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The Days of Now

May 13, 2010 By Being, Open Space, Poetry

A poem by Ralph Copleman a longtime Open Space practitioner, posted this week on the OSLILST

The Days of Now

On the night before Now

we all clambored over

and greeted each other by the gateway.

Now came the first morning.

We opened for each other many conversations

and passed cups around the shining circle.

On the second of Now,

I could see a long way in people’s eyes

which cleared to let in the light.

On the third of Now,

everyone started dialing up tomorrows,

released laughter and embraced

every future Now with braided voices

and sweat-slicked arms.

Each night Now the sky

came down to join us,

like an animal testing the scents.

On the fourth of Now

we saw magic inside ourselves

and blew gently the embers in each other.

On the fifth day Now transformed

into pieces of hours and sounds.

There was baying and mirth

and sweet fresh rubbing of skin on skin.

The sixth of Now saw us

plain and fearful, thrilled and drawn

to each other in new forever dreams.

On the seventh of Now

we redrew all our lines,

filled all the hollows, as Now expected.

At last the night Now

draped velvet and quiet

as hushed we prepared our ascent.

This night is that night Now.

It has unquenchable questions

and the same different beginning.

On top of morning Now

and all through evening Now

we waxed and shined the circle again

sipped each other’s songs

and touched old and new alike.

Opening space in Melbourne, and the fifth principle

May 3, 2010 By Open Space

I’ve just opened space at a conference here with Viv McWaters, Geoff Brown, Anne Pattillo and Johnnie Moore.  We’ve got a two day, full on participatory conference on evaluation with 179 people.  40 topics have gone up for our day and a half OS.

It’s sweet for me being here in Melbourne, which for me is the spiritual home of Open Space in Australia (would you agree Brendan?  :-)).  Of course for me that impression largely comes from the fact that this was Father Brian Banibridge’s  home, and I regret that I never made it here while he was alive, only able to meet him over the years at various OSonOS gatherings or when he stopped by our place on retreat or en route to elsewhere.

Brian of course was such a stalwart member of our community…he and Viv have hosted trainings in Australia for years and of course they took the mantle of hosting OSonOS X in 2002 after Laurel Doersam and I co-hosted it in Vancouver. It’s such a pleasure to be here working with Viv and our team in this place, with Brian’s presence very much in our mind.

And so as way of honouring Brian in our own little way today we took the unprecedented step of officially adding a fifth principle to the Open Space canon.  Of course the four principles are very important and probably all we need, but Brian always posted a fifth one up when he worked: Be Prepared to be Surprised.   For years I have also made a poster with that one on it and put it up in the room, but today in my opening I elevated that most excellent phrase by making it the third principle of five.  It comes right after Whoever comes… and Whatever happens…  Be Prepared to be Surprised.  And then When it starts… and when it’s over…lovely.

It seems a perfectly natural place to put it, and, being here in Melbourne,  it seemed a perfectly natural act to just say out loud “Open Space has 5 principles and one law…”  Viv and I both got a little shiver up our spine, our own little testimonial to a great friend of our community of practice whose presence we miss dearly.

So from now on it’ll be five principles for me, and in reciting them I always see in my own mind Harrison’s call to simplicity, Anne Stadler’s call to take simplicity seriously (which helped Harrison get the principles right – that IS the story, right?) and Brian’s mischievous imperative to be open to surprise.

So as we prepare to gather here in Melbourne on May 11 for a little OSonOS with 40 or so local OS-workers, and our community of friends and colleagues gathers internationally in Berlin, Viv and I invite you to officially adopt Brian’s fifth principle not for sentimental reasons, but just because it makes sense, and it lightens the invitation in just the right way.

It’s all good.

Skill with language, invitation and holding the centre

April 20, 2010 By Art of Hosting, Facilitation, Invitation, Leadership 5 Comments

On the Art of Hosting list we have been having a conversation about using language of participatory process.  Often the language of these new social technologies can be jargony and off-putting for people who aren’t used to it.  That can cause unnecessary defensiveness among participants. So I had some thoughts about using good language AND holding to a core centre…

Don’t fall in love with your processes and tools and langauge and conepts: instead respond to people’s needs and offer what you can and when they ask what it is called, or wonder if you are just making it up, you can point to the body of work, research and experience to be found when you Google “Open Space Technology.” or “World Cafe” or whatever.  That will give them comfort if they need it without “selling” them on what we think is good for them

When we put our tools above our client’s needs we are putting ourselves above our clients.  When we join a field of learning and curiosity and possibility with our clients and offer what we can, we become co-creative and participatory.

But while we must be careful that in taking care to help people understand the processes that we are not abandoning our centre.  So it is a balance, a dance between what is known and unknown.  Working at the edge of fear and anxiety can help people come to the next level.  Too much comfort is a poison for our times.

I have found that, ALMOST more important that the language I use is the centre I hold.  If I am strong and grounded in my centre, the skeptics cannot knock me about, and in fact they are rather drawn to where I am, curious and a little cautious.  For you to bring the new into a system – true for any pioneer or leaders – there is a firmness in conviction that comes with an undying trust in possibility and emergence and is helped by having the scars of battle upon you.  For sure experience helps you to temper and hold your centre, but you will not get your experience unless you feel what it’s like to stand for something and take the buffeting of uncertainty around you.  And occasionally you will fail and that will be your greatest teacher.

