Paul wrote: I'm sorry if you assumed there would be a session on "muslims" at Halifax. Never was in my mind at all. I was surprised to see that it somehow arose > in yours. And I tend to agree with you that such a session would 'go > nowhere', as I witnessed one such between Jews and Palestinians at the > Practice of Peace here in Washington State a year or so ago. Excellent > points were made, ideas exchanged, lots of tension, correction, testy > exchanges, etc., but I doubt any minds were changed. No blows were > exchanged, either. And, as far as I can tell, which isn't far, nothing of > substance changed in the situation, either.
Paul, I have just left a meeting in which a small group of people is carefully gathering all the stories of how the world is different because of the Practice of Peace held in Washington State in November 2003. I was one of the convenors of that conference and I intend to convene more PoP conferences. A central reason why I intend to convene more of them is because the world is a different and better place because of the conversations that took place between Israeli Jews and one Palestinian Israeli. Beyond personal changes, each of these people have been involved in organization development work on the international scene that they never would have undertaken if they had not attended the Seattle PoP. Appreciative Inquiry has been taught in Ramallah and at the Israeli Education Ministry because of these conversations. Peggy Holman led an open space for 2,000 street kids in Bogota, Colombia because of conversations at this conference. The Radiant Net conference, which was held in India just before last year's OSonOS in Goa was birthed in a conversation at the Seattle PoP conference. Jobs have been created for youth in Burundi and, in turn, these youths build homes for people still homeless after the genocide in Burundi over ten years ago. Many American teenagers have service curriculum in their high schools now that directly connects them with teenagers in Burundi. Another group has created Global Citizen Journey, which is taking a group of delegates to Nigeria this fall to build a library in a town that has never had a library before. This library project is dazzling: the town in Nigeria were energized to use some of their almost nonexistent resources to hire an architect to build the library that Global Citizen Journey will both fund and build. Someone just donated 18 computers for this library . . . all because of conversations at the Seattle PoP. An open space was held in Nigeria (for the first time) right after the Seattle PoP. Real human warmth has been catalyzed all around the globe because people gathered to hold space for chaos, conflict and confusion. The only way out of our human slog is right through it, right through conversations that go no where. I know from the interviews that my group has conducted with the Israeli Jews and the Palestinian Israeli that each of them had transformative experiences at the conference that has led to changes in their perspective about the deep conflicts in Israel. After 18 months, each of these people have reported that they are different because of the conversations that you, Paul, seem to think led no where. Deep. lasting healing and deep lasting shifts in perspective came about because people got together and talked. Beyond the two Jews and the one Palestinian Israeli (please note that the Palestinian is also a native, Israeli citizen), many of the people who witnessed the conversations you dismiss as 'going nowhere' Paul have reported to us deep changes in their life because they witnessed the conversations. A therapist has reported that it has deeply changed the way she approaches her professional practice. Many participants report that they became politically active for the first time. Many others report that they have undertaken new projects in the world specifically because of the conference and the conversations between the Jewish and Palestinian Israelis. New organizations now exist in the world that were formed in direct and specific response to conversations that you, Paul, seem to believe went 'nowhere'. I know, Paul, that you qualified your dismissal of the value of the conversations you witnessed at the Seattle PoP but your dismissal disturbed me even with the qualifier. I am pretty certain that the only way through any of the endless conflicts we humans create is through dialogue. There are no perfect answers to the central human conundrum of why we create war and are not already peaceful but I am certain we need to go on having conversations, especially the difficult conversations that seem to go nowhere. I agree with you, Paul, when you point out that each person is at different states of consciousness (spiral dynamics!) and one person's perceptions of what is real in a given moment is different than the next person's perception of what they think is the exact same moment. And in the next moment, everything changes again. Life is a great big game of musical chairs, I guess. Things change all the time. oops. . . they just changed again while I was breathing. I woke up yesterday and told myself that I was really sick of the whole world. I told myself it was okay to give in to despair and to just focus on my own little itty bitty insignificant life. Why bother when there is so much to be done?! Why should I engage in one more conversation that might, indeed, 'go nowhere'? Because the next conversation, or, maybe, the one after that might go somewhere. Embracing chaos, conflict and confusion is the way. At least for me. * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist