What if we reinvented Danish democracy through the core principles of life?

How can a mountain and its tourism be the spark that creates a new model for community?

Can regenerative tourism strengthen a place’s vitality rather than wear it down?

These were the questions at the heart of a gathering in the Danish countryside earlier this week — a gathering that felt alive with significance.

As part of the engaging 4½-hour program, the invitation promised that I would give an inspiring talk to help reimagine tourism, democracy and our relationship with Nature, in 30 minutes or less. At some point in my preparations, I realized what an impossible task that was.

And yet, as I shared with the group, what is emerging in all three of these domains is a common story of hosting: hosting each other; being hosted by the land; hosting the potential that can only come to life through us, in this place. Perhaps it wouldn’t be completely impossible after all.

Still, with such an ambitious intention, it helped that we were gathering at not just any mountain. It was at Himmelbjerget, the birthplace of Danish democracy, with a sloping grassy field where people first gathered in the mid-1800s to talk and sing together and imagine an alternative to absolute monarchy. Ever since then, tourists come by the hundreds of thousands annually to celebrate the resulting Constitution and to enjoy the natural beauty of the land and lakes. In recent years, people have again started to assemble there to talk and sing together with renewed intention: this time to imagine a Constitution that includes the rights of Nature — a challenging task, it turns out.

Our gathering there was sparked by timely local circumstances. Several years ago, the municipality had hired an architecture firm to develop ambitious plans for growing tourism in the area (there was some talk of doubling the number of visitors). The plans sparked citizen protests that forced them to retreat. Then, last year the municipality purchased the Himmelbjerget hotel, which was in clear need of refurbishment. They announced an intention to remake it into a Center for Democracy, though no details were shared. Days before our gathering, another public meeting was held to share more information. Another architecture competition was being launched, again with a lack of community engagement, clear vision or — in the opinion of many — integrity. Particularly galling for some was the stated intention to construct a tall overlook at the water’s edge, in violation of the government’s own environmental regulations.

In an added layer of significance, Norse mythology portrays Himmelbjerget as the place where the god Heimdal blows his horn to signal the onset of “ragnarök,” a series of natural disasters in which people turn violently against each other, lands burn and the seas rise to cover the world. In the legend, the world is renewed after the apocalypse. But this offers little comfort to those who see growing parallels to ragnarõk in modern times.

All of this provided a potent context for exploring the intersection of tourism, democracy and the natural environment in a changing world.

Hosted at the neighboring Himmelbjerggården — Nordisk Inspirationscenter, participants came from tourism, culture, research, local communities and civil society. We were close to 30 people.

What I shared with the group was that tourism, democracy and our relationship with Nature are each in the throes of a fundamental shift in paradigm. What we are moving away from is the still-dominant mechanistic worldview that tells us that we are separate from each other, from our organizations and from Nature; that productivity and profitability are what matter most; that more is always better; and that efficiency is the best way to get to those outcomes.

As that worldview leads us to the brink of extinction, we’re seeing in all three domains the (re-)emergence of a worldview in which what matters most is life’s ability to thrive.

TOURISM

In tourism, that looks like a current story in which each place is seen primarily as a destination that can and should be managed and controlled. The metaphor of a conveyor belt comes to mind: the purpose is to get as many tourists through, as quickly as possible, shaking as much money loose from their pockets as possible in the process. The community and natural environment generally don’t feature in that story, unless they are attractions along the conveyor belt.

No one goes into tourism with that story in mind. And yet, we see its effects in a growing number of places, with overtourism, degradation of the natural environment, loss of cultural uniqueness and diminished quality of life for residents. As a result, we see more and more communities starting to reject tourism, recognizing that it is not fully working for them.

In response, there is the growing call to recognize places not only as destinations but as host communities, in which we host visitors, certainly, but we also host each other and we are hosted by the land and the life within it. In place of the conveyor belt, a multi-species ecology is a more accurate concept — not metaphor this time but literal description. As such, communities hold more complexity and potential than can be managed. Instead, the most appropriate approach is to nurture and cultivate the community’s own capacity to generate new possibilities and to regenerate what must be healed.

DEMOCRACY

Likewise, the story of democracy has largely been reduced to the mechanism of voting, with the goal of efficient decision-making. We pull a metaphorical lever in order to get the decisions we want most. The Constitution is the instruction manual for the machine.

With such a simplified conception, we find democracies around the world crumbling before our eyes. When we don’t get the decisions we want, we too easily conclude that the mechanism isn’t working and that authoritarianism might be a better choice. Russia has voting and a Constitution. So does the United States. The mechanism is not enough.

What is (re-)emerging in response is a more complete understanding of democracy as an emergent collective practice of learning how to be together in our shared home. While voting is likely to remain as an important mechanism for decision making, it must be embedded within a larger story in which we recognize in our communities the characteristics of a living, multi-species ecology. With this recognition, the goal becomes cultivating ever greater wisdom and wellbeing for all. This is what the process of decision-making must serve, most of all. And this calls for development of a culture and relational infrastructure that enable more cohesion and collective capacity, more creativity, more healing.

Importantly, Denmark has quite such a culture and relational infrastructure. For example, the folk high school system stands out as an inspiring factor.

NATURE

Finally, I pointed to the dominant story that Nature is a collection of resources to be extracted and services to be provided to humans. Of course, there is some truth to this, but there must also be more to the story if we are going to survive as a species.

In response to the existential crises we face, we see the (re-)emergence of a worldview in which Nature is not only a collection of parts but a living whole and a creative process. And we are not merely external, extractive takers; we are profoundly, inseparably embedded, participating as an ongoing collective learning practice.

Again, Danish culture seems to have retained such a story to a remarkable degree through the folk high schools, through songs, through mythology, and more.

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE HOSTED

What we see across each of these domains is that they are profoundly interdependent.

In democracy, it is not enough to add another lever labeled “Nature” to the voting mechanism. We seem to need a broader conversation about the nature of community, about our place in Nature, and about what guidance a Constitution must offer. We seem to need experiences of collective learning, and everyday practice grounds for participating within the larger living ecology.

This is part of what we were attempting to model in our gathering this week. And it was the reason my talk was limited to 30 minutes. Of far greater importance than my single perspective was drawing out the many perspectives in the room and sensing the emergent wisdom together. As our invitation said: “We find the answers by listening to each other and to the wise, old mountain.”

To that end, we drew on multiple participatory conversation methods. We walked through the forest to sit on the famed grassy slope. We brought perspectives of Nature into our discussions. We heard the history of the place and even sang together, as so often happens in significant gatherings in Denmark. We connected with our own bodies, pausing at times to stretch, breathe more deeply and integrate what we were hearing and sensing. In all of these ways, we expanded what it was possible to talk about and we accessed more of the intelligence of the ecology we formed.

But beyond this gathering, who could host us in this kind of reflection and discernment?

What I proposed is that those in the tourism sector are uniquely equipped to “host the hosts.” Tourism is connected to everything in a community: to business, government, infrastructure, culture, Nature, the law and more. Those in tourism are often natural conveners, including having spaces for gathering. They have influence but not authority, and so they are not threatening as hosts. And their work has roots in things everyone cares about in their shared home.

I offered a ridiculously simple example of what this can look like. Not long ago, the Destination Management Organization (DMO) in Stratford, Ontario, led a project to expand the downtown public washrooms from three toilets to seven. They did it in a way that engaged the community creatively and collaboratively. And the result was a washroom that reflects the uniqueness of Stratford. Visitors appreciate it, and that means that downtown businesses benefit. The project has even won awards. But the most important outcome is a community that is more cohesive and more capable of generating new possibilities. This is what director Zac Gribble means when he says that Destination Stratford’s role is to be “an incubator for community wellbeing.” Anything can be a practice ground for thrivable democracy.

I also shared the moving story of a DMO in Flanders, Belgium. Some years ago, they convened the community in a series of conversations to discern “sacred principles” for how they would commemorate the centenary of World War I. Those principles then guided the actions of individual businesses and also citizens, who came to see themselves as hosts, too. The story started with protests from community members, in obvious parallels with Himmelbjerget. In the case of Flanders, it turned out more beautifully than anyone could have imagined. This is the great promise of a living practice of democracy.

“But how will I convince others to do this regenerative approach?” asked one DMO representative. “I have to answer to 250 VAT numbers,” he said, referring to his organization’s member businesses, “and they just want to know about the bottom line.” The mechanistic framing was not lost on me: people and living organizations reduced to numbers, with assumptions about the limits of their interests. But the practical concern is real.

