haunting of justice. It’s to not settle on a principle (the death of ethics!). It’s an ethics that requires embodied sensitivity to Self, Other, the parts, the whole, issues of power and control, freedom and consent. It’s born of trust, trustworthiness, courage, efort. It’s certainly moral labour (I am not suggesting morality is ejected), but one grounded in the situation, Self, reflection, reflexivity, history. Trying to sharpen an ethical framework for this phenomenological practice, the first process is ‘seeing’, enabled by this practice’s rigorous observation and imagination. It is to see the ‘formative intention’ in our lives or within the social phenomenon we are observing, and, of course, in the world as a whole (particularly at this historical moment of unsustainability). This first process enables consciousness. 188

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Only with such consciousness can people be in vital engagement with what we, in that New Zealand Long Bay workshop, saw as the ‘rigour of freedom’.

Ethics and justice Finally, aligning ethics with a phenomenological reflective practice committed to aliveness, I highlight an ethics of justice drawing on the thinking of Jacques Derrida. John Caputo’s thoughts on Derrida provide an apt starting point: The most fundamental concern of Derrida is with the distinction between the programmable, the foreseeable efect, the predictable result, which confines our beliefs and practices within parameters sent in advance, which normalises and regulates, and the non-programmable, the unforeseeable, the marginal, the outsider, which allows for the eruption of something new, of the surprise, the fortuitous, the coming of what we did not see coming.10 Derrida explains the meaning of this in relation to law and justice, which in turn ofers us some guidance to rethinking ethics and reflective practice. For Derrida, justice does not exist as a thing. It is always coming, always promised, yet never arrives. As such, justice is haunting, spectral (Derrida discusses this in the Spectres of Marx).11 In contrast, what does exist is the law as a thing. However, and this is crucial, the law does not represent justice. From a hermeneutical perspective, Derrida is asking people to always interpret the thing – the law – in the light of the no-thing, the spectre called justice. Why do this? It’s to disrupt the tendency for people in the legal field to run on auto-pilot, assuming the law, or their interpretations of it, equate with justice. An ethics of phenomenological reflective practice, while alive to observation, consciousness and working from the inside-out, is also held accountable to the haunting of justice. Justice as a spectral phenomenon that keeps whispering to us in the corridors, the dark, from behind a tree. Most definitely from within the social processes that we join as practitioners – among groups, communities and organisations. Not justice as a blunt hammer, but justice as an invitation, a haunting from the past, a present call and a future conversation. What is it to let justice vibrate in our cellular body, animate our eyes and ears to see and hear, energise our feet and legs to move and walk, to be in such an open relationship with Others that we hear their voices, and can learn from the margins that have lived injustice for eons? 189

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Yet, this justice isn’t a call for moral codes. In the same way that the law does not equate with justice, so ethical codes (morality) do not equate with ethics. Ethics work, as suggested above, is a constant moral labour, being responsive to the phenomenon engaged with. As such, the ethics of this phenomenological practice is always responding to the ‘non-programmable, the unforeseeable, the marginal, the outsider’,12 to repeat Caputo’s words. In fact, Derrida’s ethical framework is crucial for anyone engaged in institutional life of any form (as those of us working in and around social or ecologically oriented organisations will be). Finally, this phenomenological reflective practice, now gradually institutionalising itself (initiating and instigating courses, reading, research), also recognises the spectral haunting of its emerging traditions – the kinds of orthodoxies articulated throughout this book – yet must always reach for the fresh, being open to new ethical calls.

In conclusion Perhaps these musings on ethics ofer nothing but aporias – points of difculty or undecidability. In the tradition of essay, I’ve not reached for solid conclusions. Yet there’s a series of signposts. The dialectic between I and You, enabling a transformative encounter. An ethics that takes this joining and connecting seriously. A call to hospitality and being open and welcoming of the Other, purposefully from the margins too, such that our worlds are disrupted. An insistence in ethics work aligned to the rigour of freedom. No falling asleep or slouching into simple rules, codes and abstracted principles. Instead, the moral labour of being inside, with skin in the game, of social situations, finding a way, ‘making the road while walking’ so to speak. And finally, an ethics that recognises and responds to the haunting of justice, allowing that spectral energy to keep us alive to the voices of those rarely heard.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge, 75. Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge, 75. Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge, 75. Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, (London: Verso, 1997). Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence, (London: Athlone Park, 1999). Gustavo Esteva “Regenerating People’s Space”, Alternatives 12, no. 1 (1987): 149.

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The practice and ethics 7 Dunne, J, ‘“Professional Wisdom” in “Practice”’, Towards Professional Wisdom: Practical Deliberation in the People’s Professions, eds David Carr, Liz Bondi, Chris Clark and Cecelia Clegg, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 21. 8 See David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, (Washington: Many Rivers Press, 2016), 40. 9 Sarah Banks and Peter Westoby, Ethics, Equity and Community Development, (Bristol,: Policy Press, 2019). 10 John Caputo, Hermeneutics: Facts and Interpretation in the Age of Information, (London: Pelican, 2018), 192. 11 J. Derrida, Spectres of Marx, (London and New York, Routledge, 1994). 12 John Caputo, Hermeneutics: Facts and Interpretation in the Age of Information, 192.

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10

A question about (critical) theory

What is the relationship between this practice and theory? And particularly with ‘critical theory’? I briefly probe these questions, acknowledging their importance to anyone concerned with ethics, social justice, human rights and critical thinking. As should be clear by now, this practice is committed to rigour. Such rigour includes the rigour of freedom, intellectual rigour, as well as a rigour of observation. It’s not about observation, feeling, intuition, senses versus intellect. It’s most certainly about thinking, albeit I’ve made a distinction between thinking and living-thinking, which we will come back to later in the essay.

Practice and theory At this historical moment, intellect is often considered threatening in popular discourse and even among practitioners, the legacy of a bygone Age of Reason which dismissed afect, feeling and intuition as key faculties. There is now a mistrust of intellect and a risk of return to what Francis Wheen calls an age of ‘mumbo jumbo’.1 Many people don’t like intellectuals and reasoned thought. In my academic life, I often experience this mistrust of the intellect. Not so long ago I gave a conference keynote in which I had shared stories of falling in love with succulents, compassion, the art of seeing and rich stories of practice, I also mentioned Hannah Arendt’s urge ‘to think’. I argued that we need more thinking. Afterwards there was a significant reaction from some of the audience. It was almost as though people had not heard anything else – those words of feeling and love, that sharing of story and practice. They simply didn’t like the fact that I had also pointed to ‘more thinking’. 192

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Accompanying this need for thinking is the importance of theory. Here we are immersed in a book on practice, and so the obvious question is, what’s the role of theory? The universities I am linked to love theory. Most universities reify it. Many universities dismiss practice, or practice-oriented research as secondary. In contrast, however, many mature practitioners, even if they dislike theory, understand the idea of a dialectic between theory and practice, which leads to a new thesis, such as praxis. But usually, theory is seen as the poor second cousin in the relationship. If not explicitly, then at least implicitly. After all, how many practitioners resist deep reflection on assumptions guiding their practice? So, I’d argue that theory as a way of thinking about assumptions is important. This is particularly so if we understand theory as ‘mean[ing] a reasonably systematic reflection on our guiding assumptions . . .’, as Terry Eagleton puts it, in which case, ‘it remains as indispensable as ever’.2 But how does this practice, a living-thinking, approach theory?

Polarity of ‘understanding’ and ‘not understanding’ The topic arose with an alive freshness at one of the intensives at Long Bay, New Zealand. Sue Davidof shared how ‘we see via theory, yet we must remain fresh, to see freshly’. Here there is acknowledgement that all seeing is loaded with theory. We cannot escape theory, as we cannot escape assumptions, memory, presuppositions, prejudices and blind spots. Whether or not people know they’re being guided by theory is beside the point. Theory is always present, even in its apparent absence, possibly even more so. After all, there is no unmediated experience –our observing, our listening, is always mediated by language, memory, presuppositions, concepts, culture, history. However, this phenomenological reflective practice adds to that presence by acknowledging, and then holding, a crucial polarity of ‘understanding’ and ‘not understanding’. The ‘understanding’, sometimes pushed to ‘knowing’, is a theory (‘to know’ is to theorise), and the ‘non-understanding’ is letting go of theory so that we can get inside a phenomenon, be more receptive to it. As such, the invitation in this phenomenological reflective practice is a constant dance between theorising and letting go of the theory. Infused with the elemental of consciousness, this practice invites us to be more aware of our theory, that is, be more aware of how we are seeing via words, concepts and ideas, yet wanting to see beyond or within the words, concepts and ideas. Such awareness enables us to see how we are patterning, structuring, conceptualising a phenomenon, so we have the freedom to 193

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see diferently and move towards another interpretation arising from a fresh seeing. Essentially, it’s about letting go of the paradigm of knowing, instead feeling comfortable in a humble space of curiosity and openness. Interestingly, Goethe himself suggested that ‘theories are most likely the hasty result of an impatient intellect that wants to be done with the phenomenon’.3 Hence, the problem is not theory as such, but the hasty turn to theory, neglecting the on-going observational practice.

