Thank you for your lengthy and well written note regarding a subject that I agree is important. I applaud you for your courage to speak up about situations that I think of as creating conditions where people feel unsafe. We are never sure what is up for the people in the room, what hurts and pains they are carrying, or what causes people to have to make a choice to leave a group (when they really don't want to leave) due to something that feels unsafe. We are all differently abled, each of us as humans carrying different dis-abilities. I am an advocate of stating the givens for the meeting both in the invitation and at the beginning of the meeting, so that participants can make an informed choice of what they are consenting to attending.
I also believe that we as facilitators of OST meetings have a rare privilege of working with a powerful methodology, AND that we have a unique responsibility because we understand its power from having worked with it. Although we can assume that people have the wisdom to use the "Law of Mobility", there are specific times when that is more awkward. One of those is for morning and evening news, and the other is for the closing circle. In those times, the person who wants to leave what is going on in the moment, does not want to miss out on the rest of what might be offered. I have had a number of seasoned OST facilitators in our workshops raise the question of "does the law of mobility really apply here" and "what is the price to the person". I encourage each facilitator to determine for him or herself what to say at the start of these times to address this. I remember some years ago leading a weekend long OST meeting for a spiritual community. One person was furious that we were using OST rather than the process he had suggested. He was a large man with a large presence. Most gathered were women. On day 1 at the end of evening news, he wanted to lead in prayer. He had asked me if he could do this and I simply said that evening news was for anyone to do what they felt moved to do. While he was leading in the prayer, something started to feel really wrong. I couldn't put my finger on it but felt that as the facilitator, I had made a mess somehow. On day 2, the same thing happened but this time he waited until I had closed the evening news and then he stood and announced the prayer. The prayer included the holding of hands, dance, and him doing the verbal part and instructions. It lasted 1 1/2 hours. Others on this list were present with me during that OST meeting including Sheila Isakson and Virginia Burt. We gathered in my room to sort out what was going wrong and what to do. We concluded that this man was a "space invader" using prayer to exert control of the group and although the group was deeply upset none of them voiced it in the meeting itself. Most of the chatter took place in private rooms with many of the members feeling unsafe and knowing they were unwilling to address it. It was just too big for them. On the morning of day 3, the man came to me and said he had a prayer for the closing. I replied "I am sure you do". I also advised him that it was not appropriate to do the prayer in the closing circle because it did not allow for people to have choice of whether they wanted to participate or not. He started to challenge me as though I was against prayer, which I am not. I stopped him short and said that he was most welcome to do the prayer when they all gathered together again after lunch following the OST meeting. He looked me in the eye and he said "you and I both know it will not have the same effect if I wait". I looked him in the eye and said "I know". We had a great closing circle WITHOUT his prayer. In our workshops, I use this as a case example story to ask participants what they would do with a space invader like this. And the conclusions of almost all who are involved in these discussions has been that the facilitator should do just what you have said which is to gently acknowledge that people take care about hugging, touching, prayer and so on. I think I remember Harrison recently posting something about music which was that what was music to someone might not be for another and so he suggested not using it for the meeting. I think the same applies here except that instead of the facilitator not using something, it is about the facilitator wisely knowing what could occur for those times when people are not sure about the "law of mobility" applying and to provide some wisdom from wisdom files gleaned from knowing the power of OST. Thank you for this conversation, Blessings, Birgitt -----Original Message----- From: OSLIST [mailto:osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu]On Behalf Of Therese Fitzpatrick Sent: Saturday, April 05, 2003 5:05 PM To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Subject: Re: OS for people with disabilities/long Thank you Brigitt for mentioning the issue of touch. I like to hear any facilitator affirmatively mention that touching is not required. Mention it in passing, do not make it a major point. Just get the message to anyone who needs to hear it. I participate in a monthly experiment in community building at the Whidbey Institute. The sessions started out being a basic open space. By the third month, a minister had stepped forward to do invocations and prayers. The community was not asked if they wanted a minister doing opening prayers: it was imposed. She did a "marketplace" offering but it became the closing circle. The law of two feet did not really apply because people had to do what she asked because she had co-opted the closing circle. I am an open minded gal. I can take a prayer or two outside my own spiritual path. But you start to lose me when you force anything on me. It really bugged me that someone had used the marketplace to 'steal' the closing circle. But that wasn't the worst of it. She had designed this process that involved forming many different smaller circles, linking with circles, linking with more circles and then bring us into one whole closing circle. She asked each person to hug everyone in each circle. I had to drop out after the first small circle. I can usually hold anyone's hand (altho sometimes it physically hurts to hold a hand for more than a few seconds) but I cannot hug twenty people I don't know unless I am in just the right place. I might not be in the right emotional place from a history of abuse. I might not be in the right physical place because all my joints are aching with arthritis. Sometimes it physically hurts to hug. My hands and arms might not be screaming with arthritic pain but sometimes a hug hurts my knees or a hip. I, basically, was not allowed to participate in the closing circle. It didn't feel very nice, standing on the sidelines, watching the process. Many times people made gestures to include me which reinforced my sense of exclusion. Having to remove myself from a process because of physical contact is a part of my life. It is quite commonplace for facilitators to ask participants to touch each other without giving permission to not touch. I am used to it. Afterwards, I went up to this minister, waited a long time for my turn to speak to her and I asked her if she would like my feedback on her design, She said she would like to hear my feedback but after I gave it I was pretty sure she did not, in fact, want to hear anything but positive feedback in the form of compliments. I followed the rules of feedback. I spoke about my experience. I told her that arthritis made it difficult for me to do the closing ceremony. I told her that a history of abuse is another reason some people have a hard time doing a lot of touching of strangers. I told her I had felt left out. I am pretty sure she didn't "GET IT" and it is probably why I didn't feel like going to the community gathering last month. There is one of these community gatherings tomorrow. I am thinking of going, I want to be part of a fine, ongoing experiment. But I am having some resistance because of that touchy hug ceremony. If that minister had thanked me for the feedback, if I had felt 'heard' when I reached out to touch her with my words, I'd feel completely accepted. As it is, I do not feel that my different abilities have been embraced by this particular ostensibly open space circle. I am glad if you are still reading this because I need to point out that I have not shared this story just to talk about myself. I am using my experience as a real life example of how easy it is to disengage people with different abilities. It is so easy to lose people. And a corrective measure can be simple. If I were to redesign that co-opted closing circle, I would think about having people bow to each other and that as they bowed, let the bow become a way of embracing and honoring the other person. Inner connections are, for me, much stronger than physical ones. A bow would do it for me. Since I have written this much, I will add a thought about hugs in general. People that like to do a lot of hugging are going to do it, usually as soon as the closing circle is finished. People that like to do a lot of hugging do not need to be given permission to do it. They seem to need no encouragement. It seems simple enough to leave the hugs to the people who want them and thus avoid excluding the differently abled. FYI, it always hurts me to link arms. I wish it didn't but it does. Thank you also, Brigitt, for using the phrase differently abled. I had slipped into 'disabled' because it was being used on the list serv. _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.459 / Virus Database: 258 - Release Date: 2/25/2003 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.459 / Virus Database: 258 - Release Date: 2/25/2003 * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
