How home cooking relates to collaboration

In Canada, I’ve had home cooking, and honest to goodness hospitality. I feel such gratitude and connection for this. I’m sitting on a plane heading to New Mexico at the moment (they have WiFI up here! I'm having one of those moments of simultaneously thinking, "I can't believe it" and knowing at the same time that WiFi in planes will feel completely ordinary in about 6 months time...) and I feel a bit choked up about it. So I’m wondering, what is it that moves me?

When I was in Ottawa on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, I stayed in the house of some Quakers, whom my parents met in 1986, when we lived in Ottawa for 6 months (I was 11 at the time). Over the years, my parents have unfailingly sent their annual Christmas letter to Carol and John, and very very occasionally have stayed with them if they have been in Ottawa. Likewise Carol and John have perhaps stayed one night at my parents’ place in Reading, England, in 25 years. The offer of hospitality was unhesitatingly extended to me last week, along with home cooked food, lifts to the bus and train stations, and the 24-digit password to their WiFi.

The same again in Toronto. Allison and Bob are my second cousins, once removed (their son is my third cousin) - which means that my mum and Allison have the same Northern Irish great-grandmother. Allison and Bob put me up in 1991 when I ventured out for almost the first time to a foreign country on my own (aged 16) - and watched me emerge as a confident woman from my chrysalis of self-doubt and teenage anxiety, in the space of about 4 weeks. Then they hosted me again in 1994 at the tail end of my year out before university. And I’m not sure I’ve seen them or even been in touch in 16 years. But this week I got a big welcome and a comfy bed, and tolerance to my comings and goings, a metro card, a lift to the airport, and good food.

And in both places I had fantastic conversations. In Ottawa: The state of the Canadian government and its attitude to the churches. The state of Quakers in the world. The idea of the international commons and how to work on this legally. Ottawa as a government town. Grandchildren and farming and the Ottawan winter (which is very snowy and very sunny) and the links to solar energy schemes...

In Toronto: consulting firms and how they want experts who turn in to managers who turn in to ‘rainmakers’ (making money for the firm). How to use your distribution unit as a hub for connection to your customer, and to value your employee’s time spent making relationship, not just how much money they make. Bob recounted a tale where he was chatting on the phone to a customer far away in another part of Canada, and once they’d done the business, he asked, ‘How was your winter?’ And a whole new frontier of relationship opened up. Provence and the French Alps, and the merits of blackberries over I-phones. Regular online checks of the Belfast Telegraph and the unusual animal-related stories therein.

And that’s just for where I stayed. Then there was dinner with Tony and Marie, who I’d never met before but who barbecued salmon for me and downloaded their wisdom on transforming public services. There was breakfast with Emily who I first met in the kitchen of a Quaker camp in 1991, and today over pancakes and coffee we talked about life and death and love and books. And then there’s all the meetings and connections I have made in just a few days, through people who had willingly opened up their contact book and connected me with others.

You get the picture. I left today, gratitude in my heart, having felt nurtured and welcomed. And I wanted to extend offers of hospitality to Carol and John, to Bob and Allison, Tony and Marie, Emily, and to their children and grandchildren and unborn great grandchildren and nephews and nieces. What moves me is the way these supportive connections are offered over many years, and inter-generationally, in subtle ways, and that these then link families and communities and, ultimately, nations in understanding.

I had a breakfast when I was in Washington 2 weeks ago, with some community funders, and our discussion turned to whether the purpose of collaboration was to achieve change, or the purpose of collaboration was to be in relationship. One woman said, both. ‘The people that keep coming back to the advocacy work don’t just come back to make a difference in this town. They come back because they want to be in relationship with the people they are doing the advocacy with.’

Yesterday I had lunch with a woman who works at United Way Toronto and she said a similar thing. “We help the homeless get back in to work, through social enterprises. And what this offers them isn’t necessarily dignity or money or a home. It’s connection. Most homeless people are really isolated. When they get work, they start to belong, to feel connected. And the best thing? Sometimes, when they feel really connected, they start giving back, and being a volunteer.’

And so I want to acknowledge that this theme of mine, collaboration, is also, sometimes about just being in relationship. Offering support. Welcoming folk. Remembering how we’re connected rather than how we are different. It’s simple, and profound, and it nurtures the soul. And that’s why I have a tear in my eye, because I’m very very grateful for this and how it gets manifested in my life.