Theory as naming; danger of a name In saying theory is not a problem as such, consider what I have already said about the theory of patriarchy in Essay 7. On the one hand, the theory can be a block to reflection on the process of coming-into-being of what patriarchy tries to make sense of. Giving a name to experience, such as patriarchy, can be super helpful for people experiencing pain. I referenced Solnit’s relief at having a name to make sense of her experience. In this sense theory, as a way of naming phenomena, is potent. As such, to see and name class is helpful. Marx and Engels did some powerful work for us all. In the same way, to name social or cultural trauma as a method of making sense of one’s confusion and constant emotional escalation, or the legacy of colonial violence on inter-generational life, or lateral violence in organisations, helps people see what they might never have seen otherwise. In the same way, to name a theory of community development is very helpful as a way of understanding a particular approach to social change. Yet, as already discussed, such naming is also dangerous. Not only in the sense that a name can mask the complexity of a phenomenon, but because naming has discursive power. For example, consider the theory of development. Tracking the use of ‘development’, Gustavo Esteva talks about only realising he needed so-called ‘development’ after Harry Truman’s use of the word in 1949, which led to the creation of the idea of the so-called ‘Third World’ needing development.4 The theory of development then starts to shape people’s reality rather than help us understand it. Development theorists have grappled with this for a long time, and Chilean post-development thinker-practitioner Manfred Max-Neef,5 who realised that his theoretical understanding of development couldn’t help him at all when face-toface with people who are poor. His account of silence in the face of poverty and reorientation towards a phenomenological inquiry into development economics is a salient lesson in how living-thinking can lead to a diferent kind of theorising. Emma Kidd in her delightful book First Steps to Seeing explores this journey of Max-Neef from theory-led economics in which ‘economists he encountered were 194

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convinced that they “knew” everything about poverty, yet still did not understand it’.6 She recounts the story of his immersion in people’s experiences over many years and the development of his barefoot economics approach and human-scale development. My main point is his move from theory-led knowing to a living journey of inquiry that produced living-theory.

Towards live-theory But to go further, also in that Long Bay conversation, we discussed how ‘anything that is alive is in process, is something becoming’. What this means for theorising is that we are trying to see what we could call ‘live-theory’ – something in movement. This perspective acknowledges a holistic frame where, within any phenomenon, there is no centre and no periphery. Instead, there are infinite centres and endless peripheries. In that acknowledgement, we can also focus on any fixed point – after all, seeing the whole also requires seeing the detailed parts. In doing this, theory makes sense of a part, in a moment. And that theory can have lasting relevance, but often theory then gets ossified, and stuck in the moment and/or the part. This phenomenological practice requires a living-thinking, and therefore living-theory – theory that can dissolve. The practice insists on working with theory and the meaning of it, in this moment. Take Marx and Engel’s contribution as an example again. They spent many years observing the workings of early capitalism in Manchester, England. They saw so clearly that they were able to give us a powerful theory of capitalism, using concepts such as class, labour value and so forth. This theory obviously has an on-going legacy and relevance, enabling us to see processes we might not have seen without their painstaking work. However, the risk is that their theory becomes a ‘thing’ and is wielded without on-going close observation of contemporary phenomena. I’ve named other theories such as trauma, development and patriarchy, which, while helpful, can also be a problem. Returning to Derrida’s point, all theory, like any narrative, is only alive to the extent that it opens itself to continuing deconstruction (the destruct and reconstruct of thinking).

What about critical theory? During my time of research, as a scholar and practitioner well trained in critical theory, I was constantly aware of the question at the back of my mind: ‘What is the 195

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role of critical thinking and theory in a phenomenological practice?’ The question arose because it seemed to me that some of my colleagues, who were even more deeply steeped in critical theory than I was, tended to ‘see’ more quickly than I was able to, be it through a particular lens. For example, when working in Uganda, a colleague and I were listening to the plight of communities sufering from oil companies taking their land to put in pipelines from source to distribution. My colleague’s critical theory of political economy and ecological [un]sustainability insisted on the idea that ‘oil should stay in the ground’. Yet, as we listened to what communities said it was clear their issues were more to do with fair compensation and alternative livelihoods. As such, my colleague felt the communities had missed the point and needed to be educated about the need for oil to stay in the ground (which I also felt uneasy about as I’d used plenty of oil flying to Uganda). That is, she knew, and they didn’t. In some ways, I envied such colleagues their rapid certainty, yet wondered whether the role of critical theory may be important as a background lens but runs the risk of becoming a potential barrier to inquiry if foregrounded too quickly. John, in a similar trail to my path of thinking on this topic, shared the following almost as a warning: This work is phenomenological . . . and I realised that the ‘critical’ voice puts you outside of it; it means you refuse to enter the work, into relationships. It doesn’t help a relationship or conversation. The critical approach tends to lead to a language such as ‘let’s go and interrogate’, and we work like this with critical theory informing our practice. We hear people say we must question; we need theory. Critical theory (Marxist/feminist) has to be critical. I was trying to get to a place where we start in a diferent way. In the 1970s, all theory started with experience, and yet we got stuck in theory as it disconnects from experience. In conversation, we need to work with experience and theory but keep the conversation alive. And he further adds, ‘If I can come back to myself – observation of self, I’m wondering when I adopt a critical voice if I place myself outside, and I also deny that part of myself that . . . I’m blocking seeing a part of myself.’ I sense John raises an important issue here. Perhaps it is not so much a problem of critical theory, but a particular foregrounding of its concepts that prevents practitioners from radically participating in a phenomenon and seeing it afresh. Getting close and radically participating in a phenomenon enables people to ‘get inside’ it, from which a real understanding can flow. This is what Max-Neef did. He didn’t eject his economics education, but simply used it diferently and moved closer to people, communities and the real phenomenon of poverty and human 196

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development. Perhaps John’s final point is that this understanding also flows from a living conversation, one in movement, held with openness, looking to see clearly, and also letting go of quick interpretations.

Don’t fall in love with concepts Tanya put it succinctly when she reiterated the importance of ‘not falling in love with concepts – we do need concepts to see the world, but also let go, to keep seeing the world afresh’. Again, the idea is to embody a living, fresh way of seeing, of not getting stuck or settled, not getting caught in concepts as ideology. The invitation for Tanya is to ‘let go’ – to see the world through concepts, but then ‘let go’ and see again. So maybe she is inviting a genuinely reflexive critical seeing. I think a good critical theorist is animated by a well-developed faculty of seeing. This is true for practitioners now and has been historically. For example, one weekend in Melville, Johannesburg during my sabbatical, I devoured a new book in one sitting – the story of Rosa Luxemburg. I was intrigued by her, knowing that the work I was linked to in Uganda was funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and I was soon to head to Berlin to meet some of their African desk staf. What struck me about her life was not only her deep commitment to a radical critical politic, but her ability to ‘see’. She seemed to have a very well-developed faculty of observation. This wasn’t made explicit in the biography but ran as an almost invisible thread through the text. It became particularly clear to me in her love of nature. For example, she spent extended periods of time in prison, and she soaked up any opportunity to watch, describe and write about the brief encounters with nature still available despite the imprisoning walls. Reading her life stirred within me a sense that her capacity to see natural processes is what gave her such an astute capacity to see the violent and exploitative machineries and machinations of imperial capitalism. It was her capacity to see rather than her ideological commitments that made her theorising and then writing and revolutionary commitments so potent. Yet, this capability is often rendered invisible, with the biographers, or commentators, foregrounding theory, rather than the fresh, living-theory-building process.

In conclusion Perhaps I am overreaching with this inference about Rosa Luxemburg. However, it echoes Max-Neef ’s decision to reverse the direction of seeing from theory-led 197

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interpretation of experience, to experience-led living-theory. A living-thinking approach, aligned with live-theory, invites a more open approach – to be in a conversational, participatory, relational approach to phenomena, which enables more rigour and, at the risk of repeating myself, is also more open to encounter with experience, thereby refusing assimilation and accommodation and welcoming transformation (to have our views disrupted). It’s to have the same open relationship with theory itself, holding concepts and ideas loosely, not grasping, not wielding them hastily or earnestly. Just holding them as useful and potentially potent lens. In writing this essay, one fear is that readers might assume that I am no longer a passionate advocate of social justice because I have questions about the quick use of critical theory – even though I’d love to see more critical thinking in the world. Instead, what I’d really love this essay to trigger is a passion of not-knowing the answer to this discussion – that is, we don’t become settled on an answer. I’d love the reader to love critical theory, while being able to let much of it go as the first urge, and instead become immersed in seeing, sensing and participating in a social phenomenon.

Notes 1 Francis Wheen, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions, (London: Harper-Collins Publishers, 2012). 2 Terry Eagleton, After Theory, (London: Penguin, 2004), 2. 3 Safranski, Goethe, 423. 4 Gustavo Esteva, Salvatore Babones and Philip Babcicky, The Future of Development: A Radical Manifesto, (Bristol: Policy Press, 2013), 3–6. 5 Manfred Max-Neef, From the Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics, (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books, 1992). 6 Emma Kidd, First Steps to Seeing: A Path Towards Living Attentively, (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2015), 145.