“There’s no need to convince anyone,” I shared with him and the whole group. “Find something people care about and convene them around that. Host them in a way that grows compassion, creativity, cohesion and wisdom, without telling them that’s what you’re doing. Find a small number of others who also see the value in this kind of hosting, and work with them behind the scenes to sense what the others are ready for. Maybe sitting in a circle will be too much at first. Maybe they’re not ready to take on the most complex and challenging project right away. Build up collective capacity over time. The point is to expand the things we can talk about and the benefit we can serve.”

As we closed the conversation, there was a buzz of energy and emotion in the room. We don’t know what will happen next, or what will be the fate of Himmelbjerget. But as I reflect on the state of the world and the uniquely potent circumstances of that place, I can’t help but hope that a Center for Democracy will indeed emerge, not only documenting Denmark’s democratic past but hosting an exploration and experience of humanity’s democratic future. Not only growing the number of tourists but growing our capacity to enable life to thrive.

I’m seeing a growing focus on relational approaches to system change, and within that, on creating “belonging without othering.” This is so welcome and needed. But I’m not always sure it’s clear that belonging is an emergent phenomenon. We can’t create belonging; we can only create the conditions for its emergence. And relationship is only one of the necessary conditions.

In my own work, what I have seen is that belonging and regenerative system change emerge from an unfolding relational space in which people are welcomed to contribute in diverse ways to a life-aligned shared purpose.

Woven inconspicuously into that statement are the core patterns of all living systems, what I think of as Life’s Universal Design Principles. In every thriving living system, there are:

• Diverse Parts (diverse contribution),
• In dynamic patterns and structures of Relationship (relational space),
• Brought together in convergent Wholeness (shared purpose),
• Animated by the spark of Life (life-alignment; responsive participation in unfolding aliveness).

In human contexts, we can frame these conditions as Passion, Practice, Purpose and Potential.

• We each have agency to share what we are passionate to contribute.
• We engage in a rich practice ground of relationship, thoughtfully shaping our information-sharing and decision-making; working to grow trust; attending to power dynamics; weaving layers of context into our relational field.
• In shared purpose, we co-create a larger whole to which we all belong, embracing our mutual responsibility for a shared vision and narrative of possibility, generosity and healing.
• And we do this not through tight control but as an unfolding manifestation of life’s emergent potential that can only be expressed through us. We attune, discern, learn and respond as an individual and collective practice of stewarding life’s ability to thrive.

If any of these conditions are not well cultivated, the experience of belonging will be weak at best, little will be generated, and little system change will occur.

If all of them are well tended, it feels like magic. We surprise ourselves with our own genius. New things become possible. It feels like healing. Like home.

I have a framed, carved ceramic tile that says “This joy you feel is life.” I believe it’s a quote from Gertrude Stein. By the same logic, I would say: “this belonging you feel” is also life. What we feel belonging to or within is life’s flow. We are woven back into the fabric of life, even if only for a time.

In some ways, all of this adds complexity to an already challenging situation. It’s hard enough to make the case that relationship is important — even more to make the case that belonging is vital civic infrastructure, as my friend Duncan Ebata 🔥🥘 does with the Front Street Community Oven.

But as Eisenhower advised: “if there is a problem that cannot be solved, enlarge it.”

Maybe part of why it’s so hard to make the case for relationship and belonging is that they lack a large enough framing. On their own, they too often still sit within the prevailing mechanistic paradigm of prediction, control, efficiency and reductionism. And there, they don’t have real value or validity.

Just as much as we need to work with all of life’s design principles, we also need the underlying recognition that we’re working from an ecological paradigm.

When we explicitly see ourselves, our projects, our organizations and our communities as dynamic living systems, we more naturally embrace our role as stewards of these core conditions of our thriving.

This is the fullness of what Duncan and his colleagues and neighbors have taken on with the Community Oven. In committing to the full intention and practice of stewarding life’s ability to thrive, they’ve articulated the “recipe” below that guides their actions. See if you can detect life’s universal design principles woven throughout their words.

The result is that a simple brick oven in a tiny park is a vibrant space of belonging and generative system change. People connect across cultures and generations. Those who need help find it in community. New conversations become possible. Projects emerge. Joy is abundant. Healing happens. You can read more about the “magic” of the Oven here.

This is one particularly beautiful example of what is possible in any context. And this informed intention and practice is more important than ever. For so many of us, the yearning to belong is a constant ache. And it has societal and civilizational implications. Isolation is one of the primary preconditions for authoritarianism. And the multiple, global crises we face will require us to work together within new levels of complexity.

I am wildly encouraged to see the growing emphasis on relational approaches and belonging. And I will be even more encouraged when they are more often framed within a larger practice of stewarding life’s patterns of thriving.

My activism in the world takes multiple forms these days. I write to my elected representatives frequently. I march in the streets whenever a relevant protest gathers. Occasionally, I post my views on social media. But where I feel the greatest impact — and hope — is in the slow, unassuming work of creating what I think of as practice grounds for a more thrivable world. In a wide range of communities and organizations, I and a growing number of others like me are helping people come together across divides, imagining new, creative possibilities and actively caring for each other and their shared place.

This is the work of collective capacity building. It’s what many are calling a “regenerative” approach to leadership and change. And at the heart of it is the transformative, largely invisible practice of stewarding life’s potential, in all its complexity and emergence. Amid all the things I despair over, I find comfort in knowing: this is also happening.

I believe this subtle work of bringing people together in community and collective care is a powerful antidote to rising fascism and polarisation.

• We can’t be convinced that our neighbors are subhuman and disposable if we know their stories.
• We can’t be fed simplified narratives when we’ve tasted the richness of our community.
• We become less fearful of change when we’ve discovered our own resourcefulness and creativity.
• We grow less cynical when we experience our own participation in a wondrous living world.
• And our bodies feel less craving for the dopamine and cortisol hits of social media and outrage when we are nourished with the oxytocin and serotonin of belonging.

Indeed, I believe the practice of stewarding our shared potential is the only way we’ll find the creativity, the collective will and the collaborative capacity to address the complex problems we face. Our resilience is dependent on the quality of our relationships, on our ability to learn and generate new possibilities together, and on the courage that comes from standing for something that truly matters.

Tending the soil of community

In my work, this looks like a community of 50 or so farmers with diverse, even conflicting, agricultural methods and perspectives but a shared interest in soil health. They are brought together regularly and in a variety of ways by a small circle of stewards — ordinary farmers, themselves — who are committed to “tending the soil of community.” There is solid practicality involved, with talk of cover crops, compost and soil metrics. But “to become better farmers,” the stewards assert, perhaps most of all “we have to become a better farming community.”

In the responsive, emergent work of tending such a community, they’ve found inspiration in nature’s own patterns, asking regularly: what would soil do? After all, a community is not only a collection of people but a dynamic, human and more-than-human ecology. And while that ecology holds more complexity and potential than the stewards can fully know or control, they have articulated a small set of “core intentions” that guide their actions. What they are working towards is that:

1. Farmers are no longer isolated.
2. We have a culture of shared learning, curiosity, generosity and change.
3. Local community grows more invigorated, cohesive and inclusive.
4. There is a steady stream of new self-initiated, community-sustained projects in support of soil health and more.

These are necessary fertile conditions for regenerating the soil on individual farms and across the landscape.

The circle of stewards has found a nourishing sense of meaning in the mix of care, knowledge, skills, attunement and even identity that make up the practice of stewardship.

Just as important: a recent impact evaluation affirmed that their approach creates “critical social infrastructure” for the farmers of this community. It enables learning, experimentation and adoption of more regenerative methods of agriculture. It supports farmer mental health. And it makes them more likely to keep farming. “It’s been a real farm saver,” one community member reported. These are vitally important outcomes that can’t be assumed.

Hosting community wellbeing

In my experience, stewarding life’s potential also looks like the residents of a popular tourism destination working to grow into a more cohesive, caring, creative “hosting ecology” capable of generating collective wellbeing.

Like another beautiful project I’ve written about before, the initial spark for this came from the local Destination Management Organization (DMO). In most places, that entity’s mandate is endlessly growing the number of visitors and the amount of money they spend. In this case, however, the DMO’s bold 2030 strategy framed their primary role as “an incubator for community wellbeing.”

