The Breadcrumb Trail, January 2024
Work, resources, teachers, and inspiration
I’m not sure how I’m feeling about this liminal time that envelops me within its mist, this winter-full turning of the year in the Northern hemisphere.
Mostly, I love the wintering. Cold walks, cold showers, hot baths, saunas, keeping close to myself and my loved ones. Reading books when I feel like it (occasionally). Going to bed when I feel like it (around 8.30pm). Turning away from new ideas and formed ideas and materialised work, knowing that they’ll be rearranging themselves with a life of their own (as these things are wont to do) while I intentionally hold my attention elsewhere. Turning my attention back to them when I’m ready to check how they’re materialising.
But then there’s also the awkward reconnecting with a more expansive life. One foot in, one foot out. Not really ready to be energetic and creative, but moved to act; an inner moving often tempered by the external cold (to be fair, we do need feet and hands we can actually feel and engage to hold books, type words, not cry.1). And yet, within the chilly hands of January days, the gentle and unmistakable warmth of new directions and new offerings; even amidst the deepness, the closeness, the muted reach of a far away sun with all the colours it holds.
This second of my breadcrumbs articles, sharing what I’ve been up to as well as breadcrumbs I’ve been following, is part of that being moved to act…
My Ecology of Offerings
Over the last six months or so, a new ecology of offerings has tenderly materialised into being:
↟↟ The Ecological Organisations Framework. Released under creative commons, anyone can adopt this lens, evolve it, share it, and explore how an organisation or community might become more ecological. Download it as a PDF and read the accompanying article.
↟↟ Cellular Rearranging. Hosted on Substack, these free articles share my insights and learnings on organisational ecology, embodied facilitation, stewardship and commons, and self- and shared-enquiry. (Nice one, you’re already here! Go you!)
↟↟ ‘Organisations as Ecological’ speaker. For the next three months, I’ll speak, for free, to any group, organisation, or community that is curious about organisations as ecological. I’d love the practice and to develop embodied routes into this subject. Invite me as a guest on your podcast too!
↟↟ Generative Worlding. Also hosted on Substack, GW is shifting into a new form that I'm very excited to spark, with deeper, richer, collaborative episodes. All of the first 4 episodes will forever stay free but moving forwards episodes will be released for free at around 80% of the full episode, with the full episodes for paid subscribers. Find your listening route here.
↟↟ Ecological Organisations Constellation. I am so, so excited to have just last week launched a Patreon-hosted network for those of us that want to gather around the idea of ‘ecological organisations’, and experiment, learn, and research while sharing our findings and ideas. This week sees the start of the arrival of ecological organisations ‘ambassadors’ to the constellation, a small, select handful of people who have helped develop the framework or been deep supporters of this work since the start. For those that generously step into being the first members, I’m running a special offer till next Thursday as thanks. Read more about our work and the different tiers here.
↟↟ Bespoke client work. Remote and in-person, my client work goes from ‘thinking partnerships’ to organisational ecology coaching and embodied facilitation work. I offer a ‘Choose Your Price’ intro session for people (and their colleagues) to gain a lived experience of working with me. Find out more and book a session here.
↟↟ Facilitation Pods. We’ve just ignited season two of this gorgeous, intimate space of inquiry and are inviting new members to our commons. Fancy joining us? There are still some places available in a new pod starting in the next two weeks. We close applications this weekend. Read about the pods and apply here.
The Biology of Wonder
Some of the things I treasure about my dear husband, W, include his innate holding of the foundational perspectives about reality that is found in chaos magic and nature sciences, a holding that is in deep relationship with his innate connection to the natural elements; and the almost-mystical beauty he finds in engineering and design principles. (Plus, he has the most pert bottom I’ve ever seen in real life without putting any real work in.)
What the first two things mean to this article is that we have lively, fascinating, and wonder-filled conversations. We explore our converging and diverging ideas and perspectives and feelings with interest while occasionally thinking that the other is talking sweet nonsense, and W grounds my sometimes fantastical conclusions as I open W to a more emotive experience of life. Case in point: The Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling, and the Metamorphosis of Science by Andreas Weber and his idea of ‘poetic ecology’.
As I read it, a poetic ecology holds that all living organisms are imaging the world around them and responding to it through decisions driven by value (rather than as mechanistic responses driven by, say, gene programming or how an electric car navigates its environment):
To preserve oneself as form over matter means that the living system has a necessary stake in its continued existence. At the same time it means that the organism does not perceive the world “as it is”, but only as it matters to its own ongoing existence. (…) The world, then, is imagined rather than observed. And this imagination is in the service of a living beings own needs to flourish and thrive, which is all it needs to know. A bacterial cell follows a trace of sugar not because it recognizes its components as carbohydrates and therefore, objectively concludes that it must be food, but simply because it has a positive value for it. It does not follow “sugar”, it follows “good”.
Andreas Weber: The Biology of Wonder, p.65
I keep trying to hold onto a more objective response to Weber’s work than that of so much of what he writes makes sense to me on an instinctual and experiential level but his earlier descriptions of how we humans are multiple, not singular, so closely reflect my experience of life that I’m 100% biased:
With every breath, we all surrender fragments of our bodies, constituents of ourselves, into the surrounding air. At the same time, we all continuously incorporate transform many elements of the earth into ourselves. We become what has been the environment. (…) What I have just been is now already carbon dioxide in the inner space of a leaf’s loose green tissue, and then it will be part of a blade of grass on the meadow. (…) A deep part of my self is not myself.”