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What is it to promise something? It is in some way to aspire to fidelity – to ‘follow-through’, to move words to actions, to be in alignment, a congruency of aspiration, intention and perspiration. However, it is also surely about the almost inevitable disappointment, the betrayal of a promised hope – because there is human frailty alongside the inevitable movements of life shifting aspiration, intentions and perspiration. With the idea of a promise we do however gain the courage to venture forward – risking all on the ever-prescient frontier of past-present-future. In this essay five promises are ofered: first, of a ‘practice’; secondly, of traces-tradition, thirdly, of the haunting shadow of unlived life; fourthly, of an ontological shift; and, finally, of be-friending the world.

The promise of a ‘practice’ Attention to practice has been at the heart of this re-search. Essays 2 and 3 sharpened questions about who the practice is for, and whether it should be named. Lots of paradoxes and tensions emerged. In some ways, having journeyed over the years with those questions, paradoxes and tensions, a part of me still feels as though I have skirted around the challenge of ‘What is a practice’? On the one hand, it’s perhaps better to skirt around, and avoid. Because as will be clear to the discerning reader by now, there’s a risk with deploying definition. Definition settles a living process into a thing, with boundaries; it shifts the dynamic of Becoming into the static of Being. To define something is to risk losing the very aliveness that produces the efect of a practice. However, on the other hand, I want to get clearer, because it’s hard to write a book about ‘a practice’ without clarity. I’ve reached for clarity accompanied by DOI: 10.4324/9781003112280-21

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Alistair MacIntyre, Pierre Bourdieu and Michael Polanyi, significant scholars on the idea of practice. Their work helps delineate between what I think of as phenomenological reflective practice as ‘a practice’ – a practice with a clear intention; and ‘the practice of everyday life’, discovered through reflection, which is in turn often ‘tacit’. For MacIntyre there are both external and internal goods of ‘a practice’. To be ‘a practice’ is to have both, and most of his scholarly work is focused on ‘the practice’ of nursing and teaching. Within his conceptual framework the external goods refer to an architecture or community of practitioners. This consists of workshops, journals, organisations and courses at universities and so forth, about ‘a practice’. The fact that this architecture exists implies a ‘community’ of people thinking, learning and researching – in critical and yet also through appreciative inquiry with one another – that is, it’s never a solo venture. Within this MacIntyre lineage of thinking, Joseph Dunne refers to practice as: a more or less coherent and complex set of activities that has evolved cooperatively and cumulatively over time, and that exists most significantly in the community of those who are its practitioners – so long as they are committed to sustaining and developing its internal goods and its proper standards of excellence.1 As suggested in this passage, the practice I’ve been inquiring about is not a solo practice. There are networks of practitioners around the world, currently linked through a web of connections to The Proteus Initiative, that can be constituted as a ‘community of practice’. This community has accumulated ideas over time and has developed a body of ideas or knowledge that strengthens observational and reflective capabilities. Is this not true? I go to workshops to hone my skills so I know I am part of an emerging ‘community of practice’. I direct people who seem interested to The Proteus Initiative website. People go to one-of workshops in Brisbane or Maleny, Auckland, Wellington, Sao Paulo, Recife, Towerland itself; or they can join up to three-year learning programmes, or university certified post-graduate certificates or Master’s programmes – so there is an architecture. There is clearly an emergent set of external goods. MacIntyre explains that ‘a practice’ not only has these external goods, but also has coherent internal goods. In talking about internal goods, he first refers to the idea of an objective of this practice. Teachers educate. Nurses care. Obviously, for this phenomenological reflective practice it’s not so easy, because the objective is not always clear. Yet, some contours and elementals have become clearer. For 200

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example, there is the objective of observation, of seeing the invisible, the formative intention of a social phenomenon (group, community, organisation). Or there’s the objective of working with what’s alive – within and without, and making conscious living process. MacIntyre also refers to internal goods as representing the kinds of qualities that a practitioner has or should cultivate. Again, somewhat contestable, but very important because ‘modern’ technical-rationalist approaches to practice assume internal qualities are not important. In contrast, what has become clear about this practice are the key qualities such as humility, rigour, love, attentiveness and so forth; and, more importantly, that it is the quality of the practitioners that is the key to the quality of the practice (as opposed to their technical prowess). Within the MacIntyre framework this phenomenological reflective practice is ‘a practice’. My re-search also tries to contribute to its evolution. Pierre Bourdieu thinks about ‘practice’ in a slightly diferent way that is also useful for us to consider. For him, practice is our everyday way of being in the world, our dispositions, what we say and what we do, which in turn are deeply shaped by habitus – what he understood as the structuring structures of our lives – our class/gendered/racialised backgrounds. Bourdieu is included in the mix of this reflection to foreground that the practice is, on the one hand, ‘a practice’ as above, which alludes to professional wisdom, yet it is everyday life too. After all, I’ve been arguing this practice is a practice for all, one that cracks open the professional-lay person duality, and below I will be arguing for de-professionalising it. Within this frame people are simply discovering their own practice (their way of being in the world) through observation, inquiry, reflection and dialogue, and understanding how their habitus is shaping their way of being in the world – remember the reflections on feminism, patriarchy and so forth. Taking this perspective helps practitioners become aware of what it is within them that stops them practising the qualities they want to embody – the personal, familial and social-historical hauntings that hinder our own conscious freedom. Thirdly, Polanyi’s seminal work shows that ‘we learn how by practice’, but more importantly highlights that this ‘how’ is ‘tacit’. By this, Polanyi is suggesting much practice knowledge is not easily made explicit (i.e. we can’t teach it, or even workshop it), because it is drawn from experiences that are embedded in a collective and an institutional endeavor, an insight that is also crucial for this promissory reflection.2 Drawing on this lineage of thinking, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger propose that learning may be less an individual, and more a social exercise that occurs in everyday settings rather than formal learning contexts.3 It’s these ‘everyday settings’ that intrigue me. The place of the tacitly learned. Not in a workshop, or formal 201

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learning space. Instead, simply in relationship with others attuned to this practice, in conversations with them, hanging out. I feel this is true, as my practice has most certainly been honed in the context of a growing network of people committed to this practice who’ve become friends. Not just workshops or processes together, but the conversations, care, the convivial community. New habits grow from this emerging home. In summary, these three scholars add to our thinking about how to progress this practice. Many people around the world are contributing to building an architecture and community of practice. There clearly is ‘a practice’ even if it’s at times hard to name and is best portrayed and experienced. Yet, thinking of it as ‘a practice’ in no way separates the key opus of discovering our everyday practice, and understanding how our personal histories and collective social structures shape that. Finally, this practice is honed in the milieu of social relations, embedded in the networks that both shape our life and that we contribute to shaping. As such, we can be more conscious about the networks, the social world within which we immerse ourselves. For example, we can choose to apprentice ourselves to the Other from the margins, stretching our everyday and professional practice wisdom beyond the norms of our orthodox networks.

The promise of traces-tradition If the first promise is a ‘practice’, one requiring fidelity to a community-of-practice, to self-reflection on our own everyday practice and to contributing to the evolution of the practice, I’d like to add some thoughts about the linkage between practice and tradition, drawing particularly on Derrida’s idea of the trace. Tradition is to recognise that we stand on the shoulders of giants, ancestors, and best acknowledge them. Rarely do we have a new idea. Yet we reinterpret good ideas, ones that stand the test of time, in new ways and in new contexts. So in this second promise is the gift of traditions acknowledged. Again, it means we don’t stand alone. It means we build on what has come before us, evolving practice, in dialogue with others, with the etchings of memory, traced in books, journals, oral culture, myth, stories and so much more. I feel humbled knowing I work on the edge of an evolving practice, but one that is grounded or rooted in fertile soil. However, there are risks with this promise of tradition – hence the insertion of the idea of trace. Trace is a word the French philosopher Derrida gave a fair amount of thought to. For example, within his book Spectres of Marx, there is a ‘tradition’ of thought – known as Marxism – but he suggests we only really know ‘traces’ of that 202

