Connectivity

[Fr Brian S Bainbridge]

Dear Chris
I have been following with appropriate interest the discussion you have
been part of about trust and such matters.  Like a lot of such
discussions, it helps to sort out one's own thinking, as you well know.
And I thank you for that.
I would like to add to your thinking one other aspect which I see as
vital in keeping the life of a group together and continuing - whatver
the nature of the group.
The quality is - in direct terms - the ability to forgive.  It can be
dressed up in management terminology - quite rightly - as learning from
mistakes or correcting errors or finding one's way around a mountain (as
per Charles Handy) or tolerance or patience or......  But I have noticed
that when this quality is lacking, there is an immediate preponderance to
focus on the rights of the individual person against all others. And it's
not a quality that I have ever found in any management text of this
century.
Without it, we get ourselves into the bind of frantically examining the
past to see if what happened measures up the the criteria of the present
and then assessing "failure" as an absolute instead of a learning
experience.  Recidivism can and does happen, of course, but one has to
have the forgiveness quality in place before that matter can be even
considered, I reckon.
Companies, groups, organisations and even families which are successful
and lasting all manifest this ability to cope with failure by forgivcing
and learning, not by expulsion and judgement and subsequent collapse of
the relationships which have previously been so successful.
Open Space, as I see and use it, allows always for the "looking forward"
quality ensconced in the "Whatever happens is the only thing that could
have" rule, and so helps us and those we work with always to be moving
along, allowing for what has happened rather than being stopped or
destroyed or sabotaged by judgements about what has happened in yesterday
time.  I find healthy and alive organisations very good at doing this -
which is marvellous. They portray all the textbook characteristics of a
learning organisation - which, I think, has forgiveness as one of its
qualities or abilities as well as those mentioned in your discussions.
Of course, we all keep learning of the need for forgiving and being
forgiven by others in our personal lives, don't we.
And I hope you be at least forgiving for my raising this insight as part
of your thinking.
Cheers and blessings in yur work and living.  BRIAN.