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Photo courtesy of Harrison Owen
My friend and mentor Harrison Owen has provided periodic doses of inspiration for me for years now. Today he posted something on the OSLIST that invited a long response from me. Harrison wrote:
terrorists will strike, and how to keep them out . . . It is getting pretty close. And the closer it gets the more our possibilities are limited, and the human Spirit withers. In an odd way, the more we try to preserve that Spirit, the more it seems in jeopardy. Some wise soul remarked that after studying history for a long time he had concluded that the telling end-stage of any country or civilization showed up when they spent more time trying to protect what they had than growing what they might become (my words, but his thought). Definite closure of space.
So I thought to myself, thought I, how to open some more space – anywhere, anyhow, with anyone???? Doing an OS is cool, but surely that represents but a tiny fraction of the opportunities available. So come on Folks (Lurkers
included) how do we open up some more space? And how are we doing right now. Perhaps if we shared we cold give each other some really good ideas.
Here is my response:
When I first started consulting, I took my business model from the model of the Elder’s helper in Ojibway society. That role basically sees a person working with an Elder to support her (or him) in any way possible to ensure that the wisdom in there gets out into the world. This means everything from bringing the Elder water, to arranging the teaching space in a way that is conducive to learning. It means preparing medicines, prayers, food and ceremony when we are doing things that work with Spirit, or invite “manidoo” (Ojibway for both “Spirit” and “Mystery”) into the mix. I found that “helping” in this sense was an opening activity, and it set the stage for me to look for other opportunities to “open” through a consulting practice.
I soon found that in spades when I stumbled upon Open Space in a very large conference facilitated by Anne Stadler and Chris Carter and Angeles Arrien in 1995 in Whistler, Canada. Since then I have been struck by what Open Space means beyond the facilitation of the OST meeting.
I started by wondering what it meant to invite more stories into our lives and our relationships and my first learning was that it extended connections between me and others. I discovered by telling my stories and listening to stories of others, that it never took long for me and someone else to arrive at a place in which we were connected. Stories became an almost magical medicine for me, weaving together people in my life and extending my connections in the world to many far flung corners.
Then, as I started working with OST, I discovered something very profound: Elders kept coming to me and saying that this process is the way our ancestors met. I knew what they were saying was not about the circle exclusively, but rather about the quality of the experience and they way in which OST calls forth the inherent resources we have available to us RIGHT NOW and invites us to use them well. That got me thinking about what has happened to us, both indigenous and others, over the years that created a situation whereby we had forgotten how to rely on our own resources. And I discovered a powerful truth about colonization as a result: colonization was not only about the imposition of structure and behaviour on our lives; it was rather about the way our inner lives were stripped away, be it the inherent truths that come from our own personal ways of connecting with Spirit and intention, or the cultural stories and frameworks that supported and continued to invite this knowledge.
In short, colonization is by definition a closing, and decolonization is about opening.
Michael Herman then gave me the language to describe the process of facilitating decolonization, when he used the word “invitation” to describe a whole practice and approach to facilitation, organizational development, community development and living. And since then I have shamelessly appropriated his mantra and said to people that my work is a practice of invitation. Invitation for us to know our own truths, create and honour our own story, organize our own responses to the world around us and take responsibility for making the change we want to see.
This is all about opening.
At the same time as all this was happening, I developed my website and early on integrated my personal life with my professional life and decided to share all of it, or as much as I was able to. So I made my weblogs public in the hope that sharing my thinking and learning would lead me towards others who were engaged in similar things.
Again, it’s about opening up the boundaries between us. Sharing instead of taking, extending instead of retracting, blurring lines instead of creating them.
I was in New Zealand recently and while I was there I spent a delightful evening talking in a hotel lobby over a bottle of Shiraz with two Maori musicians, Elena who is a classically trained violinist and Howard McGuire, a classically trained opera singer. Both blur boundaries in a way that means that classical music is now Maori music. Instead of retreating into a closed and static traditional culture, they have included and transcended Maori culture and see what they are doing as building an inclusive identity, an inclusive form of cultural expression, wider and living, while all the while being Maori.
Elena’s artistic statement says this:
I’m working on projects to combine Kapa Haka and classical music with arrangements that will appeal to young people and encourage them to extend their musical knowledge and abilities. I plan to visit schools, Kohanga and marae to perform stories using the violin to express characters and emotions, and to give concerts in classical and modern music.
It’s also in my game plan to provide quality musical material for Maori radio stations, shops and the media. That’s all part of encouraging young to perform in Te reo Maori and to support and sustain the Maori culture in an ever-changing world.”
That is opening (and you HAVE to get a copy of the CD!) It invites us to see the world through new eyes and it encourages us to extend ourselves beyond the stories and “realities” that limit us. If Elena and Howard are out there doing what they are doing, what does that say about what the rest of us are capable of? Isn’t their work an invitation to extend ourselves so that we ultimately dwell in the same sphere?
Harrison talks about opening space to help ease conflict. Michael uses the great line that “conflict is simply passion that has not yet extended to include the whole.” By looking for opportunities in my own life to extend, open and invite, I feel like space is opening all around me and people show up in my life who move me immensely and give me the hope we all need to take on the stuff that is trying to close us down.
Vaclav Havel called it “living in truth.” Gandhi called it “Satyagraha” which means close to the same thing. It’s understanding the quality of small daily acts and asking ourselves, whether this one is a life affirming moment, or a life denying moment. Am I opening or closing?
We choose opening by offering ourselves, by understanding our gifts and talents and inviting those out in others, by giving each other new ways of seeing the world, by making connections, by providing comfort and relief, by bringing our Elders water, and preparing the space for the wisdom to pour forth.
If it sounds trite and soft and well-meaning, then you need to read about the history of India, the history of the demise of the Soviet Empire, the history of the peaceful struggles for change that have propelled human history on an evolutionary path rather than a regressive one. You need to sit in with me when I have the privilege of working with Aboriginal youth in this part of Canada, who are channeling their minds, bodies, spirits, and hearts into a promising future.
You need to know that, despite everything, it really works.
And then, you need to steal back Nike’s marketing slogan, and just go do it