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tradition. We can’t know exactly what Marx was trying to say because we cannot get inside the author’s intent. As already discussed, we engage in multiple readings of Marx’s work – searching for intent, but ultimately, we can only really encounter the text (with all that we bring to it). As such, we keep re-interpreting what Marx had to say in our own context. Derrida suggests this process is what keeps the thinking alive, in the sense that we see Marx’s thinking as influencing history and we are searching for that thinking to have a similar efect in our times. For Derrida, the idea of tradition without the infusion of ‘the trace’ signifies that ideas are too easily settled – or settling. Tradition alone, too tightly coupled with identity, leads to ossification. People love to say something like, ‘I am a Marxist’. They debate what Marx wrote searching for that certainty, that gesture of ‘knowing’. As such, it gives a sense of security or solidity, of identity or, as I have already said, a feeling of being settled. However, what is clear is that, like Jullien’s warnings, this settling leads to laziness, and a relaxed condition, which is the death of a living process, or the efect of life. Hence, the usefulness of Derrida’s idea of traces. This idea recognises the contribution of thinking that has a legacy, but it also recognises that while there is often a need to remain connected to some authentic interpretation of that legacy – the tradition (of which fidelity is important) – aliveness ensures no settling, no solidity, and keeps inviting a freshness, a re-interpretation, such that there is a multiplicity, not a many! In this framing of tradition and trace I want to say a couple of words about the legacy that this book builds on. In Essay 1, I shared some of the traditions of thought that have profoundly shaped my practice – dialogue, community development, soul. Their traces then influence what I encounter in this phenomenological reflective practice. They shape one another. In Essay 3, I also named some of the traditions that influenced various people encountered on this search: peace and conflict studies, Jungian psychology, Quaker education, green activism and so forth. Allan and Sue themselves come to this practice from several traditions – the cooperative and community development tradition,4 black consciousness, anthroposophy and radical higher education. These traditions have influenced Allan and Sue’s cellular being – seeing, presencing, social change, transformation, consciousness and so forth. And, then sitting alongside these is also this emergent phenomenological or Goethean tradition, accessed through both the archival traces of Goethe’s writing and also phenomenological works. Allan and Sue have taken this writing and engaged in a living conversation, an encounter which also includes their re-interpretation of Goethe for social practice, and links Goethe’s ‘delicate empiricism’ to their A 203

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Delicate Activism,5 which in turn builds on Allan’s Artists of the Invisible.6 They are trying to be ‘true’ to the legacy yet are making it alive with new interpretation (the multiplicity), in a new context. There is a confluence of traces of thought and ideas that are coming together in their practice, and their articulation of practice. Some would remain invisible; some are possible to surface. These traces symbolise the myriad rivers of living thinking and practised practices that shape phenomenological reflective practice.

The haunting shadow of unlived life Much like Derrida’s haunting of justice, the third promise of this practice is what I call the ‘haunting shadow of unlived life’. As already explained in Essay 9, by the ‘haunting of justice’ Derrida is meaning and arguing that all programmes, practices and institutions – for example, of law, democracy or education – are subject to an ever-present spectral call to justice. And that any programme, practice or institution cannot claim to ‘be just’ – because that spectral haunting of justice insists on ‘more’. In this deconstructive gesture, Derrida is ensuring that people never ‘settle’ for what they have constructed (a programme, practice, institution). There’s always more possibilities for more justice – what he calls a ‘democracy-yet-to-come’ or a ‘university-yet-to-come’. Like Jullien, he’s suggesting that ‘to settle’ is to lose the quest for justice. Alluding to this haunting of the no-thing that Derrida calls justice (for he sees it as spectral),7 I suggest that this phenomenological reflective practice is also haunted by the shadow of unlived life – that no-thing that we have called life. Life, like justice, is a ‘no-thing’ – it’s an ever-present flow. To ignore it is to be haunted by a shadow. This promise recognises that phenomenological reflective practice always needs to be shaped by, responsive to and disrupted by the flow of life. Aliveness, characterised (for it cannot be defined) by movement, suppleness, adaptation, context-sensitivity – while honouring an inner desire (for example, an eagle to manifest its eagleness) – ensures a state of becoming. It’s to live on the edge of the moment, aware the next moment is profoundly diferent (albeit recognising continuity in a relationship of polarity with discontinuity). It’s to hold the polarity of both continuity and discontinuity, recognising that flow connects us to an imagined essence (the river is a river) yet is always being disrupted as a form (for river banks shift, and a pebble falls from a clif causing a new ripple that afects the whole river). As such, whether it be the signature at the bottom of an email, or a plan for teaching a class, or a social programme in a community organisation, this practice – one that is alive to the flow of life – will disrupt that pre-planned form. 204

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To ignore this flow of life, and its call to constant becoming, is to relegate its energy to shadow, to a place where it’s unlived, but also manifests in maladaptive ways. To be disconnected from life is to become brittle, stuck, stagnant. Yet that life will find a way. Reminded again of Anthony Kelly’s mantra, ‘Never underestimate people’s attachment to chaos’, chaos is one manifestation of the haunted shadow of unlived life. To thwart the process of life, to relegate it to shadow, is to ensure a stunted group, community, organisation – to not lean into being the best it can be. Mimicry is another expression of the shadow – for a group/community/ organisation to try to be like another, perhaps thinking through a franchise model, the kind of social packaging we have already talked of that is indicative of mechanical thinking and practice. In summary, like the haunting of justice, the flow of life invites, or insists, on never settling (even if from the outside there is the feeling, or appearance of settling – much like the turning of an ocean tide). To appear settled, yet attuned to flow, is to be fully present to what is becoming – and requires all the observational skills (focus/peripheral; infinity/finite, boundaries/connections) that this practice calls us to. To avoid this flow is to render it as shadow energy.

The promise of an ontological shift The poet-songwriter Leonard Cohen, in one of his later interviews, argued that the ‘catastrophe’ was upon us. Michael Leunig, the Australia cartoonist-prophet, has made the case that we live in a time without a moral compass, which he describes as ‘a moral trauma’. I often meditate on these two ideas. From this meditation, I then often want to do more. Think back to my musings within Interlude 1, about ‘what accompanies me while on this ‘search’ – Brussels bombings, Sao Paulo violence, South African student demands and refugees drowning in the Mediterranean. There are many reasons to do more. Yet, the practice that has been at the heart of this inquiry, while not avoiding action or intervention, is an invitation to a new way of being that foregrounds observation (with that deft notion that observation is an intervention). As a practice that is oriented towards being, as opposed to the cultural urge of doing, while actually recognising that from a relational, holistic perspective being and doing are deeply intertwined – it is again about ontology. I find that it’s too easy to urge cultural, social, political, economic change. Yet, the promise of this practice is more about a way of being, or what Rose highlights as a ‘new art of living’.8 Some of the compass points of the practice include 205

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a yearning for connection,9 a new ethic of seeing connectivity and process, and actively connecting – that is, participating in the world. It’s a practice that requires transformation of our image of self to not inhabiting earth, but being earth; not connecting with nature, but being nature; as naturing – the new ontology that Escobar talks about as relationality and interbeing.10 Think of a time when we fall over. For me, a fall often wakes me from a slumber that then enables me to sense my connection to nature (if I am nature the connection is always there), to enable its full presencing to me. Remember my account of being at the tea tree lakes of Byron Bay? Seeing, experiencing the lake as story, enabling the lake to become manifest to me. Remember people’s accounts of ‘being seen’ by others, through a practice of deep and heart-felt listening and attention? In this ‘being seen’, people experienced new connection. Remember my and other people’s stories of ‘seeing’ a group, a community and an organisation – seeing metaphors arise, images emerge, the invisible? In this seeing, people were conscious of their renewed participation in the social and could see it ‘from within’. These stories and accounts try to portray a practice that is ontologically oriented. It is a quest that insists on a deep dialogue with the self, the other, the world.

The promise of be-friending the world There is something else of importance, linked not only to ontology, but also the assertion that ‘this practice is for all’. I have been grappling with the notion of the professional since engaging in this inquiry. Part of my sabbatical journey was about decolonising from the academy as university, its language and its instrumental bestiality. What is becoming clearer to me is that this decolonising work of the self is actually part of the larger project of de-professionalising. Many decades ago, I read Ivan Illich’s Disabling Professions.11 They took me into new spaces, but it was only an intellectual ‘taking’. At the time of reading I was deeply embedded within the grassroots and had not yet developed any settled professional language or identity. However, some 30 years later I find that the professional gesture – external and internal to self – dominates my world. And I now find myself doing what Mexican scholar-practitioner Gustavo Esteva calls ‘trying to reclaim [my] being beyond the specific shape of a profession’.12 This ‘reclaiming of being’ is also an ontological question or quest – but is oriented in trying to regain a way of seeing with my own eyes, not those of the profession that I have been inculcated and habituated into. I find that to dismantle this professional seeing is to not only see in another way but to dismantle the self. And here the ontological 206

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quest of dismantling is about a transformational journey – not one primarily of knowing, but of unknowing! Like Esteva, I would suggest that the de-professionalising journey, one of unknowing, is to enter into a relational world that is about the familial and friendship. Esteva focuses on friendship and this too reminds me of the writings of my dear friend and colleague Jason MacLeod, who, when writing about his 25 years of solidarity work in West Papua, asked the Indigenous people he worked with, ‘What do you want of me?’ Their answer – ‘Friendship’. Isn’t this a good lens of seeing to accompany the journey in de-professionalising – how to be-friend the world, my-self, others? Hence, this practice is one for all of us requiring a journey towards friendship. One of the enduring legacies of this journey or search has been the beginning of incredible new friendships; and, of course, to have been seen by Allan and Sue, as I continue to see them.

