What can we find beyond division……
Imagine a Canada where well-held, heart-felt dialogue about complex issues was the normal. Where people feel and believe that their voice and heart matter to their community.
Environment vs. economy? rural vs. urban? Vaccine vs. no vaccine? Are these issues tearing your community and loved ones apart? What if we got really good at creating safe spaces to pause from debating, convincing and fighting and start listening deeper and wider, than we’ve been able to before? What might open up? What do you yearn for in your community?
Your Voice Matters
Your Heart Matters
About us: The Spirit of Canada Dialogue Project is a volunteer network of dialogue hosts across Canada. As a Core Team, we support people to develop and practice their skills to host dialogues beyond division. Hosts are invited to explore taboo or sticky subjects with their communities. We invite sharing what is breaking our hearts, and feeling into what breaks our hearts OPEN to new possibilities.
“Feeling and sharing broken heartedness and discovering open heartedness, frees us to face the future together.”
Kara Stonehouse, Vision Holder
Spirit of Canada
The Spirit of Canada, for us, is a collective consciousness encompassing the land , animals and peoples through time, before and including the legal entity called Canada. It holds all the aspiration and potential as well as all the suffering of the diverse collective. Our offering is to shed light and healing on the places where we feel stuck and uncomfortable so we can face the future and potential as a diverse, caring and wise collective.
Dialogue
We use the root meaning of dialogue: to engage in a ‘flow of meaning’ which can take more forms than verbal conversation. Nature is included in the flow.
Join our monthly community call on Zoom
Together, we practice listening beyond division on various topics of interest, providing opportunities to learn and create community. If you are interested in hosting your own generative dialogue with us, we’ll support you in designing the engagement and delivering it to your audience.
Calls are generally every second Thursday at 3pm EST.
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How do you approach Conflict?
Have you noticed a divisiveness in our public discourse and how that way of communicating can spill over into our private relationships? We can become tempted to throw up our hands in despair. But there are ways through those situations to deeper empathy and understanding that may lead to resolution.
Social Scientist, Deborah Conners, is offering this valuable workshop on conflict styles especially for us, and you are invited!
BIO: Deborah Conners, PhD, Masters in Conflict Studies, teaches community engagement and social justice courses in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Carleton University. Deborah uses adult-learning principles practiced over several decades in community development and consulting work. Her courses take a “learning together” approach to frame a dynamic learning experience that is (hopefully!) useful to everyone involved.
Join us on May 11 from 3 to 5 pm EDT on Zoom as we learn about our own conflict styles and increase the possibilities that we bring to difficult conversations.
Register Here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/how-do-you-approach-conflict-tickets-626725200947
Past events
If you resonate, participate! Get involved!
This project is held in the field of the Hague Center for Global Governance, Innovation and Emergence. We are open to partner with a Canadian NGO to formalize and scale up this project for 2022 and beyond. www.thehaguecenter.org contact kara@thehaguecenter.org