Category: General Learning

A post on the Open Space List Serve from Amerie Rose. It came from a thread about optimism and progress, not wanting to return to the cave. I love her honesty here.  I relate to the value of the cave in similar ways. And need it!

I long for the good old days out in The Cave. I hark back to the time of Dreaming, and often struggle in this time of Doing. I grieve because today I am surrounded by folks who judge me when I ‘go there’ because they lost touch with their’s somewhere along this line of evolution. I battle with myself throughout the year because I STILL only get myself a ticket to there when I have lost ‘The Plot’ to the point of only being ABLE to do what needs to be done – collect wood, make food, protect the children. 

I love these words from Harrison Owen, shared recently on the Open Space list serve. It speaks to me to the inner grounding needed to offer such practices. It speaks to the story, the worldview that is already in place beneath the methodology. And it speaks to some of my own distaste for any kind of coercion in using this and other participative process.

I have never tried to “sell” Open Space. The reasons are two. First, when you describe it to anybody who hasn’t “been there” they can’t believe it, won’t believe it, and – worse – are pretty sure that anybody who does “believe it” is more than a little bit “off their rocker” (Americanism for weird, strange, marginally crazy, and such). Not a strong opening position for a “sales” pitch! Bottom line? Don’t bother. As I think I have said ad nauseam, Selling Open Space is not unlike trying to teach a pig to sing. It annoys the pig, and sounds terrible.

And there is an alternative. Just recognize (in your own mind) that these folks (whoever they are…) are already “in” Open Space. They are just doing it badly. Your “offer” is simply to help them to do what they are already doing – but now with some understanding, expertise, and style. Short take: you can help them to remember what they already know, and having remembered, to do everything much better.

Practically – I find that most people really don’t care about the “process.” As Eiwor says – they just want results. So explaining the details of the process, given the liabilities of that explanation (see above), doesn’t make a lot of sense. What you can do is make some promises that I know can be kept. Every issues of concern to anybody will be on the table. All will be discussed. Reports of those discussions will be created. Action groups will/can be formed. Guaranteed! With one major proviso. People care to do that. If nobody cares, nothing will happen. But what else is new?

I love these words from Peggy Holman that name the relationship between individuals in relation to a group. It is often a dynamic that I notice people struggle with. How to lean into what is the group, but then act individually, or in smaller groups, from what is felt in the group.

Create opportunities for individual expression and connection. It brings out the creativity in differentiation. A lesson from Open Space: the heart of self-organizing in human systems is the invitation to take responsibility for what you love. A seeming paradox: when we are invited to pursue what authentically matters to each of us rather than selfishness, our actions become an act of service, of contributing what we love on behalf of the whole. What, in other circumstances might be disruptive differences can become gifts to the whole.

 

Here is a 43 minute recording of a radio program by Michael Rivero. It moves quickly.

I don’t understand all of what is spoken from this premise that private banking is behind motivation for wars, assassinations, political rhetoric, etc. Yet, there is something powerful to pay attention to here.

How long can economic systems based on increasing debt and the printing of private bank notes survive? I don’t know what comes after. I don’t have enough in me to untangle how we got here. Yet something rings true to me in this story.