Notes 1 Dunne, “Professional Wisdom”, 14. 2 Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Knowledge Dimension, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967); see Matthew Crawford, World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). 3 Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 4 See, for example, Allan’s earlier book, The Development Practitioner Handbook, (London: Pluto Press, 1998). 5 Kaplan and Davidof, A Delicate Activism, 3. 6 Kaplan, Artists of the Invisible. 7 Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx, (London and New York: Routledge, 1994). 8 Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (London and New York: Free Association Books, 1989); Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 9 Similar to Gibson-Graham’s articulation of the role of deconstruction and connection, see J. K. Gibson-Graham, “A Feminist Project of Belonging for the Anthropocene”, Gender, Place & Culture 18, no. 1, (2011), 1–21. 10 Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse. 11 Ivan Illich, Disabling Professions, (London: Salem & Boyars, 1977). 12 Orla O’Donovan, ‘Conversing on the Commons: An Interview with Gustavo Esteva – Part 1’, Community Development Journal 50, no. 3, (2015): 532.

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Postscript Many rivers flowing

I started this book sitting by the Otter Pools at Towerland. I wrote much of it walking alongside or sitting by the Brisbane River that weaves and winds through my home city. And I see the river in three ways. First, I see the river that is obviously visible and can describe it in all its beauty. This observation requires pausing and exercising the faculties of seeing. Perhaps drawing or photographing, and carefully looking; sensing, smelling, feeling and touching the water too. It’s murky, brown and strong, it moves slowly at times on a meandering journey, but sometimes it moves rapidly, filled with turbulence, currents and tidal flow. It carries passengers on jet-like ferries; it’s crossed by several bridges. Its edges include mangroves, walking paths, wealthy homes and gorgeous parks. Second, I see the river through my imaginative capacity. This imagination helps me to see the river that is bounded in identity, as a ‘river’, yet is also completely one, and in deep connection with the ecological system of the bioregion of Brisbane and surrounds. ‘Ecosystem’ as a concept feels almost too mechanical, for this seeing is to see a web of relationships, the river in porous relationship with the soils holding the river and connected to the forests and trees that edge it. It is the river that is made by the ocean and the rain, and is both of those things, not separate. It is the fish and other animals that live and love the river. It is the river as part of the whole, while also being completely whole in and of itself. It is the river that becomes a lake in a flood unaware of the city on its banks. But I also see the river in a third way, the river as a story, of the ‘Brisbane’ river, that gives meaning, that is its particularity, made as this river connected to this city at this bay and so on. It is the river that is a story, or a dance perhaps. It is the river of Aboriginal Dreamtime, being made and re-made by the ancestors, as we care for it through giving it story. Yet I am not Aboriginal and so cannot participate 208

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Postscript

in the river as they once did, seeing its aliveness as given. I can only see this river, and participate in its aliveness through rigorous, active and conscious imagination. This kind of three-way seeing is an example of living-thinking, or perhaps phenomenological thinking. Or it could simply be a seeing of expanding consciousness, seeing in a way that is stretched or stretching. It is this kind of seeing that can give substance also to new movements around the world, ones such as those giving rights to rivers in New Zealand or India. Think of Te Urewera, a vast forested region in New Zealand, now recognised as a legal entity, whereby the forest has all the rights, powers, duties and liabilities of a legal person. Think of Te Awa Tupua (known as the Whanganui River), the first river ecosystem to have its own legal standing, given in 2012, within a Western legal framework. Intriguingly the legislation states that the regional policy must be consistent with the vision and strategy for the river. Can you imagine asking how to be a steward of ‘what the forest wants’, or ‘what the river wants’? And then asking: ‘How can regional development fit in and around that want/need?’ It would require a deep practice of observation, listening and imagination, such as that I recounted above. And here midway in my re-search journey, I purposefully journeyed to the central desert of Australia to stand in the ancient river of Pinta, winding through the 2-billion-year-old West MacDonald Ranges, a river that connects me deeply to seeing in living ways. I camped on the dry riverbed and lay among sand particles that John, a geologist I know, suggests ‘could be’ up to 4 billion years old. Imagine? Here the dreaming of central desert Arrernte people, caterpillar country dreaming, connects with geological timescales that are beyond my comprehension. Yet, to lay in the river and feel the gentle, cold desert wind against my skin, to sense the layers of water below me – for the ghost and red river gums are healthy, a sign of water, even if unseen – and know some of the dreaming stories, even as huge, shimmering, red quartzite mountains tower above, with a moon shining brightly peaking over one of the saddles, is to feel so alive and connected. To be a part of, as opposed to a-part from, the world, is to be immersed in a living process of which I get a brief glimpse of what is a tiny life compared to the eons of living going on around me. I am humbled and delighted deep in my soul. And now, finally, near the home I am making in finishing this book. One that is less than a kilometre from the fulcrum of three valleys, feeding three river systems, the Stanley River, the Mooloolah River and the Mary River. Each and every morning, I walk that forest circuit I wrote of in the story told, 45 minutes of the world’s expanding time, immersed in a cacophony of birdsong and a hall of leafy mirrors reflecting light. Near the end of circuit is a slow-moving creek among a piccabeen pine swamp, albeit after rain it can become a raging torrent. One week 209

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in spring this year it became a series of pools, with barely a flow of connection and movement between them. It is on the edge of stillness, without fresh flowing water, a stagnant becoming. In slow morning walking, I see the huge earthworm homes striding from the soil, the macro-pod pademelons musing, the birdy logrunners playing, the haunting catbird and wompoo creating echo soundscapes. And, at other times, I sense it all, receptive to those particular beings, yet perceiving the forest as an eco-system, alive in all its wonder. At times I am aware of my stagnant faculties, like the creek barely flowing. Pools, only just touching one another. I see, smell, touch, hear, intuit, notice. Yet, these inquiries, like rain showers, have re-activated the flow that disturbs the stagnation. In that flowing I am more aware of the beautiful particularity of the earthworm, wompoo pigeon, pademelon, logrunner, along with the red cedars, silver ash, strangler fig, catbird. Yet also I ‘sense’ the beautiful, wonderous, creative, destructive whole; and a whole that I-am-a-part of, in a social relationship with. Often, I am looking, sometimes there’s an encounter, an in-between third space of I-in-relationship-with-forest-as-we. The forest is a place in-the-world, gesturing to rest and play, inviting yet guarding, dancing yet still; the same yet never as such. The wait-a-while vine of the Jinibara country I now dwell within insists on a slowness such that the dormant senses awake. Here is the ‘crack’ in the edifice of a world that manipulates and manages nature, and that works nature instrumentally. Could this be the beginning of people re-imagining their image of themselves in relation to nature, not as something separate to nature, but as nature? Could this be the beginning of re-understanding ourselves as relational beings, who could then flow into a community and ecologically oriented life? Could this be both an ontological and practice shift that enables us to participate with the planet, enlivened by a newly created Gaia? As this book has tried to show, such a ‘crack’ in ecological thinking could also occur in everyday practice. Re-connecting our relationship with nature could also support the healing of our social woundedness, which in turn could penetrate the alienation that sits within each of us and often flows seamlessly into our social relations. Repairing social relations could, perhaps, with imaginative efort, undo our economic and political practices too.

In conclusion In reality, there can be no conclusion to a work such as this. The initial sketching within artwork is the upstream work, enabling the artist to start imagining, a move 210

Postscript

towards the next living part of the process, to paint some picture. But, and at risk of repetition, as Picasso said, ‘to bring a work to “a conclusion” is like putting an end to a bull – to kill it’.1 I am certainly not at the end of this search or re-search; I am still living with the quest or the question. And at a moment in May, 2016, I had just re-read one of these interviews – Patricia’s – and her very last words felt very apt as I drafted the very first version of a conclusion: On the other hand, alongside humility is the need for ‘genuine interest’, which might be another word for love. It’s not about curiosity, but some heart connection to the person or the situation. When someone comes to me for coaching or consulting, I have an ‘inner test’. This test is, ‘Can I love this person, or this company?’ If I can, I’m on the right path and can be a right person to serve that someone. Her comments push me to another level of consideration, curiosity about this quest and understanding of myself within the quest. I know I have held a humility of not-knowing; I am certainly in the space of a ‘passion of not-knowing’ as Derrida puts it so well – meaning I keep asking. But what Patricia asks of me is can I love this quest and the people I have been putting the questions to? It is a good question to live with.

Note 1 Jullien, Silent Transformations, p. 52.