To that end, they gathered a Destination Stewardship Council — a mix of business owners, economic development champions, city representatives, arts & culture activators, and leaders of community organizations. With ongoing learning and support around the perspectives and practices of stewardship, the Council recently held the first in a series of larger community convenings, exploring the ways in which residents are meaningfully hosted by each other and by their living place, as a hosting ecology. As a point of convergence and a practice ground, the convenings are focused on an ambitious project around the local river, generating collective wisdom, community engagement and creative guidance.

“The river is a metaphor for connection, joy and play,” reflected one community member. “To keep going, we’ll need those.” “A much bigger door opened than I anticipated,” shared another.

The project is certain to attract and serve visitors, but most of all it will serve the wellbeing of the community, including the river itself as beloved kin. The envisioned outcome for residents is more creativity, adaptability and year-round vitality because they are a more connected, cohesive community. And this can only happen through a thoughtful practice of shared stewardship.

Cultivating a learning ecology

Then there is the three-year research project, co-stewarded by two large networks of care organizations and a major cultural institution, in which the point of convergence is increasing access to learning for those who face social exclusion. As I wrote elsewhere: “The research has shown that … people are most likely to learn within a space that is full of life, relationship, and the emergence of new possibilities. The most potent solution, it seems, is to cultivate a learning ecology: a space in which multiple forms of knowledge and learning are brought together; people learn from and with each other; and it is not for or about people in contexts of exclusion but together with them.”

The project is exploring, supporting and documenting the practice of stewardship that enables such learningful spaces. And part of that is naming the experience of it. How do we know we’ve been in a well-stewarded gathering? it asks. The project website offers this answer:

Because something still hums. Not just the memory of connection — but a felt sense that what happened mattered. Warmth in the chest. A quiet sense of rightness. And a subtle confidence: that the work we’re doing is not only good — it is necessary.

And more…

And then there is the wood-fired brick oven in a tiny park, stewarded in ways that cultivate a generous, generative community, so much so that the contributions and care expressed within that community are being recognized alongside formal social services.

There is the inspired biotech company that embraced the practice of stewardship internally and is now extending it to their partner and industry ecosystem, potentially “editing the DNA” of how work is done in life sciences.

And there is the coalition of 30 eldercare organizations exploring ways to be a practice ground together — a creative, collaborative village, as they’ve imagined it — in the slow, unassuming work of stewarding system change.

In recent protests I’ve been part of, someone will call out: “tell me what democracy looks like!” and we in the crowd will chant back: “THIS is what democracy looks like!” I feel that way about the examples I’ve described above. THIS is what democracy looks like. THIS is what mutually responsible community looks like. THIS is what collective wisdom looks like. This is what it is to create a practice ground for a more thrivable world.

Amid all the chaos, division and harm, this is also happening.

In Belgium, the coordinator of a three-year research project shared with me that “we know the direction but not the destination” and “we’ll track milestones along the way.”

In a Canadian project to regenerate the soil by bringing farmers together in shared learning and mutual support, one participant said to me: “I’m not completely sure where we’re going with this, but I know I want to be part of it.”

The head of a Destination Management Organization in New Zealand publicly announced her team’s commitment to developing tourism regeneratively, with a multi-year strategy to “get organized, build momentum and accelerate.”

In each of these cases, I gently pointed out the journey metaphor they were using and proposed that it may not be the most appropriate framing for their complex, emergent initiatives. In fact, when applied without full awareness of its limitations, I have seen that the journey metaphor can bring unintended, even harmful outcomes for us, our projects and the world we create through our efforts. As an alternative, I often invite people to explore a metaphor of cultivation — of tending the soil — to see what more it might bring into view. There’s little risk in the exercise. And I find that it almost always leads to wiser, more effective actions and a more cohesive, capable team.

On the surface, this is just a quick swap of vocabulary, a neat trick with some handy benefits. But the deeper opportunity is a shift from the reductionist, mechanistic worldview that has brought us to the edge of extinction to a more life-aligned, ecological way of seeing and being. The limits of our language shape the limits of our thinking and, therefore, of our action. Words create worlds, as the saying goes.

The Ever-Present Journey

As it stands, the journey metaphor is a near-constant guide to our thoughts and therefore our actions. Once you start to listen for it, you’ll likely be astonished at how often it comes up, with concepts like:

Identifying next steps.
Setting the direction.
Overcoming obstacles.
Moving into uncharted territory.
Navigating the road to success.
Charting a career path.
Forming a Steering Committee.
Creating a roadmap.
Standing at a crossroads.
Mapping the customer journey.
Recognizing it’s a marathon not a sprint.
Doing Agile sprints.
Keeping things moving forward.
Asking: what do we want to carry forward from this? What do we want to leave behind?

Even leadership itself is based on a journey metaphor, with the image of someone in the lead and others following along behind.

And in my work promoting stewardship, thrivability and regeneration, the standard practice is to invite people to “embark on a learning journey.”

The Limitations of the Metaphor

Clearly, the journey metaphor has value and validity, evoking adventure, challenge, pilgrimage and progress. But its inherent simplification also limits what we can see and, therefore, what actions make sense. For example:

• A journey is generally assumed to be linear, predictable and one-dimensional, a simple trajectory from Point A to Point B. But in complex scenarios (which is almost all of life), there is no point of arrival. In a world that is emergent and multi-dimensional, we don’t arrive: we continuously respond to ever-changing circumstances.
• The metaphor tends to prioritize speed, when life often has its own pace, its own tempo of ripeness and readiness.
• The journey frame risks ignoring context. Any surrounding conditions are overlooked or left behind.
• The journey metaphor is necessarily incremental, focusing on “next steps” and “overcoming obstacles.” It invites a problem-solving orientation, working with what is now and known. It is rarely expanded to sense the unknown, infinite potential that might be cultivated.
• “Here” is dismissed as not the right place. The metaphor ignores existing gifts and resources in this place. It overlooks layers of meaning and relationship, which are to be left behind.
• In the rush to speed and the assumption of predictability and control, the linear journey metaphor tends to invite impatience and critical judgment, first of ourselves and then of each other.
• All of this has a tendency to create anxiety: we understand ourselves to be alone, unrooted, with only what we can carry, otherwise naked against the elements. This keeps our bodies flush with cortisol and adrenaline, susceptible to burnout, unaware of opportunities to calm the nervous system, to be present to more of the situation, and to be held by place.
• The unspoken pretext is the “hero’s journey,” putting ourselves at the center of the story. In this way, the metaphor paints us as isolated conquerors, not pausing to consider whether we are welcome in the new terrain we would travel to. Uninvited, unthinking, we too easily adopt a colonizing mindset. We assume our God-given right to Manifest Destiny.

Bringing awareness to these tendencies and limitations can be a relief and an opportunity. But it can also feel irritating, even threatening. For so many of us, the hero’s journey has become part of our identity. The metaphor is deeply embedded in our psyches, even in the wiring of our brains . As one friend said to me: “people are at a loss when they don’t have a frontier.” And the pressure to be a heroic problem-solver is real, even if it’s not a fully realistic endeavor in a complex world.

Fortunately, there are alternative lenses that reveal more of the true nature of the systems we’re working with. In particular, we can draw on the metaphor of cultivation — of tending the soil and stewarding a living ecology.

Here’s how that has played out for the three initiatives I mentioned above.

Cultivating a Learning Ecology

For the research project in Belgium, the goal is to understand how to help citizens access learning, especially when they face social exclusion. We’re finding that it’s less about fixing the individual learner and more about creating a “learningful” container — a vibrant ecology in which everyone is able to learn.

In place of “knowing the direction but not the destination” for the project, we shifted to acknowledging that “we know the ground we’ll tend but not what’s in the soil.” We have intention around what is to be explored and the process of discovery to be used. “We don’t know what’s growing,” said the project coordinator, “but we know how we’ll grow or care for it. We know we won’t cultivate fear and judgment. We will cultivate curiosity and care.”

In place of “tracking milestones along the way, “ we are gathering stories, noticing patterns, monitoring qualities of relationship and creativity. We’re keeping the equivalent of a gardening journal to make note of the practices that are most generative and of insights into this landscape that we are tending. We’re envisioning a “field guide” to this practice of cultivating a learning ecology.

Cultivating the Soil of Community

For the farmers in Canada, this was my response to the participant who “didn’t know where we’re going with this,” and to others in the community:

“The point is not to go somewhere. The point is to stay right here, tending this soil, this community, this landscape. The point is to grow more capable of doing that, because we do it together.

And so the better question might be: ‘where are we growing with this?’

