It's winter in this picture as I walk alone up the drive with my dogs. Every morning, no matter the weather or my calendar, we have this moment together. I am alone but I am not. This is the time of day when I am most connected to myself and to the entire universe. I often think of how this may be my last day. Surrounded by the trees and the fields and with two beings who love me as much as their own lives and who will never judge me, I am centered in a "Trusted Space". This Trusted Space is a source of deep power.
Here I am with my sister Diana. We had created a Trusted Space between us that gave us the courage to rise above a loveless home and face the world in the spirit of adventurers.
I never experienced these feelings about being loved, about loving another, feeling safe and feeling strong in my corporate life. I never felt safe enough to be the whole me. I was always weak and anxious as a result.
Why?
Toke and Chris provided me with a map that is helping me find the answer to that question.
As Toke drew this on the floor at the Shire, my eyes opened. My heart and mind went "Of course!"
Let me take you through my first impression of what this map means. You are the individual at the bottom - you are alone.
A "Group" is a collection of people thrown together by circumstance. Your workmates, your classmates, your neighbors and even most of your family. At work you can be called a Team but that is a lie. If you are simply collected - you are in a "Group". As a member of a Group, by definition, you have a very limited knowledge of who your other members are and they have an equally obscure view of who you are. Many people can work with others for decades and only know the "official" work other person. In a group you are still really on your own. Maybe that is why I needed money and things so much?
Because you participate in a Group while wearing a Mask, Groups are very political. All is artifice. Think of high school or of office politics. The lower the stakes the worse the politics - think university. Groups are based on appointed position and not on skill or even on results. Think Bureaucracies or some families. They are bounded by external rules. Following the rules is the prime objective that trumps even results. Groups do not want innovation they want and demand obedience.
Groups are easy to join and easy to leave. Money is often the only bond. Groups tend to be geographically based and so fall apart when geography and time get in the way. This is why "Face time" is so important at work. Think of how few of your old school chums are still close after 40 years. Think of how you don't miss most of the people you once worked with. Think of how many of your cousins and even siblings you are glad not to see much anymore. I suspect that many marriages and families are really Groups and are accidents of geography, of conception or of finances.
Teams are quite different. They are competency-based and have objectives. Here relationships are more vibrant. To join a team you have to be selected! You may have been treated badly or hazed for a while as part of the initiation. The higher the hurdle, the more the satisfaction of membership. Think Marine Corps versus the Army. Respect in real teams is granted to those that win it and hence is real. It is the same with Trust. Trust is also earned in a Team. I become angry when I see the naivety of people who think that respect and trust are givens and who fail to see that they are the underpinnings of what all real teams need to know about you - that you can be relied on.
Teams are bounded by fields of endeavor. Think of a Game, of Music or even of Raising Kids. Inside the field, the higher the skill you have the greater the freedom you have to interpret your skill into action. Teams - all societies have hierarchies. In Teams the hierarchies are based on levels of skill. Think Guilds. Most Teams are goal orientated. Win the series. Make more money. Raise the kids well.
Teams are so much better than groups in providing belonging and meaning. Many good marriages I think reach this level and are founded on a great contract of complimentary skills. A major risk I think for Teams is that once the goal has been won or lost, the energy for the Team dissipates. Think of how many good marriages falter once the kids are adults. Teams still don't ask for the 'Full You". Much of you is still on the outside and is not connected in a Team.
You will see a line above Team that separates what I now see as the best of the machine world from the first step of the Natural World - or Trusted Space - where humans really become alive.
The term that Tim, Toke and Chris were using here is "Mates".
What did we mean by the term "Mate"? Diana and I are "Mates" not just siblings. She knows all my failings and still loves me. She loves me because of some of my failings. So I am completely myself when I am with her. We do not have a goal or a plan. Our final knowledge is that one day one of us will be alone again but we will have still the other within us. This is the reason why living with dogs can teach us so much about being Mates. Their inevitable loss prepares us to lose all and everyone else who is close and to help us know that in our hearts we are still together.