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Index

abstraction 46, 55, 57, 67, 100, 106 accommodation 11–12, 198 Adorno, Theodor 7 aesthetic response 24, 107 afect, taking seriously 91 Afghan asylum seekers 111 after-death care 134 Alexander, Christopher 34, 51, 76–7 alienation 13, 57, 210 aliveness 5, 14, 22, 31, 129, 159; and becoming 204; concentrated 73; consciousness of 119; and desire 183; discerning in the social field 80; on the edge of order and chaos 86; as elemental 51, 53–4, 88, 148; and ensouling 113; finding 85–6; new 41; quality of 76–7; receptivity to 99; relationship with 82–3; search for more 43; sense of 11, 178, 182; and singularity of seeing 86–8; and working from the inside out 94 ambiguity 151, 166, 170 Amsterdam 9, 13, 16, 31, 108–12 anticipatory practice 59, 129 apartheid 15 architects 43, 97 architecture of practice 200, 202 Arendt, Hannah 13, 108, 192 arising image 65 arrogance 116, 128

212

art of living, new 205 Artists of the Invisible (Kaplan) 7, 14, 42, 65, 85, 204 Artists of the Invisible programme 64 assemblages 88, 111 assimilation 11–12, 198 assumptions 27–8, 43, 116, 156, 193 attention 94; and awareness 59; faculty of 37; lack of 86; new 91; paying 44, 63, 78–9, 82, 163; political economy of 129; quality of 57, 63–4; real 97; technologies of 72 attentiveness 43, 64, 83, 99, 112, 201 Aunty Penny 62 autonomy 32, 95 awake, being 115, 128 awareness 41; and attention 59; of judgements 43; of the social 28 Barfield, Owen 54–5, 74n7, 84, 112 Barung Landcare 168 Bayo Akomolafe 81, 87–8 beauty 79, 107, 109–13, 113n19, 161, 178–9, 208 Becoming 5, 53, 83, 151, 199, 204–5; philosophy of 119; poetics of 102 Beerwah Mountain 165 befriending: of death 75; of the world 206–7 being, reclaiming of 206 being seen 206

Index Belgian Cemetery 145 Berlin 9, 65–6, 110–12, 197 betrayal 173, 199 The Big Push 176–7 binaries, oppositional 151 biodiversity 130n1, 152 biology, Weber’s ideas in 91, 95 bioregions 116, 159, 169, 208 the body, and consciousness 117–18 Boochani, Behrouz 113n20 borderlands 5, 33, 40, 45, 49 Bortoft, Henri 5–6, 14, 24, 90, 121; on Goethe 25; on sensory experience 35 Bourdieu, Pierre 200–1 Brisbane 103nn7-8, 118–19, 166 Brisbane River 208 Brussels bombings 16, 205 Buber, Martin 3, 10, 30, 123–4, 182–4 Bunya Dreaming 167–8 Byron Bay 17, 206 Cacciatore, Jo 144 Cairncross, Mary 162 Caloundra Community Centre 147, 150n9 Camellia Cottage 158–62; workshops at 164 Cameron, John 25 Camus, Albert 187 Cape Town 5, 9, 13, 19n7, 44, 48, 58, 79, 85 capitalism 101, 106, 195, 197 Caputo, John 89n14, 189–90 Cartesian duality 88, 117 CD QLD (Community Development Queensland) 141 CDRA (Community Development Resource Association) 14, 19n7, 39, 49n8 change, stories of 177 chaos 72, 86, 205 Chermside 134–5 chikungunya 16 Chinese thinking, classical 151, 177 choir practice 78–9 clay 96–9, 103nn7-8

climate change 128, 130-1, 152–7, 168 climate justice movements 156 Cohen, Leonard 44, 96, 205 colonisation 26 coming-into-being 6, 66, 70, 178–9, 187–8; of patriarchy 126–8 community: and complexity 86; entanglement of 166; as living phenomenon 84–5; sense of 13–14 community development (CD) 40, 133–6, 141, 148–9, 156, 203; efectiveness of 179; and grief practice 144–5; needs in 139; and service delivery 143, 146; theory of 194; tradition and framework of 136–7 community development programme framework 140–1, 147 community of interest 145 community of practice 25, 36–7, 49, 173, 200, 202 Community Praxis Co-op 135–6, 138, 143, 169, 178 community turn 135 community work 3–4, 11–12, 184 co-motion 186 complexity 86; and ambiguity 170; and multiplicity 106 concepts, falling in love with 197 conscientisation 115–16 conscious practice 79 consciousness 12, 21–2, 27–8, 41–3, 94; and aliveness 83; and the body 117–18; in CD practice 156; as elemental 51, 53, 125, 187, 193; enabling 187–9; and ethics 182; expanding 102–3, 115–17, 122–3, 125–6, 128, 162, 178, 209; and the Other 122–3; and patriarchy 125–9; quality of 57; shifting 116; stretching 118–20 control: letting go of 98, 180; paradigm of 130, 154–5, 176 conviviality 101, 165 cooperative movement 168 corruption 16–17, 157

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Index COVID-19 pandemic 17, 131, 136, 153–6, 170; at Camellia Cottage 158, 160; and palliative care 142 cracks 12, 157, 177, 201, 210 Crawford, Matthew 15 creativity 96–8, 136 Creyton, Mark 98 crisis-oriented service 139 critical theory 127, 192, 195–8 critical thinking 173, 192, 196, 198 Crystal Waters 168 culture 21, 25; as generative force 28 curiosity 16, 18, 78, 116–17, 194, 211 daily practice 44, 63 dance, creative 170 Davidof, Sue 5–6, 9; and attention 64; and efectiveness 175; at Long Bay 58; Master’s programme 46; and naming the practice 37; on observation 159; on theory 193; at Towerland 22; traditions of 41, 203 Day, Elham 134, 136, 140 deadness 81 death: befriending of 75–6; conscious relationship with 137 decolonising 206 deep seeing 61 definition 199 A Delicate Activism (Kaplan/Davidof) 42, 85, 204 delight 12, 90, 108–9 depletion 5, 45, 81, 111, 170 de-professionalising 43, 201, 206–7 depth psychology 12, 22, 25, 28–9, 104, 115 depth social practice 115 Derrida, Jacques 117, 211; on community 186; on haunting 189–90, 204; on readings 120; on theory 195; on the trace 202–3 development: science and art of 7; and transformation 129 development efectiveness 175 development journey 183

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development theorists 194 development work 61 dialogue 3, 186; as between-space 123; and dwelling 158, 161–2, 169; life of 39, 183; practice of 39–40; soul- oriented 105–6 didactic models 47 directionality 141 disabilities 133, 138, 143, 149n2 disappointment 16, 45, 199; with prevailing practices 80–2 discernment 71, 86, 97, 117, 122, 177 discipline 10–11, 55, 57–9, 63, 73, 87 disclosure 10, 159, 161, 164, 186 discursive power 36, 177, 194 diversity 6 Dunne, Joseph 200 dwelling 158–9, 161–2, 167, 169, 179 Eagleton, Terry 193 ecological sensibility 27 ecosystem 208 edginess 27, 79, 167 edgy space 10, 86 education days, annual 138 educational practice, reflective 21 efect, and efectiveness 149, 178–80 efectiveness 7, 31, 82, 109; measure of 175–8; and power 125; social 144; undoing 180 elementals 5–6, 51, 129–30 email exchanges 20 embodied consciousness 98, 117 the emergent 26–7, 84, 91, 98, 100, 152 emotion: and the body 118; taking seriously 91 emotional literacy 127 empathy 155, 185 empiricism, delicate 159, 203 emptiness 180 encounter 3, 7; and interview 9–10; openness to 186; transformative 122, 185, 190 end-of-life care 133–5, 139 Engels, Friedrich 194–5

Index Enlightenment 37, 90–1, 108 enlivenment 5, 61, 73, 80, 90–2 ensouling 104, 107 environmentalists 27–8 Eros 77, 92 escape 154 Escobar, Arturo 15, 30 Esteva, Gustavo 43, 92, 186, 194, 206–7 ethical encounter 122–3, 183, 185 ethical practice 136, 185–6 ethical relationship 152, 183 ethics 110, 123–5, 179, 182; and efectiveness 149; empathy and presence 185; as hospitality 186–9; and justice 189–90 everyday life 127, 152, 179, 188, 200–1 evidence, politics of 177 evolution 39, 41, 201–2 existentialism 113n17 experience: and phenomenology 24; sensory 35 external goods 200 extraction 5, 100, 123 faithfulness 17, 158, 166 falling out of love 152 families, clusters of 141, 147 Fanon, Frantz 108 feminism 70, 124, 201 fidelity 23, 31, 39–41, 70; to the actual 67, 147; and ethics 182; to social situation 94–5; and tradition 202–3; to truth 166 First Nations 62, 70, 116, 124, 145, 165, 167, 208–9 fissures 120, 177 Flexi School 168 flexibility 5, 139; polarity with structure 142, 148 flow of life 61, 204–5 flow of movement 65 Fonte Institute 14, 19n7 foregrounding life 75 forest 184; dialogue with 158, 162–4; instrumental use of 184–5; relationship with 208–10; as social phenomenon 164–5

forest literacy 164 formative generative force 83, 85 formative image 95–7 formative intention 128, 187–8, 201 fossil fuel interests 152, 157, 196 framework of practice 21 Frank, Anne 110 freedom: diminished 26–7; and discipline 10; radical philosophy of 95, 127; and responsibility 27–8, 152, 187; rigour of 170, 187–90, 192 Freire, Paolo 40–1, 106, 115–16, 136 Friedman, Maurice 183–4 friendship 4, 123, 207 Frieze, Deborah 102 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 120 Gandhian tradition 136 gender relations 127 generative action themes 136–7 generative energy 83, 88 gestalt 13, 94, 102 gesture, invisible 105, 124 Glasshouse Mountains 158, 165 Goethe, J. W. 14, 22; and aliveness 95; deployment of 37–8; and depth psychology 29; on efect 179; and imagination 54, 65–6, 159; and reflective practice 25; and science 35; on theory 194; traces of 203; way of seeing 44 Goethean Observation 48 Goethean practice 34–6, 82 good life 157, 168 Gramsci, Antonio 115 grand ambitions 81–2 granularity 87, 160 gratefulness 75, 77, 160 Great Barrier Reef 145 grief 76, 78–9; conscious relationship with 137; spectral 157 grief garden 168 grief practice 137, 144–5, 149 Group of Learning 47–8 group processes 72, 99