And in our case, the answer is that we’re tending the ‘soil’ of community so that:

• Farmers are no longer isolated;
• We have a culture of shared learning, curiosity and change;
• Local community grows more invigorated, inclusive and cohesive;
• As a result, there is a continuous stream of new self-initiated, community-sustained projects in support of soil health and more;
• And in these ways, we regenerate the soil on our farms and across the landscape.

That’s where we’re growing with this.”

There is recognizable, surface-level action within that steady stream of self-initiated projects — the on-farm gatherings, the graziers group, the citizen science working group, the bioreactor workshop and countless more. These are the kinds of things that give people a sense of progress — of going somewhere.

But those self-initiated projects only become possible when they arise within community soil that has been well tended, well aggregated, well nourished. When someone has a need or a passion for something, they can reach out across a network of warm relationships. Others are ready to join them. Support is available.

Like the work to regenerate the actual soil, cultivating the soil of community is slow, steady, invisible work. But it is foundational and exponential. And it requires dedicated attention, skills and resources.

Cultivating a Hosting Community

For the tourism organization in New Zealand, we explored a shift in language.

We shifted from “getting organized, laying the foundation, building moment, and accelerating” to “preparing the ground, planting the seeds, tending the garden, gathering the harvest.”

This reframing brought several things into view and led to new actions:

• Replacing the journey metaphor with a story of cultivation allowed the team to recognize that “our soil is depleted.” They had been through trauma during a natural disaster, and then Covid hit. They had had no time or space to recover, reflect, renew. In acknowledging this, they made time for a healing retreat. And they brought more attention to their own wellbeing and capacity.
• The team more fully recognized their interdependence with each other. In response, they introduced new, more effective collaborative processes, bridging silos.
• The exercise led to an exploration of the ecosystem of “careholders,” revealing new needs and possibilities.
• They invited the board to take inspiration from humus in the soil: to have humility, to serve as cover crops, protecting and nurturing the team rather than micro-managing and driving them to please every external stakeholder with endless reports.
• Ultimately, they asked: How fast can we realistically go? Do we really want to keep accelerating forever, as our strategy suggests? They made a commitment to say no to some things, so that they could work at a thrivable pace and project load.

Beyond the operational benefits to the team, this is far more fertile ground for a tourism sector that is regenerative.

Reframing

As we see in these three examples, this reframing reveals more of what we’re working with and more of what is possible.

• Th ecological lens helps us take context into account. We are invited to notice more and to be in service of more.
• We more easily recognize the vital role of relationships and the need to tend them. Instead of being alone and lacking resources, we are rooted and held within an ecology of relationality.
• It keeps us curious and open. We know we need to pay attention to many complex, interdependent factors — to the soil and also the plants that grow within it, and also to ourselves as gardeners/stewards.
• The metaphor keeps us humble. Instead of the hero, we are one entity in a complex, interdependent ecosystem. We more easily honor diversity. This doesn’t mean that we’re insignificant. There is a different kind heroism and significance in being part of something and helping to grow collective capacity.
• We open up to emergence and potential, to learning and “inspired discoverables.”
• We still have the option for speed. Life sometimes calls for fast reactions. But it also invites patience. We work with time on life’s own terms. We take the time we need: time to attune, time to sense, time to be in the delay between intervention and outcome. And the timeline expands into the distant past and the distant future.
• It also opens up the possibility of cycles and seasonality — covering the same ground but with new perspectives and capabilities over time.
• We still have a sense of progress and change, but through growing capacity and adaptation.
• We can also still bring intention. And at the same time, we recognize that we are subject to the conditions in which we are embedded.
• Death, endings, failure, and composting become valid activities within a story of cultivation.
• We more naturally consult the wisdom of our bodies, of movement, of beauty because these are woven into the metaphor of cultivation.
• We focus most on capacity building — soil building — as the highest value work.
• And we recognize all this as a practice, like a martial arts practice, a yoga practice or a spiritual practice. It is an individual and collective practice of deepening in wisdom, compassion and the ability to sense what is needed and to respond with effective action.

What might this mean for you?

Seeing through a living systems lens can be liberating and enabling. I have consistently heard people say they are relieved to have new language for things that felt intuitive and natural but that they didn’t have words for or didn’t feel permission for.

I invite you to pay attention to the journey metaphor when it comes up and just see what more comes into view with a metaphor of cultivation instead. And then share what you discover here!

“The planning process had its own rhythm, and what emerged began to move in ways that felt alive and organic.” — Julia Heiroth

With these words, Julia was describing the collaborative process that led to a trailblazing 2-day conference for the Yukon tourism sector, though it could have been for people in any context. I had written about the experience in an article called The Courage to Host Regeneration. But I hadn’t named this quality of organic emergence. It seemed too nuanced to include as one detail among half a dozen I was sharing as guidance and encouragement to those who feel called to host inspired, purposeful gatherings.

Reading her words in response to the article, though, I again felt the power and importance of this way of working. If my article had described the tending of a garden and the harvest that may result, Julia was pointing to the very soil that holds and enables it all. She was naming the invisible realm that our dominant, mechanistic worldview overlooks — denies, even — in its push to plan and control. And we can well take note of how that singular approach is working out for us, as we plan and control our way to the edge of extinction.

Likewise, in the wild rush to wave the flag of regeneration in tourism, agriculture, leadership and other contexts, I don’t always find recognition of this ground and depth.

What I believe many don’t yet realize, and where the real courage comes in, is this:

If we are to host regeneration in our organizations and communities, then we must allow ourselves to be hosted by life’s emergence.

Exploring emergence

As I reflected on a possible theme for an online “Community Campfire” I hosted earlier this week, this deeper practice and experience of emergence was what I most wanted to explore.

We likely wouldn’t be breaking new ground: there are many modern guides, like Joanna Macy with “The Work That Reconnects” and Otto Scharmer with “Presencing,” along with centuries of reflective spiritual traditions and millennia of discernment practices from the world’s Indigenous cultures. Each of these offers wise alternatives to rigid planning and control.

Still, through our conversation, I felt that we might connect more deeply with our own experiences of emergent process and in that way find more courage to draw on its unseen depths.

The need for courage

Crafting the Campfire invitation, I was intrigued to notice that word come up again: “courage.”

It turned out to be fully justified. In an initial sharing around the “fire” on the call, each person spoke with open-hearted yearning for a world more aligned with life’s creative flow. And each also spoke of the challenges we face, of how hard this work of somehow serving life can be, how “terrifying and depressing” and “weary” it feels to work in “spaces where there is no emergence.” “Maybe these are the places that need this work the most…” one of us offered, clearly not convinced.

In our exchanged stories, the experience of emergence was often a surprise. Several spoke of being unexpectedly forced to let go of planning and control. “It’s happened when I’ve hit a wall,” shared one woman. “Being willing to walk away opened up new possibilities.”

But do we have to wait to hit a wall, only to discover — bruised and battered — that it was actually a door? Surely we can recognize the stuckness before impact and adjust our approach.

The experience of flow

Indeed, one participant told just such a story. It started with a gathering weighted down by hierarchical power dynamics and a rigid focus on a single problem-solving method, without much success. But then the person with disproportionate power had to leave. Uncharacteristically, the group decided to go for a walk. “I’m not sure who initiated it,” our campfire storyteller recalled (and isn’t that so often the case with emergence?). As they walked, they talked without specific focus, eventually finding themselves gathered in a circle on a hill. “We slowed down, gave ourselves spaciousness. We let the work work us.” It felt kind of rebellious, she confessed (and I wondered if that might be a special category of fertile condition for emergence). “We came back hugging.” And more than that, they came back with clear inspiration. “The project leader was in awe, in tears, actually. She said: ‘I’ve been stuck on this for months, with just the same ideas over and over again.’” And now she had a way forward.

What I take from this story is not that every meeting should involve an aimless walk, or that every problem can be solved in this way.

Instead, what I take away from this story and my own experience is that:

• There is unforeseeable, invaluable insight, energy and inspiration available, beyond our planning and control and beyond our individual intellect alone, no matter how brilliant any of us may be.
• A walk is one among countless methods to access such collective intelligence.
• What we are accessing is life itself in all its complexity and all its urge and regenerative ability to thrive.
• What is emerging is the potential that is waiting to be expressed through us and through the particular circumstances we find ourselves in.
• We can open up to this reality as a worldview, a strategy, a growing collection of methods, and a way of being and becoming through our work and in the world.

What I see in story after story in every conceivable context is that this approach so often feels better and works better.

