What is a host?

The Conversation Week month of searching for the most important questions in the world today is coming to a close. In a week, the top ten will be selected, though the top 50 should live on somewhere... and even the 600 amazing questions submitted.

Now the month of getting 400 or more hosts signed up to bring Conversation Week to their communities (hopefully on all seven continents) begins. Thousands of people in our networks (the Conversation Cafe, Conversation Week, Global Mindshift, Gaia.com, Facebook, YouTube, QuantumshiftTV and Lord knows where else) will be encouraged to sign up to host. Last year there were probably hundreds of conversations we had no idea were happening - people just participated. Signing up makes them part of the annual global experiment to learn how people around the world can be in respectful dialogue about the worlds most important questions.

But what is a host? How can we communicate what a host is or does so that people realize that's precisely what they do or want to do - but never knew there were others worldwide also persistently holding space for brilliance to arise in human conversation.

Hosts do it in Conversation Cafes, of course, but they also do it in the streets. They talk to people. They invite their views. They ask questions. The observe out loud the world of the bus stop or grocery line or conference break in such a way that others want to add their own views. They make conversational "stone soup".

As the "stone soup" story goes, a group of dirty, weary bums in a railroad yard were standing around a fire and a pot of boiling water, wishing they had something to eat. One guy says, "Hey, we can make stone soup. Here. I've got a few great stones I've save to put in." and he pulls some stones from his pocket, puts them in the pot and sniffs. Mmmm. Another guy then pulls out some carrots he scavenged from Dumpster Diving. Seeing that, someone else takes a few potatoes out of his sack, cuts them with a pocket knife, mumbles "here's some taters" and puts them in. Moments pass and another guy who'd hung back pulls out a whole roasted chicken he'd been intending to eat when the others weren't looking. He borrows the knife, cuts it up and tosses it, bones and all, in the pot. Finally a kid throws in some wild greens he'd just picked... and they enjoyed Stone Soup. When it was all gone but the stones, the first fellow took them back. Never know when you'll need to start another pot.

Hosting is gathering at the fire, inviting people to warm themselves around it, putting on a pot (a container like the process and agreements of the CC) and drop in the first stone - a powerful questions. Conversation Cafes are soul food for hungry minds. They are intelligent conviviality for hungry souls.

I host conversations - at cafes, in my home, with strangers - because it's who I am, not what I do. I can't help it. I am always hosting. I am always inviting others to make meaning with me. I am always asking questions and listening to the answers, always wondering what others think and feel. The world of bustling humans is to me like a vast ocean of hidden meaning. I want to know what people understand of the events of their lives. I want to know the stories others tell themselves about this world we live together in. I want to go out of my mind, to fall out of my certainties for a while and into the conjectures of others. I am willing to be humbled, again and again, by how narrow and harsh and demanding my mind can become, because on the other side of that brittle, lonely place is love. Okay, there it is. Last year in Conversation Week one participant mused, "This feels different than I imagined. This is more than conversation. More than friendship even. This feels like love." I host because I love.

Here are some other thoughts about who you and I are as hosts:

• Hosts aren't made, they're born... whenever one person listens to another without interrupting and discovers that warm witness inside is actually listening to them listen to the other.
• Hosts aren't born, they're made... we can host a Conversation Cafe by the book and discover that at some point we aren't doing hosting, we are hosting. It's like learning to dance. At first you're all feet. And then you're flying.
• A host brings everyone to the table to have the conversation none can yet imagine yet all know must be had.
• A host is the grown up in the room, the one who shines by allowing others to shine.
• A host invites others to break bread and make meaning.
• A host has the courage to not know. And admit it. And ask.
  
• A host isn't a not-know-it-all.
  
• A host puts others at ease with their thoughts.
• A host removes what’s in the way of people offering their brilliance to the world.
• A host listens on behalf of the collective.
• A host is hospitable, makes space for others to be at ease.
• A host hospices the brittle, dying ideas that arrive, exhausted to the table.
• A host is a leader of those who will lead once she is gone

What is a host to you?