215

Index group reflection 34, 56, 72, 184 Gubbi 167 Haarlem 84 habitus 201 Harding, David 46, 151 Hathorn, Paula 13–14 Hawthorne, Fiona 138 heart, as organ of perception 105 hegemony 115 Heidegger, Martin 87, 100, 158, 179 HELP (Healthy-End-of-Life Project) 135 helping, language of 139 hermeneutic reversal 98, 120–1 Hermes energy 107 HH@H (Hummingbird House @ Home) 143 Hillman, James 4, 15, 107, 112; on the aesthetic 24, 35; and depth psychology 25, 29, 115; on efectiveness 178; lamenting the dead 140; on the self 12; soul tradition 65, 104 historical work 116 history, haunting 124–5 HNA (holistic needs assessment) 138–9, 141 holding the moment 77–8 Hollis, James 166 honesty, deep 72 honouring the present 99 hooks, bell 15 hospices 134–5, 137, 146 hospitality 186, 190 human rights 125, 192 humility 211; of not-knowing 26, 66; pulling people into 117; and seeing 68–9 Hummingbird House (HH) 133–5, 150n9, 169, 179; and community development framework 136–9, 141; culture of 139–40; flexibility and structure in 142–3; grief practice at 144; relationship with families 146 Husserl, Edmund 25 hyper-capitalism 17–18, 128

216

identity, settled 12, 184 illness, life-limiting 134–5 the imaginal 106 imagination 7, 22; exact sensorial 55, 65–7, 159; meaning-making through 54–5; morality of 74n7; poetics of 29, 167 imagining, animal sense of 35 impact 176–7 implicate order 51, 64 implicate-level work 136–7 impressions 58, 66, 167 in-between space 3, 30 in-between state 152 in-house care 134 inquiry: spirit of 48; tributaries of 173 inside-out 31; perceiving from the 22; turning up from 182; working from the 26, 53–4, 59, 96–7, 99–102, 147–8 inside-out place 158 instrumental practice 99, 186 instrumental thinking 26, 159 instrumentalism 99–100, 128, 177, 184 integrity 6, 39, 41, 130; of practice 147, 149; sense of 94, 127 intellect 107, 192, 194 intelligence: awakened sensory 167; body’s 12, 30–1, 117 intensity 11, 41–2, 119 intention: formative. 128, 187–8, 201; invisible 126–8 intentional observational practice 148 intentionality 23, 25, 38–9, 140, 143 interbeing 206 interests, genuine 211 internal goods 200–1 interpretation: and observation 66; withholding 67–8 intersectionality 70, 124–5 intervention 55; instrumental forms of 26; listening as an 63; and observation 21, 56, 148–9, 186 interview 9–10 intimacy 170; with object of description 29; and seeing 55, 57, 107; with self 27

Index the invisible, seeing 56, 63, 65–6, 70, 105 I-Other dialectic 184 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 155 Issues and Options Paper 135 I-Thou 10, 92, 124, 182–3, 190 Jenkinson, Steven 75, 150n7, 154, 157 Jinibara country 17, 166–7, 210 Jordan, Jill 168 joy 16, 77–9, 160, 164 Jullien, François 12, 15, 17, 36, 47, 151, 180n1, 203–4; on climate change 152; on efectiveness 177–8, 180; on knowledge 154 Jung, Carl 4, 24, 41, 65, 104, 117, 203 justice 42, 204; haunting of 188–90, 205 Kaplan, Allan 4–6, 9, 19n7; and donors 39; on efectiveness 175, 177; and Group of Learning 48; on intention 126; at Long Bay 58; Master’s programme 46; and naming the practice 37; on observation 159; retreat at Towerland 22; traditions of 41, 203; see also Artists of the Invisible Kelly, Anthony 72, 183, 205 Kidd, Emma 194 Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens 85 knowledge 26, 99, 154, 200 KPIs (key performance indicators) 72, 141 Kumar, Satish 4 Kundera, Milan 77 labour, moral 188, 190 Lane, Tanya 62, 82, 85 Langlasse, Taki 146 Lave, Jean 201 law, and justice 189 laziness 12, 95, 203 learning process 45–8 leopard tree 44, 55, 85, 111 letting go 187, 197 Leunig, Michael 205

Levinas, Emmanuel 182, 185–6 Levy, Andrea 15 LGAs (local government authorities) 141, 146 life: alignment with 178; cycles of 55, 159; efects of 76, 203; flow of 61, 204–5; as process 151; situated 167 life journey 25, 45 life-force 76, 95, 104, 163, 166 life-stream 41, 98–9, 123, 182 lightness 59, 77 like-mindedness 184 listening: animal 160; deep 11, 62–4, 68, 122, 135–6, 164; levels of 21 Listening, Learning and Connecting 147 live-theory 195, 197–8 living community 86, 169 living conversation 20, 76, 122, 180, 197, 203 living inquiry 108–9, 112, 113n17 living process 17–18, 78, 81; climate change as 152; and efectiveness 177; and enlivenment 90; non-alignment with 148; parts of 53, 55; patriarchy as 126; practice attentive to 34; purposeful entanglement with 163; seeing 14, 73, 83–5, 107; truth of 26 living relationship 11, 27, 77, 79, 98 living thinking 24, 26, 29–30, 83, 102, 117, 124, 126, 204; and mechanical thinking 81; phenomenological 84–5 living way 40 Long Bay 34, 58, 78, 123, 189, 193, 195 Lorde, Audre 15 love: consequences of 178; wisdom of 186 Lukács, György 7 Luxemburg, Rosa 197 MacIntyre, Alistair 200–1 MacLeod, Jason 207 macro-level work 137, 146 Maleny, Australia 17, 154, 158, 165–9, 179, 200 Mandela, Nelson 44

217

Index manic addiction 26, 106, 157 marginalisation 18, 36, 98 Marx, Karl 194–5, 202–3 Mary River 158, 168, 209 masculinity, toxic 110, 128 Master’s programmes 46, 175, 200 Max-Neef, Manfred 194–7 Meade, Michael 4 meaning-making 11–13, 21, 31, 46, 54, 91, 112, 157, 170 mechanical thinking 26, 81, 176, 205 meditation practice 23, 40 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 29 meta-level work 137 metamorphic process 160, 166 metamorphic thinking 30, 98, 126, 187 metaphors 13, 21, 29, 106–7; new 120, 170 #MeToo 125 mezzo-level work 137, 145–6 micro-level work 136–7, 145 mimicry 205 Minjerribah 31, 118–19 Moloch 108, 159, 171n3 momentum 26, 80, 137 monkey-mind 63 Mooloolah River 158, 209 morality, and ethics 188, 190 morning practice 23 movement, polarity of 148 multiplicity 94, 106, 203–4 multi-tasking 63–4 myth 107, 157, 202 naming 35–8, 45, 126, 161, 194 narrative process, collective 146 narrative thread 7, 61, 98, 120 narrow ridge 10, 183 natural phenomena 56, 184 nature 3; cycles of 168; Goethe on 35; lessons learned from 83; love of 27; observing 44, 68–9, 147; playfulness in 77 naturing 152, 154–5, 166, 168, 206 NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) 135, 141–3, 145–6, 149n2

218

neoliberalism 155 New South Wales 154 New Zealand 5, 9, 34, 47, 97, 187, 209 Newton, Isaac 179 NGOs (non-government organisations) 15, 21, 46, 58, 71, 81, 134 non-understanding 193 normal, return to 155–6 noticing 87, 143–4, 156; collective 164–5 notitia 105–6, 112 not-knowing 26, 66, 98, 157, 198, 207, 211; passion of 117 object thinking 45, 98, 126, 128 objectivity, distancing 11 observation 10, 13, 20–2, 43; at Camellia Cottage 159–61, 163–4; careful 66, 94, 109; as elemental 51, 53, 112, 121, 148; faculty of 60, 73, 197; foregrounding 22–3, 53, 56, 153, 169, 205; and healing 169–70; and imagination 54; listening as 62; participatory 29, 53, 156; power of 21, 59, 102; rigour of 29, 185, 192 observational muscles 29, 53–4, 60, 73, 164, 173 observational practice 22–3, 26, 53, 62, 194 Odell, Jenny 15 Old Mulberry 160–1 Oldham, Kelly 143 Oliver, Mary 42, 185 ontological shift 205–6, 210 ontology 29–30, 51, 205–6 openness 38, 43 oppression 70–1, 124–6 order 86 ‘in order to’ 99–102, 106, 130, 177, 179 organisational gesture 140, 148 ossification 36, 87, 117, 203 the Other 3, 13, 104; centrality of 91–2; ethical encounter with 122, 182–5, 188, 190; and patriarchy 128; receptivity to 186 Otter Pools 3, 208