Why, then, isn’t it more widespread? Why should so much courage and struggle be required? Why should I hear so much yearning and even grief among those on the call? In this growing movement around regeneration, I’ve noticed that it’s almost a rite of passage to have your heart broken as something beautiful and emergent, cultivated with immense care, is thoughtlessly killed by those who can’t see it.

Obstacles to emergence

What most often gets in the way, in my experience, is the dominant mechanistic paradigm, with its assertion that everything and everyone in an organization (and in life!) can and should be tightly controlled, like so many levers on a machine. According to that worldview, our role is either to manage or be managed in service of a knowable solution that can be implemented like a simple production line. And this is certainly true for some aspects of our work — just not the living aspects.

What I have also seen is that if someone hasn’t experienced the flow and effectiveness of emergent process, they likely can’t even imagine it. For these people, there is no conceivable alternative to the tightly managed, leader-driven meeting and change management agenda. Anything else would be irresponsible, undisciplined, with an unnecessarily indirect path to success.

I’ve also encountered many whose scope of possibility and sense of what is at stake is too narrow, and so these alternative, emergent approaches seem like too much trouble. Or the fear is that “we might alienate people.” But as I wrote in an article called Alien Nation and the Need for Brace Spaces:

“When I hear groups express the fear of alienating some members, I often wonder about the corresponding risk of alienating those who silently crave the very new approaches and topics that are thought to be too risky. Sticking to safety and the status quo is not a guarantee that no one will be alienated. What creative impulse is stifled — or alienated — by accommodating only the way things have always been done?”

In perhaps the most significant obstacle of all, if your narrative of self worth is grounded in having all the answers and controlling all the process, then what I’m describing will be an existential threat.

Growing openness

Fortunately, practices for working with emergence are growing more commonplace, enabling more of us to experience and imagine what is possible.

At the same time, the many intractable crises we face are forcing more of us to question the dominant worldview.

The result, as I wrote elsewhere, is that:

“More and more people are recognizing that an organization is not a static [machine to be controlled] but a dynamic, ever-evolving pattern of interactions. It is people and matter in a state of transformation. What animates that pattern of interactions — and what enables ongoing transformation — is the life we bring to it. With this understanding, our concept of organizational leadership is evolving into stewardship: listening for what is needed; creating the fertile conditions for life to thrive; tending to the living [emergent] pattern of transformation.”

All of this is just as true in our communities as it is in our organizations.

I liken this process to firekeeping. “As a leader…we keep the fire but we don’t control it. Life is too complex for us to be able to predict or control the transformation. We can only tend to the fertile conditions for it to continue and evolve. When those conditions are in place — when the fire is burning brightly — life flows. Intelligence emerges. Creativity sparks. Joy shimmers.”

This is what I heard in the stories shared yesterday around the campfire (how appropriate!).

And this is how regeneration happens — through the focused cultivation of wisdom, creativity, collaboration and joy, shaped by the fullness of a system’s emergent intelligence.

Fertile conditions

So how do we do this? How do we allow ourselves to participate in life’s organic unfolding, in ways that are purposeful and effective?

These are some of the fertile conditions and courageous practices I noticed across our sharings on the call and in my own experience:

• Paying attention to the narratives that guide our thoughts and assumptions, that feed our courage or deplete it. “Letting modernity be composted in me and in the relational field,” as someone said poetically on the call — modernity as a worldview that prioritizes speed, efficiency, and control above all else and at all costs.
• An intention to “make space for feeling and resonance to happen.” A space to “move toward a future that’s not bounded, trusting that well-intentioned people will create a future we all want to be part of. Not setting objectives, but allowing emergence with the intention of wanting to thrive.” This includes the spaciousness of time, knowing that time spent cultivating the conditions for emergence is rewarded with greater speed and effectiveness in the action that follows.
• A shared commitment to convergent purpose, something more important than our fear of new narratives, new approaches and new identities, something that holds us together through the discomfort of uncertainty.
• A growing repertoire of skilful practices for dialogue, discernment and creativity, including the aimless walk outside.
• The confidence to be humble, to be genuinely curious, and to “sit with what happens even if it’s messy and uncomfortable.” Inviting in the “fire and messiness and playfulness.” “Embracing failure, being willing to make mistakes.”
• An openness to multiple sources of intelligence, including our bodies, the arts, nature and intuition.
• Attention to relationship, to “safety and how we welcome each other in the space. How we build trust [through] deep listening, space holding, witnessing. It needs to be practiced.” Not as nice-to-have “soft skills” but as essential soil-building, as what one brilliant article calls “structural capacity.”
• Finding others, and finding courage in each other. “I’m left with the clear sense of how much we need each other for this kind of work,” shared one campfire participant.

This practice of allowing ourselves to be hosted — to be shaped and informed — by emergence is more than a planning or facilitation method. It’s a worldview that sees life everywhere. It’s a way of being and becoming in the world, with curiosity, care, trust, patience and commitment to enabling thrivability. Ultimately, it’s a practice of healing ourselves, each other and the world. This is how every meeting, every project, every interaction can be crafted as a practice ground for a more thrivable world.

“Imagine if we could live this way every day,” one person shared at the end of the campfire, with cautious excitement at the possibility.

We can and we must.

It took nearly a year and an almost insurmountable level of courage and vision for the Tourism Industry Association of the Yukon’s Julia Heiroth to put together a very different kind of annual tourism conference.

“I crafted it differently on purpose,” Julia later explained, “to invite a new kind of conversation, one that asks us to look at tourism, community, and the future itself through a regenerative lens: a future where life thrives, not just business.”

In place of the usual line-up of entertaining speakers and business tips and tricks, it was to be a lively, engaging two-day dialogue to discern the state of the Yukon tourism sector and of the community, broadly defined. The common understanding that resulted could then inform a wise, sector-wide strategy. In all, the invitation was to join together as stewards, tending to the wellbeing of people and place in the interest of greater resilience and thrivability for all.

Several months into her planning, I was thrilled to receive an invitation from Julia to help shape the gathering and to offer guidance and facilitation during the event. Now, in the weeks after what was indeed a powerful gathering, I want to share some of my observations about the experience. This kind of convening is still incredibly rare, though I believe it is needed in every community where there are guests and hosts. My hope is that the detailed reflections below will offer inspiration to others who may be waiting for the encouragement that a pioneering example provides.

Language matters

First, we were very thoughtful about the description of the event and the nature of the invitation, hoping to set the tone from the first interaction. For the most part, this meant setting aside offers of best practices and guarantees of “what you’ll leave with.” It meant moving away from the unquestioned pursuit of industry growth in isolation of other factors. Instead, the invitation painted an evocative picture:

Tourism isn’t just about where we go — it’s about how we host and connect.

This year’s gathering will explore how hosting — in the broadest sense — shapes community resilience, well-being, and our shared future. In this context, hosting goes beyond tourism to include the way we welcome, nourish, and sustain each other, our land, and new possibilities.

Together, we’ll reimagine tourism not just as an industry — but as a way to host and sustain a future we all want to be part of.

This framing felt risky: will people come?? But it also felt exciting: how could they resist?? It called for trust that those who were open to such a conversation would be drawn to it, perhaps feeling relief that, at last, someone had dared to name such a need and opportunity. And it required acceptance that this wouldn’t be for everyone and that other offerings were available to meet other needs at other times.

Never host alone

Three heads are better — and braver — than one. I suggested that we add a third to our team, preferably a man, someone local, grounded and practical. That isn’t a suggestion I’ve made in other contexts. But here, I felt it would be helpful. I knew I would be coming from away, bringing abstract concepts, and I wanted to balance that out. Julia found the perfect complement in Michael Pealow, with his flannel-and-jeans demeanor and his deep experience working with First Nations, government, economic development and community consultation across the Yukon. Our little trio was an absolute joy to be part of. And we were a microcosm and model of the kind of attunement, collaboration and responsiveness we were inviting people to embrace.

Seek out diverse voices

Beyond our core team, Julia understood that it would be important to integrate views from across the sector and beyond — before, during and after the event. In the context of the Yukon it was clear that First Nations’ perspectives and partnership, in particular, were critical to the conversation. That was reflected in conversations leading up to the event and in the agenda.

This was not about representation for its own sake. It was about growing in collective awareness, maturity and capability in order to enable necessary change. As the Australian Aboriginal activist saying goes: “if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Such an intention and approach takes time, sensitivity, commitment and adaptability.

At the same time, full representation and partnership from the very start is impossible. I’ve seen too many groups stall as they discount their own validity because of who is not in the room. Instead, as Margaret Wheatley says, we “start anywhere and follow it everywhere.”