Andreas Weber: The Biology of Wonder, p. 60
Yep, 100% biased. I’m there with him on a poetic ecology; W, not so much. Read the free PDF of the introduction here.
Allergic to Modern Life
Another often conversation between W and I2 is my body and how I, and we, navigate my chronic, complex, and confusing health issues. We try to balance useful reflection and curiosity with surrender, acknowledging my and our reality with a full gaze - no pretence of wellness, no averting our gaze, no reducing them from the central place they hold in my, and our, daily life - while still holding the possibility of miracles.
The impact of modern life on our bodies cannot be denied and doesn’t need repeating. At the same time, more and more of us share that our bodies are becoming queer. Queer bodies that refuse to heal. Queer bodies that won’t carry the myth of robust bodies living out lives of modern wellness. W and I speak often about bodies being allergic to modern life, of my body being allergic to modern life (literally, as I have experienced new allergies to dust, grass, animals, along with systemic reactions to a long list of once-harmless foods).
There’s much to be grateful for in this queering. How I see around corners where others only see straight lines. Embodying a self-compassion that others seem to never meet in their lifetime. A body-shaped holding of deeper time; of seasonality, grief, stillness, and subtlety3. There’s also much to be grateful for in the courageous, insightful, generous humans that are publicly voicing the beautiful, troubling continuation of being GriefSick, making kin with disability, living in bodies and lives that refuse to heal, the exhausting ask of unresponsive bodies, and performing wellness so that others feel more comfortable.
I believe there’s much learn from these wise voices, whether we are inhabiting often-unwell bodies or often-well ones.
In Search of A Third Attractor
Onto a lighter note: the metacrisis/polycrisis.
Like most of us, I’ve been aware that there’s something undeniably tweaked going on on a global level. As a generally curious human who loves to soak up interesting information, I’ve been curious about this tweakedness for quite some time. Yet, every time I’ve looked to those talking and writing and speaking about the metacrisis/polycrisis, to better understand why things are quite so tweaked, I’ve often found a level of what I’ll call MAIM (mutually-assured intellectual masturbation). This is really frustrating to me because I’m not sure there’s a subject more important that everyone-that-cares-about-why-things-are-so-tweaked has an avenue into:
… the metacrisis is the underlying crisis driving a multitude of crises, not just ecological collapse (which is certainly bad enough) but a range of governance and security issues, alongside global economic instability and inequality within countries, a steep rise in mental health problems and a decline in social trust. It’s as if we have a civilisation-level wicked problem.
Jonathan Rowson, ‘How to think about the meta-crisis without getting too excited’
Because of my previous experiences, I have been overjoyed to find two mesmerising talks by Daniel Schmachtenberger that I get.4 The first is a succinct but absolutely riveting (and, to me, beautiful) talk that Daniel gave at Emergence (a festival). The second is a three part, epic journey called ‘In Search of the Third Attractor’ recorded by Rebel Wisdom. The information journey in this second talk is so immense that I’ve only absorbed the first part but that alone has blown my mind while giving me the kind of grounding in these times of tweakedness that I’ve been looking for.
Other Breadcrumbs I’ve Followed
This gorgeously-rendered reminder of why commons matters and why they work so well by Scott Moore.
This New York Times article by Joshua Needleman on ‘protopias’ as an alternative to dystopias and utopias.
Rupert Read’s idea that we can be of service within the metacrisis/polycrises by engaging in thrutopianism, shared in the Huffington Post.
This article by Samantha Slade of Percolab on utilising talking circles as a way to better be in difficult conversations.
In closing, I hope that you found some breadcrumbs here that you might explore. If you did and you’re happy to share - or you have breadcrumbs of your own - please do share them with me via a comment. I’d love to read them.
Warmest wishes,
Anna-Marie
I say this with some lightness while also very much holding the reality and seriousness of how challenging this winter is for so many of us here in the Northern Hemisphere. I feel much anger and frustration and grief for the unnecessary struggle to heat homes, afford healthy food, take care of our families and communities.
Gosh, W’s making his presence known in this breadcrumbs. In case there are any requests for his pert bottom to make more of an appearance, his PR manager (me) says no.
I’d like to add that W and I also spend a lot of time talking about how illness just happens. Bodies are complex and evidence shows that they have always gone wonky, from hosting parasites, to catching viruses, to dying in childbirth. In How to Love Family Gatherings Again, Peter N Limberg perceptively refers to the ‘special-feeling of being seen’ that can so painfully disrupt family relationships; I think there’s also a ‘special-feeling of being different’ that we need to carefully keep an eye on when it comes to wellness and unwellness, along with a dangerous possibility of polarising the well on one side and the unwell on the other, not recognising that we all fluctuate along a wellness-unwellness spectrum throughout our lives.
Alongside Jonathan Rowson’s linked article which utilises the humble pumpkin pie as an explainer.
Thank you for the GriefSick mention, dearest, and for sharing such wonderful breadcrumbs to follow up!
Loved this! Fascinating and beautifully written. And the ecological orgs diagram looks terrific.