So I think you need skill in holding the centre and skill in speaking about it.  And that skill comes from practice.

So my business card says: “Asking inspiring questions, hosting powerful conversations, harvesting for wise action.” To the unfamiliar eye that is a tricky set of words to understand, but I stay unapologetic in my use of them, and I have, over the year, developed some facility in explaining them in a way that invites whoever I am speaking to to join me.

In conclusion, practice.

The methodology of study from a Coast Salish perspective

April 19, 2010 By Art of Harvesting, BC, Collaboration, First Nations 2 Comments

A beautiful extended reflection on the methodology of study in a coast Salish context from author Lee Maracle:

The object of ‘study” from a Salish perspective is to discover another being in itself and for itself with the purpose of engaging it in future relationship that is mutually beneficial and based on principles of fair exchange. We study from the point of view, that there is something unknown to be discovered, that all life contains something cherished, but hidden from us and that if we observe from as many angles of perception that we can rally, engage one another in exchanging observations, and consider the internal dynamics governing the behavior of the being observed from the perspective of its perfect right to be, we will understand it in relationship with ourselves. We do not believe we can fully understand the being under study, but we can come to see it clearly enough to engage it in relationship.

This process is a collective process, requiring many different sets of eyes, many different points of view. This is because if we examine something from one subjective angle [and all human observation and thought is subjective] then we will only understand an aspect of the being under study and we are very likely to engage in huge errors, leap to absurd conclusions based on subjective assumptions and so forth. We engage one another in this process on the presumption that all points of view are valid, but they must be POINTS OF VIEW, not biases. The points of view are accepted. They are never right or wrong, just different. No argument, attempt to persuade one another is useful here and thus we do not need to compete to see who has the best eyes, the clearest vision. The process of discovery requires different points of view, different sets of images, and different perspectives about the being under examination in order for the collective to be able to discuss it’s possible internal dynamics. We first see how it moves, see how it conducts itself, mark its sense of movement, its sense of time and being, we connect its conduct to its own being and then we connect its movement to its desire, its sense of time to its longevity and its behavior to its condition and its history.”

When we do this, we come to see that the end result is a powerful story, a long lasting relationship and this fosters, beauty, hope, heart and song.

via transCanada.ca / Keynote Speakers and Other Participants.

This is a gorgeous inspiration for  the  power of collective harvesting.

To free the innocent

April 16, 2010 By Open Space

I’m sitting in a hotel ballroom in the basement of the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Atlanta with about 350 people who work for the exoneration of wrongfully convicted and imprisoned men and women all over the United States and in eight other countries besides.  We are at the annual gathering of the Innocence Network, a network of groups and projects that help free wrongfully imprisoned men and women,  Among the participants here are 86 men and women who have been exonerated for crimes they did not commit.  One of these people, James Bain served over 35 years in prison in Florida for a murder that he didn’t commit.  I am here with my colleague and friend Ashley Cooper working with another dear friend, Angela Amel.  Angela is a social worker with the Innocence Project in New York city and she invited me to work with a small core team of exonerees who helped design an Open Space track for exonerees this year.

Today we held a circle with about 50 people, just to hear who was in the room and what they did time for and where.  It was incredible to hear some of these stories and beyond to see what these men and women are doing now.  Not a single one of them has had an easy go of freedom and yet to a person they are doing what they can to free others who have been wrongfully imprisoned.  This ranges from running groups, and starting organizations to meeting exonerees at the prison gates and pressing $100 bills in their hands to get them started.  Unlike guilty convicts who are able to access a system of resources upon serving their time, exonerees are often assumed to be satisfied with freedom and justice itself.  But when you have spent 10, 15 , 20 or more years in prisons like Sing Sing, Utica and Angola, freedom is not an easy transition to make.  So to have 86 exonerees gathered here together is a precious moment, to connect and share stories, ask questions of each other and establish bonds of experience and support.  Tomorrow we will Open Space with them so they can create and be in the conversations that are most important for them to be in.

Last night we went out for dinner with a couple of amazing people.  Curtis McCarty served 22 years in prison in Oklahoma, 19 of them on death row for a murder he did not commit and Fernando Bermudez, who got out in November from Sing Sing where he was incarcerated for 18 and a half years. What strikes me about these two and the dozens of others I have met is that they are at the same time some of the happiest people I have ever met, and yet there is a deep core of sadness for both what was taken from them as well as what is being taken from others who are behind bars because of mistakes, lies and ignorance.  They are imbued with a core purpose that awakens the potential in others, that inspires and invites and draws others to their cause.  Curtis is a tireless advocate for social justice, a photgrapher and a death penalty abolition activist whose wife Amy is an ACLU lawyer.  The Innocence Network is growing and expanding around a fierce core to extract truth from power and restore freedom to people who are losing decades of their lives to some of the worst prisons in the world as a result of atrocious and tragic miscarriages of justice.

I was struck today how much the United States is tipping towards a culture of presumed guilt.  In receiving an award for an investigative series, two journalists from the Columbus Dispatch related the fact that the question they are most asked is “How do you know if someone is innocent?”  It is a question that forgets the foundation of justice in the United States and Canada: that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty.  It is a sign of the times that people are being forced to prove their innocence.  Every person in this room is working with every ounce of will to ensure that justice is upheld in this country.

I am amazed and humbled at their work, their commitment and their stories.