Gather differently

If we wanted to have a different kind of conversation, and if we wanted different — better — outcomes, it was also clear that we needed to gather differently.

For example, the conference was held at Haa Shagóon Hídi, a stunning Carcross Tagish First Nation cultural center, in a community outside the capital city. We began in a large standing circle around the outdoor fire pit, guided in a ceremonial welcome by Colleen (Wolf Mother) James. Throughout the two days, people were invited to move from table to table to engage with different perspectives, gradually sensing the emergent collective story. Lunch on the first day was capped by an energizing and thought-provoking drumming activity. Massage and reflexology treatments were available by appointment throughout the two days.

If “the medium is the message,” then all of these conference features communicated that this was a fully human endeavor. Our heads, our hearts, our bodies and our collective insights were needed to access the full wisdom we were seeking.

Take more into account

In all these ways, we created the conditions for people not only to look at their own work, not only to consider their own experience and interests, but also to take in the peripheral view: what is happening around you?

Quoting a paper I co-authored for Destination Canada on “Regenerative Approaches to Tourism,” I suggested that, given the many crises we face:

“The situation is so dire, we need every sector to lay down their tools, turn to the world, and say: ‘these are our skills and resources; how can we help?’”

Through inspiring stories from Canada and around the world, I offered assurance that there is also a beautiful opportunity to create something new and better together.

Hosting the hosts

Either way you look at it — dire situation or beautiful opportunity — there seems to be widespread consensus that those working in tourism have a vital role to play.

What we sought to make clear at the conference is that the most powerful leverage point is not changing the tourist in some way; it is leaning into the role tourism professionals play (or could play) in their own communities.

As I shared in the Yukon, the trendy new concept of regenerative tourism is actually a call for healing, the deeper meaning of the word “regeneration.” What needs to be healed is people and place. It is us, our societies, and our natural ecosystems. And this isn’t the tourist’s responsibility, or even possibility, to heal us. Instead, it’s something we must take on together at local levels. The work of regenerative tourism, therefore, is to become a regenerative host community — a community that has the commitment and capacity to regenerate itself continuously.

The necessary work, then, is to host each other and our collective potential. It’s to come together around project after project, responding together to issues and opportunities in ways that are unique to this place. As the stories I shared illustrated, such regeneration happens through a connected, cohesive, engaged community.

And this doesn’t happen by itself. Becoming a connected, cohesive, engaged community happens when a small number of caring people are willing to bring others together — to “host the hosts.” Following Julia’s example, it takes some thoughtful group to step forward and say: We will hold this broader view and bigger story of healing and regeneration. We will ask bolder questions about what matters most and what is truly needed. We will find the courage to hold meaningful conversations and to gather the community in novel ways. We will support collaboration, transformation and celebration, growing a culture of shared learning, curiosity and change.

Not everyone in a community has to do this work of stewarding regeneration. But some must.

And importantly, people who work in tourism are uniquely positioned to play this role. They are so often wonderfully creative. They know how to make things happen. They are generally warm people who love their community and are natural hosts and conveners. Their work is connected to everything in a community — to commerce, culture, history, infrastructure, government, and more. What they do is grounded in things all residents care about in their shared home. How many sectors can claim all of these things?

The hosting ecology

In this work of hosting the hosts, it is essential to go beyond the survey, beyond consultation, beyond simply asking peers and residents: “what do you want tourism to do for you?”

If we are to support new projects and new possibilities — if we are to enable ongoing, unfolding healing of people and place — we must tend to the full “hosting ecology.”

To illustrate this concept, I offered the metaphor of a tree, in which:

• The soil represents our shared Home, the place that holds us, shapes us, informs us.
• The roots represent us as passionate Hosts, in all our diversity of resources, contributions and needs.
• The trunk represents the relationships, interactions and infrastructure that support and connect us in the practice of Hosting each other, as well as guests.
• The leaves, branches and fruit represent our outreach and offering — the purpose that unites us within a project, an organization or a community. Ultimately, they represent the experience of Hospitality that we create together.

This is the fullness of what we are stewarding. In place of the dominant view of a destination as something to be managed, as if it were a simple mechanical conveyor belt, instead we see a dynamic, interdependent ecology that can’t be controlled but can be cultivated, in a spirit of participation, service, learning and responsiveness. The work of stewardship is to enable the emergent expression of potential that can only happen in this place, with these people, in service of the real needs of this moment.

Taking such a holistic view means that we’re aiming for more benefit for more of the system. In fact, I pointed out that the word hospitality shares the same root as hospital and hospice. There is something healing in being well hosted and in hosting well. If it’s done well, an offering of hospitality generates some new level of harmony and wholeness. In an absurdly simple example, I shared the story of how the Destination Management Organization in Stratford, Ontario, brought residents and partners together around expansion of a downtown public washroom in ways that left the community more connected, more creative and more capable, with a washroom that reflects the particular culture and spirit of Stratford and with rippling economic and social benefits. Any project can have such an effect if we make that our collective intention and practice.

Mapping your hosting ecology

At the conference, we invited participants to imagine together what a regenerative hosting ecology in the Yukon might look like — and what it might require. Sixteen tables of five or six people each got a flip chart with a tree drawn on it, where they were invited to make notes from their conversation.

At first, people struggled with this, even with all the engagement leading up to it. For many, it seemed new to think in terms of the whole system rather than solely their own needs and opportunities, or rather than primarily the tourist’s wants and trends. Later, one man told me he found the exercise more “cerebral” than he was used to. But we encouraged them to keep at it. And gradually, through conversation, they started to break through to insights and understanding. After 45 minutes, each table shared brief reflections with the whole group.

At the broadest level, the exercise brought to the surface “the absence of real support and strategy for tourism in the Yukon” and “the need for a dynamic, responsive strategy to make it a better place for all.” It sparked calls for an approach grounded in “learning” and “creativity,” where “we manage the competing visions of the future and we’re proactive about what that should look like.”

One table reiterated that the tourism sector is uniquely positioned to be a force for regeneration. “We don’t have time to wait. We need everyone to step up. We don’t have to tear down everything but we do have to question everything. This is not a check-box activity.”

“We need to go beyond conversation about tourism and work together with community,” shared another group. We need to “look at what changes we’ve experienced and look to the future together.”

As another table put it: “There’s a need to persevere through the discomfort of confronting contradictions, paradoxes and assumptions that are at least partly wrong. We can’t be afraid of making mistakes.”

One group ventured a suggestion: “Maybe a ‘community first’ or ‘community-centered’ or ‘community led’ hosting ecology is easier to understand than ‘regenerative.’ What if we see ourselves as community developers?”

Some spoke of the “need to expand the narrative” that characterizes their shared Home. “We need to walk away from a single narrative and include all the people who make up the Yukon.” In particular, there seemed to be consensus around the need for more focus on the place of First Nations.

As Hosts, there was a strong call “to support our personal wellbeing and resilience,” particularly after hearing many stories of overwhelm and burnout throughout the two days. “This mirrors what the visitor needs,” shared one group. “How can we offer [wellbeing] to them if we don’t experience it for ourselves?”

I was encouraged to hear one group acknowledge that this need for self-care is heightened as we open up to new assumptions, relationships, attitudes and actions. The work of tending the hosting ecology in new ways requires self-reflection and mental flexibility. “We need to be able to pause and offer ourselves grace. We need time and space to slow down,” they observed.

In all, the need for connection — what I would call practices of Hosting — was the strongest theme throughout the two days as well as in this exercise. “Relationships drive the sector, drive the story, enable collaboration. But now, we’re operating in silos (and even in competition).” There was a call for more regular communication and for more partnership with First Nations. This will require “difficult conversations about reconciliation and the negatives of the gold rush,” some pointed out

People acknowledged that this also includes relationships within the broader community, extending across the nearby US border. And it includes the relationship with visitors (“for example: educating them about how to care for this place”).

“All of this requires being aware of what is happening around you. And it requires accountability from everyone,” said one group.

Near the end, one table spoke with blunt honesty: “We struggled a lot with this. And then we realized that this conversation needs more time and more people at the table. It’s bigger than us. It needs the support of a network.”

They suggested that such a network “could start by supporting a tiny pilot project in a way that embodies what’s being discussed.” I couldn’t agree more.

Looking through the flip charts after the conference, I could see that no single group had come up with the whole picture of the hosting ecology or its regenerative future. No single image of the tree held the complete story. But by putting all 16 of them together, a clear, cohesive vision and mandate starts to come into view. We have to look at the forest, not only the trees.

