Opening Space for Death and Life
The recent conversation about the use of Open Space at the time of death may have appeared odd or aberrant here on a LISTSERVE apparently devoted to the advancement of a meeting methodology known as open Space Technology. All of which goes to show that Open Space is only minimally about having better meetings, I think.
That meetings do go better in Open Space is a matter of record, now repeated thousands of times, but the essence of its impact has little to do with the fundamental brilliance of the methodology (smile), and everything to do with what I take to be the fact that in Open Space the basic realities of life (and death) are confronted, or may be confronted. At its best, Open Space is Truth Time, a moment in the life of any organization when things as they are, are faced as they are. In that moment of truthfulness, pretense vanishes and we can honestly get on with the business of living and dying.
Talk like this is not usual in organizational circles. Indeed it is not usual in many other circles as well. It is all very well to speak of life, but death is not supposed to be part of the conversation. At least polite conversation. And yet, as Gregory Bateson has remarked, every school boy knows quite well that what goes up will come down, what begins will end, and what lives will die. It is just the way things are. Perhaps if the ruler of the universe had consulted with us prior to the creation we would have been able to suggest a better way, but that was not to be.
It is often remarked by those who frequent Open Space (and even by those who have just dropped in) that the level of Spirit present is significant and sometimes overwhelming. Somehow the everyday turns into a marvelous tapestry of High Learning, High Play and Genuine Community. Even under the most unlikely circumstances. All true. But what may sometimes be overlooked is that the highs become high only in relation to the lows the light increases in intensity only in relation to the shadows.
The core of the Open Space experience to me is all about endings and beginnings. The significantly new and innovative only appears when the space is cleared and what was before is no longer. It is about life and death, and Bette Middler had it just right in The Rose. Those afraid of Dying will never learn to live. And the same might be said about that nemesis of Open Space, CONTROL. If you have to have it, and cant let it go The space will never open. The heights and the depths will not be reached.
No wonder Open Space is pretty hard on the Executive Mindset, at least the sort that perseveres in the notion that I am in charge... Really? And it is no less difficult for those consultants and organizational technicians who offer better ways to be in control. Unfortunately the promised nostrum of total control and perpetual life never quite seems to work out as advertised.
So here we are in Open Space with lots of life, and plenty of death as well. No wonder we find it necessary to learn a little bit about the Griefwork cycle in order to comprehend the sometimes mysterious happenings in Open Space. And on a good day we come to know that the value of life lies not in the little (or big) things we pick up along the way but in the journey itself. It is not the things that matter, but the process: life, death, and new life. At least that is what I think.
Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, MD 20854 USA phone 301-469-9269 fax 301-983-9314 Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org Personal website www.mindspring.com/~owenhh [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected] Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
