Dear Chris Viv McWaters and I opened space for a considerable and important group of New Zealand Facilitators some years back. It was, as always, a very interesting event. It confirmed for me that working with facilitators is one of the more delicate dimensions to work in. As expected, there was much patch-defending, much applying-my-model-to-everything, and a fair bit of serious hesitance about trusting the Open Space process. BUT, there was a wonderful response from a number of Maori participants. They very quietly talked with Viv about the Open Space process and - as you have found - identified with it as something that "belongs in our world utterly", saying that we (Viv and I) had given back to them what was really theirs anyway. They were also at pains to have us promise "not to tell any of the pakeha that they thought this" because they feared (rightly or wrongly) they would not then be tolerated if "they" knew such opinions were being aired. That, in itself, was a huge message to us who opened the space and worked with with two other NZ facilitators on the program. It is a message that has stayed with me ever since - the need to really be open and, as HHO says, live open. In all our trainings here that I have anything to do with, that message - "living open space" - is what I have tried to share as much as possible. It makes sense to me and I'm glad to see that a number of Open Space-ers here are following that along, too. We'll talk about that more when you come to our land, of course. Cheers and blessings, BRIAN
-- Fr Brian S. Bainbridge 0412 111 525 * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