In that vision of the future, people and businesses are “each stronger with others,” “nourished by real connections with ourselves, visitors, and community.” As hosts, people are “able to be authentic, not prescribed,” even as they have “a sense of shared identity.” “There’s more than one way to share this experience. There are different ways to host connections.” People are guided by shared values, and that “creates a sense of purpose” and “contagious passion.”

Within this vision, the connection and collaboration “creates good ‘soil’ to develop and leverage infrastructure, growing enough capacity.” “We’re making a better place, or at least aiming to.” “We inspire others. And we feel hope.”

This is a vision of a new level of Hospitality: “Once you step foot on the ground, you feel the connection. The spell of the Yukon.” “Visitors stay longer.” “Visiting is a wholesome experience.”

As the conversation continues after the conference, I wonder what broadened vision of Hospitality will come into view. What will this community choose to invite visitors to “rush” to the Yukon for in the future? What is the treasure that can only be found in the Yukon, the new “gold” that responds to the needs of these times? What would Yukoners love for people to take away, and leave behind, in a reciprocal pattern of health and healing? This conference seemed to be an important step towards answering those questions. The conversations that follow will determine how the answers come to life.

In the short term, away from the potent space we created together and without the view of the forest rather than the trees, there have been the voices of some who wished for the usual conference experience. That is to be expected.

But these times call for conversations that can only happen when an entire hosting ecology is represented in one room. They call for insights that only come into view when we weave together these many vantage points. There are things that only become possible when many of us discover what we care about and what is needed most. There are questions that can only be asked within the soil of relationship. It makes a difference that we share some meals together, that we share stories, that we show up in more of our full humanity. Our own courage doesn’t come to the surface at the first invitation. It needs to be coaxed, explored and convinced in the context of what matters more than our fear.

All of this is the deeper power of hospitality.

“Personally, I’m proud,” Julia shared after the gathering. “Proud to have been able to create something authentic and future-facing, rooted in the belief that change is possible when we’re willing to see things differently and work towards it, even if the path is still uncertain.

I hope this is just the beginning: a shared journey of re-imagining what tourism can be — together, thoughtfully, and with care for the place we all call home.”

And I hope that this is just the beginning of a wave of such conversations across Canada, and beyond.

[Read a follow-up piece, “The Hidden Dimension of Regeneration”]

For the past several months, I’ve been co-hosting a Montréal dinner and conversation series to explore the emerging global movement around regeneration. When my two co-hosts and I realized that the next gathering would fall on September 30 — Canada’s National Day of Truth and Reconciliation — it felt appropriate to honor the significance of the day. It was also a moment to explore the connection between Indigenous wisdom, reconciliation and regeneration, as far as our group of non-Native people understand these things. This week, as many parts of my US homeland celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I’m continuing to reflect on the meaningful things worth sharing from our dinner conversation.

In fact, the gathering was not without risk and uncertainty. There is always the delicate dance of honoring without appropriating and without making it about ourselves. For me, there was an added layer of tension. I have been included in several social media call-outs among the most visible advocates of the regenerative movement. “Shouldn’t we put decolonization at the center of this movement?” some have asked. And more pointedly: “Why aren’t youdoing that?”

In response, I’ve been candidly uncertain about what is mine to do and where my voice belongs within that part of the work. My sense has been that my contributions serve decolonization without calling it that, inviting people into a life-aligned worldview and into the practice of wise, compassionate stewardship as profound participation within a living world. I would leave it to those who have experienced colonization most directly, most unjustly, to speak of the doorway of decolonization.

But that hasn’t felt like a satisfying answer. I’ve wondered if I’m actually just avoiding discomfort, or if I’m secretly reluctant to de-center myself, after working so long and hard to be among those most visible advocates. I’ve wondered if my visibility comes with responsibility to advocate for others, particularly those who carry the Indigenous wisdom this movement likes to hold up as evidence and inspiration. There is surely truth in all of these scenarios.

And yet it was clear: on this Day of Truth and Reconciliation, we could not ignore the call to acknowledge historical and present-day injustices. And we should not pass up the opportunity — not to make it about ourselves, but to make ofourselves better allies, even if indirectly, of Indigenous peers and ultimately of life itself.

Among those who directly serve reconciliation and decolonization, there is the concept of creating an “ethical space” for engagement, first described by Cree legal scholar Willie Ermine, in which multiple cultures, knowledge systems and worldviews may coexist in mutual respect. Mi’kmaq elders Murdena and Albert Marshall further introduced the concept of “Two-Eyed Seeing,” viewing the world ”from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing, and … from the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing, and to use both of these eyes together.”

Reflecting on our local dinner, I can say that we left with broader perspectives and expanded hearts, better prepared to engage in an ethical space as the opportunity arises. Surely, that is something.

For those who are drawn to convening conversations like these, I’ll describe the experience and some of its emergent insights. This is one shape the work of this movement, and perhaps the work of decolonization, can take.

We started by gathering in a standing circle, with co-host Nathalia Del Moral Fleury calling the 18 of us together. She later invited us to connect with another person in the group and introduce ourselves through our relationship with the land.

Our second co-host, Sarah Grigsby Msc. PCC, offered a calming, grounding visualization, inviting us to imagine roots spreading from our feet into the Earth and a leafy canopy stretching between us overhead, creating safe haven and connection.

It was then to me to lead us in the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, a ritual held at the beginning of important gatherings among Native people of these lands. Also called “The Words That Come Before All Else,” it is “a way to get everyone in a good mind to work together for the best for all,” connecting with our broadest context and responsibility. From multiple sources, non-Indigenous people have been granted permission to conduct this ritual, in which one person speaks greetings and gratitude to different aspects of the natural world, starting with the people convened. For example, one version offered by the Six Nations Indian Museum starts like this:

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people.

From there, greetings and thanks are offered to Mother Earth, and then to other aspects of the living world, working up to Grandmother Moon, elder brother the Sun, and ultimately the Creator. After each greeting, over and over, the gathered group says all together: “Now our minds are one.”

“Imagine if all meetings started that way,” someone later remarked with a sense of wonder and a tinge of sorrow. Another confessed that speaking the words all together made him uncomfortable, reminding him of Catholic Mass. “But I like to be uncomfortable,” he added with some humor. “My contact with First Nations culture and communities has helped me heal the wound with the sacred,” offered another man. “Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.” “And we need to make a place for tolerance of discomfort,” said another in the now-seated circle, “without needing to solve it.”

Someone else shared her craving for a way to describe the ritual more meaningfully: “It’s so much more than an Address. It’s like a prayer.” Another suggested “ode.” “An Ode to Nature.” I revealed that I had been moved to tears the first time I experienced it, realizing that I had lived most of a lifetime unaware that there is a more beautiful, meaningful way of being in the world. Someone pointed out that this seems to be a common sentiment: so many of us feel a sense of grief and loss for something we’ve never known.

Nathalia then led us in a simple exercise to recall something we did in the past week that was pleasant, carrying a sense of rightness and integrity, and then something less pleasant and aligned, noticing the contrasting feelings. We can become numb to our own felt sensations and the information they provide. One woman shared that the pleasant experience she recalled was working in her garden, rejoicing in the dirt and the day, and her unpleasant experience was going grocery shopping. “Both are supposed to be about nourishing me with food!” she exclaimed. And we wondered: how did we find ourselves with that second experience, such a core part of our lives, but that feels so misaligned with life and thriving? And what more is possible, if a spirit of gratitude, groundedness and reverence could only be infused at every stage of the process?

From there, we moved into three 20-minute rounds of conversation in small groups, changing tables between rounds to cross-pollinate the observations and insights that emerged. Our starting question was a weighty one:

How do I experience a colonized world in my life?

Without diminishing or distracting from the unimaginable trauma suffered by Indigenous peoples, it felt important to recognize the countless ways that colonization has shaped and warped our experiences, too. As Aboriginal elder Lilla Watson points out: “If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

After two rounds with this question, our final round asked:

Where do I experience reconciliation in my life?

Here, we discovered reconciliation as core to the human experience and to the regenerative movement more specifically. We are engaged in reconciliation with ourselves, with our bodies, with a family member, with food, with time.

We then gathered in a seated circle and passed a talking stick (one that had visibly been nibbled on by beavers), each responding to the question:

What do we now understand about regeneration?