Index palliative care 133–5, 137–8, 145 Palmer, Richard 24, 121 paradigms 7, 11–12, 18 paradox 37, 69–70, 110, 199 participatory relationship 57, 59 participatory worldview 54, 112 particularity 20–1, 86, 89n14, 169, 208, 210 patience 23, 117, 147 Patio de Colegio 107 patriarchy 66, 88, 110, 201; and ethics 187; and power 125–8; theory of 194 pattern language 51 patterning 27, 130, 179, 193 pause 10, 25, 36, 39, 56, 72 PCQ (Palliative Care Queensland) 141 people’s power 111, 114n21 perception 29–30, 35; as participation 53; peripheral 112; phenomenological 107; restructuring tributaries 116 personal care workers 138 PHA (participatory holistic assessment) 139, 141 phenomenological disclosure 10 phenomenological inquiry 9, 22, 37, 108, 194 phenomenological practice 4 phenomenological reflective practice 4–7, 15, 28–31; and community development 137; dilemmas of naming 33–7, 45, 48–9; and Goethe 25; and other traditions 41–2; past and present in 70–1; qualities of 22; in the social field 133; third river of 4, 40 phenomenological step 24, 120 phenomenology 14, 20, 22; use of term 23–4 Picasso, Pablo 211 Platonic Being 151 playfulness 77–8 poetic practice 102 Polanyi, Michael 200–1 polarity 24, 30; attention and non-attention 163; awareness of 56; of continuity and discontinuity 204; Jullien on 151–2; lens of 73; village and forest 162

post-activism 88 post-truth 17 poverty 80, 83, 194–6 power, ethical expression of 125 practice: having a 38–9; promise of a 199–202; use of term 23 praxis 4, 46, 106, 193 pre-determined image 99, 101 pre-judgments 185, 187 presencing 44, 64, 85, 87, 98, 105, 156 presentness 184 process thinking 91 processivity 102, 151 procrastination 89n9 professional practice 23, 44 Profides 40, 49n9, 87 promissory reflections 199 The Proteus Initiative 5, 9, 14, 47, 153, 200 pulsating life 87 QCH (Queensland Children’s Hospital) 134 Quakers 41, 203 quality of being 42–3 quality without a name 34 quantum physics 149 Queensland: children’s hospice in 134–5; COVID-19 in 154 Queensland Community Development Conference 62 Queensland Kids 149n1 Queensland Neighbourhood/Community Centre Network 141 quiet, quality of 155 QUT (Queensland University of Technology) 134 racism 108, 110, 123 radical participation 10, 18, 29, 102 rainbows 54–5, 83–5, 170 reading, extractivist mode of 121 receptiveness, active 97–8 receptivity 24, 26, 58, 97, 99, 120–1, 177, 185–6

219

Index reflection 24–5; embodied 31; rhythm of 71–2 reflective practice 3–4, 22, 27, 72–3; Goethean 25; openness in 101; in palliative care 143–4, 148; poetic 29; see also phenomenological reflective practice refugees 16 regularity 23, 25, 38, 40, 144 relational ethics 188 relational thinking 91 relationality 30, 105, 186–7, 206 relationship, being in 158 Rembrandt van Rijn 108 remembering day 140 re-search 9–11, 13, 15, 42, 70, 88, 106, 156; journey of 7, 17, 22 resistance, ontological 31 re-spect 24 responsibility 26–8, 59–60, 82, 84; and climate change 152; to the emergent 100; radical 64; for seeing 68 responsiveness 5, 92, 139, 142, 144, 185, 188 rhythms 23, 31, 44, 48, 77–8, 143–4 rigour: and discipline 55, 57; of openness and responsiveness 100–2 Rilke, Ranier Maria 4, 81, 91 the rim: sitting on 70, 88, 102, 112, 168; stepping onto 124, 134 ritual space 144 River School 168 rivers 3–4, 208–10 Rose, Nicholas 188 sacred space 140, 165 São Paulo 9–10, 16, 34, 43, 77, 84, 107–8, 112, 205 Scharmer, Otto 156 Schiller, Friedrich 88n4 seeing 21–2; bringing people into processes of 117; of culture 28; dynamic way of 44; enabling for everyone 60–2; and ethics 188; experimenting and exercises in 56–7; faculty of 10, 37, 53, 64, 197;

220

and holding the moment 78; and imagination 54–5; as intervention 58–60; and ontological shift 206; with others 117; phenomenological way of 24–5, 29, 107; rigour and discipline in 57–8; singularity of 86–8; and the source 68; three-way 208–9; in traditions of practice 41 seeing into 159 seeing through 106 sense-discipline 164 sense-making 140, 148, 153, 158 sensibilities: aesthetic 35; new 22 sensing 21, 25, 29 sensitivity 30, 43, 127, 166, 188 separateness, deep cleft of 91 shadow-traditions 4, 25, 28 Shamdasani, Sonu 104, 113, 150, 178 Shaw, Martin 167 signature, automated 20 silent transformations 17, 119, 151–4, 211 singularity 20, 86, 88, 89n14, 96, 185 slowness 17, 122, 210 Smith, Patti 15 Soal, Sue 39, 41, 62, 67, 71, 82 the social: complexity of 68; and consciousness 125, 127; phenomenology of 105–7; receptivity in 121–2; seeing 67 the social body 102, 118, 121, 128 social change 41, 102; inner nature of 26, 80 social dynamics 27, 156, 168 social field: aliveness in 80, 88; observation and intervention in 21; practitioners and practice 38; seeing in 58, 65–6; working in 27, 45, 81–2 social gesture 70, 143 social justice 125, 192, 198 social mapping 139 social movements 56, 65, 68, 70, 124 social networks 136, 139 social package 82, 94–6, 117 social phenomena 23; accurate seeing of 101; aliveness in 29, 85; fabric of 186; formative intention of 201; imaginative

Index participation in 105–6; intervention into 26; sensing ourselves into 129; working from inside-out 54, 94–5 social practice 10, 22–3, 27, 36 social practitioners 23, 26–7, 97–8, 106, 186 social processes 59–60, 68–9, 71–2; aliveness within 83; living 76, 86–7, 102 social purpose organisations 38, 82, 169 social relationships 169, 210 social situations 57, 83; discerning what is alive in 85–6; gestalt of 94 socialism 70, 124 solastalgia 144 solitude 15, 160, 165 Solnit, Rebecca 15, 70, 120, 125, 194 song writing 96–7 soul 100–1; and sensory sensitivity 166; of the world 104–5 South Africa 9; Fonte in 19n7 space, creating 65, 71 Stanley River 158, 209 stewardship 159, 162, 168–9, 209 story 84 storytelling 21, 63, 158 stuckness 27 subjectivities 79, 95 succulents, observing 56–9, 63, 192 Sunshine Coast 150n9 surfacing 21, 25 surrender, skilfulness of 76 symbolic expression 65 synchronicity 65 Syrian refugee crisis 108, 111 tacit knowledge 49, 154, 200–2 Te Awa Tupua 209 Te Urewera 209 text, encounter with 120–1 theory: and experience 196–8; importance of 192–3; as naming 194; see also critical theory Thích Nhất Hạnh 30 thinking: dynamic way of 25; need for 192–3

Tombi beach 77 Toon, Paul 136–7, 139, 143, 146–9 Toowoomba 146 Towerland 3, 14, 22, 47–8, 56, 87, 175, 208 town halls 138 Townsville 145 traces 202–4 tradition 202–3 traditions of practice 33, 39–42 transformation 3, 12, 64; as flourishing 129; and observation 59; of understanding 121, 123 trauma 128, 194–5, 205 A Treatise on Efcacy (Jullien) 177 Truman, Harry 194 Trump, Donald 17 the Truth, reading for 120 truth, re-aligning with 166 truthfulness 17, 166 TULE (Tying Up Loose Ends) 168 turning up 98, 182–3 Uganda 15, 196–7 ugliness 110, 112 uncertainty 69; holding 97 the unconscious 117–18 unconscious bias 128 unconscious practices 126, 129 understanding 193 unlearning 46, 103, 106, 128 unlived life 204–5 urban consciousness 159, 169 Van Gogh, Vincent 108 village consciousness 162 violence: colonial 194; fast and slow 154; of patriarchy 17, 125–8; state-led 110 vulnerability 127–8, 154, 156 wakefulness 4–5, 27, 44, 78, 159, 169 Walker, Michelle Bolous 121 walls 16, 110–11, 138, 197 Watkins, Mary 4, 29, 105–7, 112 Weber, Andreas 14, 80, 90–1, 95, 117–18

221

Index Wenger, Etienne 201 Wesley Mission Queensland 134 West MacDonald Ranges 209 Western thinking 151 Wheatley, Margaret 102 Wheen, Francis 192 the whole: and hermeneutics 120; seeing 102, 108–9, 112–13; sense of 86, 122; touching 78–9

222

wildness 144, 160, 165, 167 wilfulness 7, 56, 177, 184 Williams, Robin 157 witnessing 15, 102, 149 wonder, sense of 78–9 Woodman, Marion 4 writing, practice of 31 Yeronga Village 66, 85, 100, 112, 165