A story told this morning

On a buffety, blustery early summer day, when the news was bad and the sky turned yellow, a strange thing happened in the town where I live. That morning, two grandmothers who had never met, not even by accident, put on their summer Sunday clothes, their most comfortable shoes, their favorite sun hats, walked to the park in the center of town.
Now that, of course, wasn’t the strange part because lots of people walk to the park, especially in summer.
It’s what the grandmothers did after they got there that set the whole town on its collective ear.
What, you ask, could two grandmothers do that would cause such a buzz on a buffety, blustery early summer day? Well, just wait till you hear.

Dragonfly story

Dragonfly story

Originally uploaded by theworldcafe.
Anne Dosher telling us the story of Grandmother Dragonfly…she’s gathering the right people together

The dragonfly gathering!

Sunday (I guess). Another day of our gathering… Anne Dosher opens the day like the previous ones: calling in the directions in silence. Everybody is sitting in silence, eyes open, eyes closed… the sacredness is tangible…
And like in all the previous sessions the new people who joined us, are welcomed: Bienvenido!
Tom Hurley opens the conversation. We came to see ourselves as a whole through what happened in all the previous sessions. It seems that the meaning of stewardship has been shifting. We want to continue refining and deepening what this whole is and what stewardship means.
What are our core elements?
What does it take to support it, now and to steward it forward?
How will it look like, when it are not a few people, but a network that is stewarding?
We will use stories.

Dancing the Night Away

Evening Music Dance_day2 003

Originally uploaded by theworldcafe.
Many of us gathered together Saturday evening for a celebration with music and dance. We danced the night away, everything from “The Twist” to Celtic folk dances taught to us by Edgard Gouveia of Brazil. Thank you Edgard for your amazing ability to weave story, dance and community together.

What conversations are you called to convene?

The question leading us into the afternoon small group session today was “What conversation are you called to convene around the stewardship of the World Café? As the previous blogger (Ria Baeck) noted there were many wonderful responses, and I was drawn to the particular dialogue catalyzed by a question posed by Alain Gauthier: “What is the deeper spirit and practice of the World Café that would help us connect with other global communities that also care for the whole?”

What was dominated is now surfacing

This morning we started with a Café on Stewardship: How to steward this World Café to the future?
The focusing question was:
What in the world,
of the world,
of the World Café is going on?
I listened deeply to the answers of the other ones, wrote them down and a pattern was showing up to me.

Calling on the Four Directions

Steward_Dialog_Day1 (38)

Originally uploaded by theworldcafe.
Anne Dosher, World Cafe Elder begins the first session of the Global Stewardship Dialogs by following the Native American tradition of calling in the four directions. View more photos of day 1

And so it begins…

The Stewards gathered this afternoon for the first time, met with an enthusiastic welcome from members of the local community of West Marin. The setting here at the Marconi Center is a most conducive environment for all things nurturing and transformative, with the sweep of Tomales Bay opening before us and the wide blue sky and majestic eucalyptus towering above us.

The context for the Stewardship Dialogue

Earlier, I wrote about the purpose of the World Cafe Stewardship Dialogue taking place August 25-29 in Marshall, California. Now I want to provide some context for the gathering.

Since the World Café was born in 1995 during a two-day dialogue among the Intellectual Capital Pioneers – a story you can find in The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter (Berrett-Koehler, 2005) – tremendously exciting developments have taken place:

What does stewardship mean to you?

Hello everyone,

I’ve never blogged before in my life, and I am deely grateful to the GiGi’s—the Girl Geeks––for helping me figure out how to start! I hope I’m not offending some unofficial blog etiquette, so here goes!

In just five days, more than 80 “stewards” of the World Café will be gathering at the Marconi Center on Tomales Bay, a pristine and fragile ecosystem which includes not only the Bay, but pastures, wild ocean, oyster fisheries, dairy and organic farming and a diverse population who live here because we love this “place” and want to see it survive and thrive for future generations.

Helping to organize the World Café Stewardship Dialogue in this unique natural environment has made me think more deeply about the question “What does stewardship mean to me? In this gathering we’ll be asking this question in relation to the future of the World Café.