According to the first person to share, one way we experience a colonized world is the imposition of frames around our identities and our contributions: you are a scientist or an artist. You cannot be both, or more. But a decolonized view recognizes that each person has something unique to contribute that can’t be contained within a tidy chart or hierarchy. Nature expresses itself through us, with us, as us. Core to our ability to contribute fully to regeneration, it seems, is reconciliation with life, and therefore with the fullness and mystery of our gifts.

We noted that “reconciliation” and “regeneration” are cast as static, impersonal concepts, but they are better understood as embodied, relational processes. This is reflected in the language itself: English and French are dominated by nouns, while Indigenous languages tend to be heavy on verbs. Our sense was that the reconciling, regenerating — healing — that is needed comes through valuing attachment… through depth of connection… through working through things together… and most of all, through listening.

There is a humility implied in this understanding. I can’t heal you (or even myself, for that matter); I can only support the process of healing and renewing wholeness. By the same logic, I can’t reconcile or regenerate; I can only seek to support and participate in these relational processes.

Going further, one person pointed out that reconciliation is not an abstract, intellectual exercise. “It’s not something the government does” with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its public apologies. “Here, we’re connecting with heart, emotion, integrity.” To go deeper into this point, someone proposed the alternative term “rapprochement,” a moving closer together into more harmonious relationship. It implies respect and “a heart that is open to understand the reality of another.” “We could do that here,” someone suggested.

“How can we remember the living dynamic that we’re part of?”

The next time you’re in a forest, one man proposed, try to experience it not as a thing, a noun, but as a verb, a living process. In fact, the following day on my morning run through the woods with my dogs, I did just that, offering silent greetings to the “foresting” and gratitude for how it forested.

The questions about my place in this work remain. Maybe that is part of the living process, too. As Buckminster Fuller said, “I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process.”

The work continues.

I’ve been in multiple conversations lately with people who have recently discovered the regenerative movement, with its worldview of greater alignment with life. They feel drawn to bring living systems principles into their work with organizations. They’re dreaming of having more meaningful impact in the world. But they sense — and often have been given advice — that they need to do the “inner work” first, integrating the new ways of seeing and being that are at the heart of the movement. “Perhaps the Inner Development Goals are a good starting point” is a frequent suggestion.

There is logic to this advice. And at the same time, there’s missed opportunity — if not actual impossibility — in this approach.

To be clear: there is no denying the vital role of personal introspection and knowledge gathering. And there’s real risk, both to the movement and to those directly involved, when someone claims — without depth of understanding or preparation — to be able to bring wise stewardship in service of system thrivability.

At the same time, it’s not clear that we can sufficiently do the inner work first before engaging with the world. It’s through encounter and engagement that we most powerfully discover what is needed and what more we’re capable of. Perhaps more to the point, there are few of us who can afford to remove ourselves from the action for such an indefinite process.

And here’s the thing: it’s incredibly challenging to develop new ways of seeing and being within old structures and systems. But the converse is also true: as we introduce more life-aligned structures and systems, new ways of seeing and being come more clearly into view.

• Experiencing the emergent, self-organizing collective intelligence of an Open Space session for the first time is world-rocking.
• Agile approaches to project management pull back the curtain on a whole new way of thinking and showing up.
• Developmental Evaluation challenges the bedrock of the outgoing paradigm.

There are many portals into a living systems worldview and the stance of stewardship that goes with it; and often those doorways are innocuously hidden within more life-aligned forms of action.

Indeed, in between personal, inner development and societal, outer impact is the space of practice. This is the understanding behind the Core Practice Areas of Thrivability that my colleagues and I work with and teach (depicted in the diagram below). While exploring new ways of seeing and being, we can also work together to: interact in new ways; attune more fully to system potential; conduct thoughtful experiments in service of that potential; develop new ways of noticing what matters most; and be deliberate about learning as an individual and collective practice. With full awareness, intention, humility and joy, we can (also) learn more life-aligned ways of seeing and being by doing.

In this way, our projects and organizations become fertile practice grounds for a more thrivable world. And we become wise stewards of the systems we’re part of.

I’m not sure there is any other way.

[If you’d like to learn more about integrating this approach into your work or your organization, you’re warmly invited to join a 9-part workshop series starting November 6, 2024.]

“But how can we convince the others?”

It never fails. No matter what the sector, I can almost count down the seconds before this question comes up in any good-size gathering where we’re exploring the need to shift to more life-aligned, regenerative perspectives and practices. A recent 100-person, half-day meeting of Montreal’s venture capital ecosystem was no exception. There, hot on the heels of a compelling, confronting presentation by Nate Hagens, this question — the first to be asked — took on its most extreme form:

“But how can we convince all 8 billion people?”

Beyond the impossibility of it, Peter Block would say this is a question that has no power. In his fantastic little book, The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Matters, Block observes that questions like this are a defense against action, “against our own responsibility.”

The question ‘How do you get those people to change?’ distracts us from choosing who we want to become and exercising accountability for creating our environment…. [W]hen we honestly ask ourselves about our role in the creation of a situation that frustrates us, and set aside asking about their role, then the world changes around us.

My own experience bears this out. The shift to more life-aligned, regenerative practices goes nowhere if it is not first an honest reckoning with our own role in creating the situation we face and our own potential to create the conditions for something new to emerge.

Nate shared a quote pointing to a similar conclusion. Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine observed that:

When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.

In so many ways, our world is far from equilibrium, a sea of chaos. And within it, there is little logic in trying to “boil the ocean” of 8 billion people. Instead, the only thing that has ever worked to effect meaningful change is to gather with others in “small islands of coherence” and spread from there.

Convincing has a more limited role in this than the ever-ready question presumes. The etymology of the word is “to defeat, to overcome.” (Consider the common root in “invincible.”) But as Buckminster Fuller famously advised: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

And though Nate’s presentation of undeniable data had an impact (leaving us all a little shell-shocked, in fact), we’re daily flooded with information that is, nevertheless, all too easy to set aside. It’s not lack of facts that keeps us locked in destructive patterns.

Instead, what is needed most is collective spaces where we can take in the data, make sense of it with others, come to terms with it, and find both courage and resources to act on it together. What is needed even more than convincing is convening. Islands of coherence don’t happen by themselves. The real challenge and opportunity is not in persuading others but in creating practice grounds for seeing, stewarding and becoming the new. The real power is in finding the collective will to have bolder conversations and to focus not only on changing our systems, but on changing ourselves.

Fortunately, that was exactly the intention of the venture capital gathering, and that’s what I had been invited to support. The event was the annual general meeting of Real Ventures, a VC fund that “serves entrepreneurs and nurtures the ecosystems in which they thrive,” according to their website. At the end of the meeting — a thoughtfully crafted afternoon of sharings, conversations and activities — we invited each person to write on an index card “the conversations we’re not daring to have in this ecosystem… the bold questions we’re putting off to tomorrow that we need to be asking today.” The answers went further than I had dared to hope, and the Real Ventures team is now exploring how they might guide future gatherings. This will be an island to watch as it takes shape.

So here’s to the courageous conveners. And here’s to those courageous enough to accept the invitation, despite the confronting facts and the inherent uncertainty of island-building.

This is the work of our times.

Photo credits: Julian Haber and Richard Bastarache

I speak and consult frequently about the practice of regeneration in contexts as wide-ranging as tourism, agriculture, community and business. And always, people want examples. Not only that, they want perfect, start-to-finish examples of best practices — a clear roadmap of how it’s done. Anything less throws the whole concept into doubt. The promising initiative that died when leadership changed is dismissed. The ambitious project that didn’t live up to expectations is rejected. And courage and commitment falter.

But here’s what we need to keep in mind. When a degraded landscape starts to take on life again, there is a certain order to the return of species, in what is called ecological succession. First come the lichen, followed by small annual plants. These prepare the soil for the subsequent arrival of perennial grasses, bushes, then trees, ultimately generating a whole, complex — regenerated — ecosystem. Each stage calls for the contributions of specific species.

In human communities seeking regeneration, the early brave examples may be short-lived. They may not live up to our hopes for full system regeneration. But this is not their purpose. Theirs is to prepare the ground, spreading seeds of new potential. With every hopeful new start, the landscape of our imagination has been transformed. The soil of what seems possible is richer because of their contributions.

Let’s not hold back from celebrating these pioneers (as they are called in biology). And though we may rightfully grieve what didn’t come to pass when those halted projects are our own, let’s also honor what did happen — what is unalterably changed in us and in the world — and the courage it took to step into the barren unknown.