The gaol of Mates is Mateship! The result of Mateship is connection with another and to yourself.
How does Mateship happen? In the recent past, Mateship was I think a product of a crucible. War is such a crucible. In war, men are often put into situations where they willingly would die for another. Many veterans never wish for another war but their eyes glisten as they recall how it felt to be so connected with their mates. Before modern medicine every mother offered her life in exchange for the new life. In this context, every mother could look another mother in the eye and share a moment of common accomplishment and of destiny.
Is war, or sharing the risk of death, the key for Mateship? Yes I think that it is but also I think that it is not essential. I suspect that it is also the product of a Trusted Space.
A Trusted Space is a "Place" where it is safe for people to take off their masks and so show their full selves. When we sat every evening for hundreds of thousands of years in a circle around the fire and told our stories - we were in a trusted space. When we lived our lives in public, there could be no masks. In a world that was based on reputation, your name was your most important asset. We showed our full selves to another and we were accepted for being whom we were.
Do we have to return to tribal life to find mateship? No more than the people of the Renaissance had to put on togas. We only have to understand the circumstances of the camp fire and of tribal life and find modern equivalents.
Am I dreaming? No I know that I am awake. My experience is that it is happening right now.
The most important thing that has happened to me in the last 4 years is how blogging has introduced me to "Mates".
I am still amazed that I can know someone I have never met so well. I am not alone in going to work, as I did with Johnnie Moore, on a very dangerous piece of work with a person that I had never met before. There is some weird property of the web that enables Mates to notice the connection. Cyn has helped me overcome my fear of using my body and has put me on a path to keep healthy and fit. She lived only a mile away but we met for years online. Chris arrived at the Shire never having met Tim before. I came to the Shire because of Chris' request knowing that it would be great. I have only met Chris once before. Many of you have similar stories about finding 'Mates" in the 'sphere. I find no separation in these relationships. Reputation is critical in this world.
OK then you may be feeling - this is all well and good for a few bloggers but what about work and making the money that we all need?
More and more people are coming together in "Mateship" to provide the means and the society that they need to pay their bills and to make a difference in their lives.
In the next few weeks I will be interviewing a few friends who have set up workplaces that fit the world of mateship. I will also be interviewing many involved in the work of establishing Commons' - that I believe have the potential for creating the spaces that may offer us more Mateship.
I will also be interviewing more of my friends in Public Radio who seek to create a Trusted Space in their community.
So what then is Fellowship and how does Fellowship extend from Mateship?
Fellowship is when Mates decide to do the world's great work together. There is great work to be done that requires exceptional courage and often more than a lifetime to accomplish.
In the Shire, the Hobbits were Mates. Taking the ring back to Gondor is the work of Fellowship. Being Mercenaries together created Mateship between Ignatius Loyola and his friends. Founding the Society of Jesus was when they set out in Fellowship. I suspect that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were Mates at work but have now decided to become part of a great Fellowship.
Fellowship is when Mates leave the shire and take on the work that is needed to serve their people and their world.
What is ironic about Fellowship is that, once the foundation of Mateship is set, the Fellowship can and often does split up and each person works on their own. But of course - they are not on their own. The essence of Mateship is that it transcends time and place. It transcends even the grave. So when you work on the great work you are always connected. The goal of Fellowship is integration.
I suspect that only Fellowship will enable us to heal the great wounds that our living in groups has inflicted upon our own souls and so upon all things living and not.
I think that there is also a hierarchy in Fellowship and that Frodo gives us the clue. It based on those that are the most pure in heart. The most admirable are those that are the most vulnerable and the most open. For those that are most sensitive, courage takes on a new dimension. For true courage is knowing how much danger you are really in and still presssing on. In Fellowship the Beatitudes are made flesh.
In closing here is how Joseph Campbell describes Fellowship. He nails both the path and the price.
....... we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."
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".....The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. "Live," Nietzsche says, "as though the day were here." It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal - carries the cross of the redeemer - not in the bright moments of his tribes's great victories, but in the silence of his personal despair."
The Hero of a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell, 1949
