The beginning of a book review:
During the arms race that dominated the 70’s and 80’s a friend of mine remarked something to the effect that “to accomplish change requires the intellectual ability to both accept that the situation is hopeless at the same time you believe it can be changed.” This statement haunted me for years, because if I focused on the gravity of the world’s problems, I immediately became overwhelmed and doubtful of my ability to make a difference. I felt powerless, and, if the cynicism and apathy of my generation is any indicator, I was not alone.
We regarded making change a difficult and complex task. We ordered studies, studies that took years before they told us what we already knew, things needed to change. Oh, and they also told us that change takes years and lots of money.
But what if we were wrong? What if change is as simple as making soup?
Instructions from the Cook, says it is…
Instructions from the Cook - Review « Five Husbands
Thomas Mulready of CoolCleveland.com does a video interview with authors Jack Ricchiuto and George Nemeth. Here’s the excerpt that accompanied the video in the newsletter:
Jack Ricchiuto & George Nemeth, local community-builders, have teamed up to author a new book entitled Instructions from the Cook, a collection of creative recipes and and ideas for engaging and empowering a community to change. Based on zen principles, their book speaks of how small acts can bring big change. Listen to this video interview at their book signing in Tremont with Cool Cleveland’s Thomas Mulready and learn how to initiate conversations, both on the internet and face-to-face, that maximize our individual gifts and talents to build our community.
When is the last time you actually made soup for a senior, exchanged stories with a homeless person or used one of your unique gifts to reach out of your comfort zone and help someone with lesser resources? Dive into this little gem and become authentically engaged.
There’s a recipe in this story:
Seeking Common Ground and the programs that operate under its umbrella are the embodiment of that dream. The programs include a community organic farm at Denome’s home on Hicks Road in South Bristol; a farm-to-cafeteria program that works with Ontario County Cornell Cooperative Extension, local farmers and food service directors to increase the use of local foods in cafeterias; and Herb Haven, an herbal gardening and retail training program for women and children who are striving to become economically self-sufficient.
About 50 women are participating in one or more of the programs. The community farm is a cooperative that offers the chance to learn about agriculture and help grow a variety of vegetables and other edibles in exchange for having healthy, homegrown food. At Herb Haven, women attend eight to 10 hours a week to learn life skills (such as budgeting and setting goals), horticulture and retail job skills and attend a support group. They plant, tend and harvest the garden, create useful products with the herbs and then sell them from a shop at the site in Crystal Beach on Route 364. Free nutritious meals are provided for women and children, and a child-care program offers arts, crafts, song, dance, gardening, cooking and creative play…
Group of women fighting poverty at home - Wellsville, NY - Wellsville Daily Reporter
I’m gearing up for a new season of “strategic planning” projects with a new sense of what the process might mean when we’re being intellectually honest with ourselves about the future.
The truth about the future is that it’s uncertain. It’s uncertain because our knowledge is alway imperfect, because we’re taking actions that will always have non-linear ripples of consequences, and people we will never meet will take actions that will impact us in non-linear ways.
When I wrote “Project Zen” a few years ago, I defined planning as preparation. But how do we become prepared for an uncertain future? Here are a few questions that help.
What matters to us?
What potential future changes could occur that we wouldn’t cause?
What potential future changes could occur that our actions could cause?
What is the percentage of un/certainty for each?
Who might have more certainty or certainty before we would?
What do we want to invest in being prepared for?
So what does planning look like for an uncertain future? It’s dreaming and translating dreams into small acts that we can commit to in the present. These questions help enrich the conversation. At the end of the day, intellectually honest planning does not produce a binder of anything. Only commitments to dreams and small acts.
Jack writes on his blog regarding Instructions from The Cook:
The start of AA was a small act realizing a big dream. Two men started by helping two other men toward recovery and today million of lives are transformed by the community they built. If you have examples you know of or have been a part of, send them to us. The book, that will be titled “Instructions From The Cook: Recipes for Building Community” will feature descriptions, implications, and applications of a community building model around these recipes.
View the Intentional Model Recipes here. Email your recipes to recipes@radicaltransitions.net. You can also leave them here in a comment.
In a conversation with friend and Radical Transitions recipe contributor, Linda Fabe, in Cincinnati last weekend, she inspired a possible distinction about the 4 conversations in the intentional mode we’re working with. Since shadow conversations are the “old” conversations that divided communities, the 4 conversations are the “new” conversations designed to build community. I like the distinction because of its elegant reminder of how focus makes the difference. Even this meta-conversation implies how the old conversations about money, allies, and power do not have the possibility that focus has in engaging the gifts of the community.
People continue to be amazed by the power of small acts as realizations of dreams. They’re empowering antidotes to shadow conversations about scale and speed, which are postponements of small acts. The irony of these postponement conversations is that talk about scale and speed sound important and worthy of attention and action. In fact, large acts of scale and speed often only engage the tangible asset wealthy few. Small acts democratize communities where assets run the gamut from very tangible to the very intangible.
Rules of the garage
• Believe you can change the world.
• Work quickly, keep the tools unlocked, work whenever.
• Know when to work alone and when to work together.
• Share — tools, ideas. Trust your colleagues.
• No politics. No bureaucracy. (These are ridiculous in a garage.)
• The customer defines a job well done.
• Radical ideas are not bad ideas.
• Invent different ways of working.
• Make a contribution every day. If it doesn’t contribute, it doesn’t leave the garage.
• Believe that together we can do anything.
• Invent.
1999 HP Annual Report
In light of many recent conversations, I’m now renaming some of the shadow conversations, particularly the “Consensus” conversation to the “Postponement” conversation. This is the conversation where we ask the question, “What permissions and agreements do we need?” It’s the conversation of postponements of what’s possible.
Posted a handful of Frequently Asked Questions on the Intentional Model site.
The question include:
Is the model for grassroots or institutional efforts?
How small should small acts be?
How does the model help us get to scale and speed?
What kind of community leadership does the model require?
What’s the role of ideas in the model?
How much funding does the model require?
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