The first time I "Opened Space" we had two "endings." The first was in the room, and the second was at the restaurant that night. We were staying at the Ritz Carlton in Maui, and had one last night together after the program ended.
The "first" closing touched me deeply. I had been preparing for this meeting for a couple of months (including a quick trip to Toronto to have an intimate little Training with Birgitt and two others). I had just been put in charge of running meetings within our company, and this was the "biggest" meeting I had done, with the CEO, President and others from the five different countries we do business in. In some ways, I had wagered my future on Open Space working (much because of the postings I had read on this list serve) and had never really been through an OS event. The group had started with much conflict and tension, and the faces that greeted me on the first day were skeptical, and weary...weather torn comes to mind, though they all work in doors. The final day there was a lightness to the group, and in particular to a couple of the people that had impressed me as "complainers" at first. The CEO had been diagnosed with Cancer about a year and a half prior to this meeting and is following a Macrobiotic diet to reduce the cancer rather than have surgery. As our closing circle merged to a small standing circle of people holding and supporting eachother (we don't use words like "group hug" in our company) the CEO said, "I have grown to realize that every day I have on this earth is a gift, and today seeing you all working together in harmony has made today one of the greatest of my life." Then the "second" closing happened that night. We had the entire restaurant to ourselves, and ended up staying past closing (the Ritz just put a guy in the corner to watch us and make sure we didn't break anything, and closed the place down). We ended up making a circle, randomly grabbed two other people's hand, and made a human pretzel. The goal was to "un-pretzel" ourselves without letting go. After about 15 minutes that staff from the Ritz came over and started to give us suggestions. In the end we had to "cheat" a couple of times and ended up in a circle of hand holding, giggling, smirking adults. As we left, we thought, "Should we give this guy a tip?" Instead, we sang the "Thank You Song" from our children's product. It litterally brought a tear to the guy's eye. Now when I do programs with people that work in our children's division, we often close with the Thank You song, with them inserting people's names as they look at their eyes... For those that are interested, here are the lyrics:::: "T-H-A-N-K-Y-O-U Are the letters that spell Thank You T-H-A-N-K-Y-O-U Spell the magic word that I sing to you Thank you mother (replaced with someone's name from the group) Thank you father Thank you mother Thank you very much. Thank you mother Thank you father Thank you mother Thank you very much." With respect from Afar, Jimbo
