Hello Lisa,
Wonderful to read again your inspiring thoughts and reflections. Thank you!
I send you a big lovely hug!!
Agustín
On Friday, June 12, 2020, 03:43:56 PM GMT-5, Lisa Heft via OSList
<oslist@lists.openspacetech.org> wrote:
Hello, OSLIST friends -
I have not written anything here since 2016 - although I am still sitting in
the circle and listening in. Some of you are dear friends from across the years
(note my new email, by the way). A few of you have mentioned that it might be
nice if I wrote to the list about how I am doing.
This message is long, because a) I have not visited in awhile, b) I am having a
conversation with you here in my head over time, and c) in Open Space, even a
group of 1 can have a rich conversation for an entire session or longer - and
can then share their documentation of that exploration back to the rest of the
group in their Book of Proceedings. Of course you have a choice to read it or
delete it.
Those of you who know me extra-well know that - since you have known me - I
have while working as a facilitator and educator also been very involved in the
care of elderly parents. What just a few of you know is that I have also been
living with a health condition called ME/CFS. That condition has progressed. I
am fortunate that I am still able to care for myself, although here is one way
to describe this particular invisible-to-others disability: I have to rest
in-between putting on my right shoe and my left shoe. But I can still put on my
shoes ;o) (and hey, who needs shoes in COVID quarantine??) To understand
the impact of this health issue (for people who have it much much worse than I
do), perhaps your country offers access to a sobering yet beautiful documentary
called Unrest. A few years ago I realized that true, radical wellness meant
that I must release even those things I love (love love love facilitation and
teaching about facilitation - love it). I did not feel sad releasing my client
work - I felt lighter. I still grieve not being able to teach and facilitate,
and in so many diverse settings, countries and cultures. But I knew immediately
that it was the right thing to do. Last year my amazing father died, this year
my amazing mother-in-law died, and after two decades of parental care, now my
wife and I have more time and energy to care for our selves.
Interestingly, I never thought of myself as disabled until recent years,
because I simply lived my life. However, since my parents raised me in a
richly-diverse world, I have always had a passion for seeing / imagining /
designing with a priority of and focus on access and inclusion. So here I am in
an embodied experience exploring things I always imagined might be someone
else's experience. Fascinating.
I write this next part simply to share my background, with those of you who
have not yet met me: I have facilitated for 40-something years. My interest
area is dialogic methods that scale up (only one facilitator needed for a group
of 5 or 3000+), that work across country and culture (without requiring
participants to learn someone else’s vocabulary; without working through the
facilitators’s own cultural filter), and in which participants frame their own
experience (rather than the facilitator doing so). When I say 'dialogic', I
mean those processes which engage participants in internal and external
dialogue (conversation with self, conversation with others). And when I say
conversation, I do not mean everyone has to speak aloud. Witnessing - fully
listening - is participation just as much as speaking. I use existing and
custom-designed processes which engage participants in silent reflection,
kinesthetic and graphic thinking, improv, role play, poetry creation, movement,
and (no surprise!) such methods as Open Space, World Cafe and Focused
Conversation Method. Here is another way of showing who I am (there are so very
many different ways of seeing / naming / showing one's self).
And now I write this part to share what I feel so proud of - and because
writing this shows me back to myself, with you as witness to my "prouds". I
have much more life to live, but this is also a point of my life where I am
reflecting a bit. I am so proud of having been able to learn so much from and
with so many of you. I am amazed (but not surprised) about how Open Space (I
will call it OS) works. I have used it in over 20 countries, and within those
countries with participants of many mixes of cultures and countries of origin.
I have used it when only one person showed up, and with groups of 3500. I have
seen groups use it to figure out how to spend a billion dollars of funding over
the next several years, in a way that was different than they did before, to
bring positive impacts to programs, outcomes and communities. Survivors of
foster care or violence or disaster articulating their unique and collective
experience, grief and loss, and resilience. Communities impacted by
institutionalization, marginalization, corruption, exclusion or resource
elimination changing laws, changing narratives, changing other peoples' minds.
People in some countries (mine included) noticing how participating in OS has
given them their first experience of true democracy. I have learned from
exploring and experimenting with participant-centered documentation design,
with ways of helping groups think about, understand or respond to the huge
amounts of data generated at an OS (new thinking, new relationships, potential
projects or next steps, previously-unseen patterns), from sharing differences
in how I or others explain the principles and law, when to call it OS and when
it has been changed to become something slightly different, what-to-do-when's
(or what not to do), what-ifs, what is helpful and what is too "helpy", and
what can negatively impact or support the outcomes and human dynamics possible
with full-form OS. I am proud of learning together with so many of you as we
"unpack" OS - the doing of it, but also the tasks and actions from pre-work to
after the event. Exploring what is true, diversity-welcoming invitation
(resource generation, seen and unseen actions, pre-work, registration design,
site design, and ways of seeing / listening / naming / honoring / celebrating /
embodying). I am proud of how my passion for documenting dialogue - both
documentation design and also participants' own hard work - has given thousands
of participants back their own amazing words and shown back to them their own
system, answers, resources, nutrient-rich unanswered questions, voices and
discoveries - and helped them integrate their experiences after (a big rest
and) their dialogic events. I have learned so much about what is action, when
to separate an event from post-event decision-making, and when the dialogue
itself *is* the action. *Is* the change. And how change does not have to be
seen by a facilitator to exist and to have an impact, in ways that many
participants have told me about long after their events. Proud of being able to
access such rich learning from some big mistakes or errors in understanding.
And I am informed by the principles and law and trusting the people and the
process being also ways of living life.
(No, I might not answer your questions about any of these things above for your
own learning / comparing / contrasting to. Because I am way too @$#@#&!%-ing
fatigued. Writing this email has taken me quite a lot of energy and many months
to create. But if you have questions or wonderings, agreements, disagreements
with or diverse experiences about any of the above, I invite you to give the
gift of your exploration to this big circle here by wondering out loud: Post to
this list and explore together.)
I am proud of having helped raise and share resources, traditions,
understanding, and access and inclusion for so many people from so many
countries and cultures - people of so many seen and unseen diversities - who
have sought to join our in-person tribal gatherings around the world. Proud of
being and helping Poets Laureate. Proud of helping and mentoring those who
courageously asked for help or ideas or ways of stepping in or speaking up or
being seen. Delighted at repeating explorations of (for example) conversations
in silence or in graphics or in movement - again and again across the years -
to see what we think might hold true - or not - about some or all individuals
or cultures around the world. Proud of finally making it to an okay level of
ability in Spanish to be able to teach and laugh and explore in such a rich
language and collection of cultures. Proud of engaging in conversation with so
many of you on this list - those who speak, and also those who witness without
speaking - about things with which we may or may not agree, do or not do the
same, understand or do not understand in the same ways. Proud of our (and
participants in my conferences, client work and workshops) collective
exploration to struggle to articulate the complex, the unexplainable, the
unnameable, and the unknowable, in our simple human languages.
I have conversations with so many of you, dear friends in my head - with each
of us sipping a beverage-of-choice and looking out into the garden and talking
about life. Or not talking, just sitting in rich nutritious silence together.
And I love both those conversations and that shared silence.
For anyone worried (as we sometimes do when hearing about another's health
issue), do not worry: Although I do not feel pleasant and sometimes feel worse,
I am living a sweet life. I am very lucky, I love silence and have a quiet
sweet home to live in, a very supportive wife, nobody else's rhythm or
expectations to fit myself into, and some little creative
projects-without-deadlines. For example I am sewing my first-ever quilt
(blanket with patched-together fabrics and softness in-between), which began
with fabric from my father's softest shirts. I am watching some incredible
animals - including huge Bald Eagles in their nest and a great view. (Bald
Eagles are huge - 1 meter / 6 feet long even before they spread their wings,
and when any of the eggs make it to hatching, they have cute babies. Nocturnal
animals such as flying squirrels and great horned owls visit the nest when the
eagles are away, eagle couples sing and love each other up, and chat moderators
share their vast knowledge for rich learning. And you can move the timeline
back to enjoy the sunrise or sunset in your own time, complete with the sound
of the stream below.) Molly makes me cocktails ;o) And I simply sit, in
silence, doing nothing, for long periods of time. I often think about writing
about this work that we do - so many stories and understandings and learnings
and still-unexploreds to share. But I do not hold that tightly as it is not
something my energy can include at this time. Who knows / be prepared to be
surprised / whatever happens and all that.
I read emails but may never reply - it is often more than I can do. You who
love me know that I feel your love all the time. You also know that I feel
loved even by people I have not yet met - people I will never know. That is how
I am built. I feel lucky to have love and self-love, intuition, peace and
imagination as my navigational system. I am a big spirit in a weak body,
however / and I am doing very well. And because I am so amazing simply living
my life with such a big challenge - and because I have been given the gifts of
appreciation and being fully in the now - I have given myself a superhero name:
STREAK (for those of you who do not have English as your home language, the
meaning for this word I refer to is like a fast flash of movement). STRength in
the face of wEAKness. (I wonder, dear reader, what would be the superhero name
you would give *your* self?)
A big abrazo / abraço / (air)hug to you, my friends. I am not going anywhere,
and yet I am everywhere, and I feel seen and sometimes unseen, and I feel
engaged and sometimes disengaged. I am prepared to be surprised and not
attached to outcome, and whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
Take very good care of yourselves, and each other. I now move back to my seat
(or to standing behind my seat and swaying, as many of you have seen me do), as
a witness in this big circle, Lisa
As I will be transitioning email addresses, thank you for sending emails now to
lisah...@gmail.com and removing openingspace.net from your contacts.
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