Connectivity

[Virginia]

Brian
Your insight into organization of all types including family are right on.
My experiences in OS and in life both reinforce "whatever happens...." and
the forgiveness and learning instead of navel gazing and judgement! Carolyn
Myss's work where she integrates the Jewish tree of life and the chakra
system speaks well to this. She equates the fifth or throat chakra with
"will" (vedic - sp?) and the equivalent is mercy and judgement at the same
level in the Tree of life.  I think your discussion on forgiveness is both
related to the right use of your will (to stay in the ditch, judging and
wallowing to death or to use one's will to stand up and learn to see better
so it doesn't have to be quite so painful the next time) to the aspect of
mercy as we look to the past and forgive, learn and move on (letting go!).
Thank you again for the reminder and kick start.
Virginia

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> From: Fr Brian S Bainbridge <briansb at MIRA.NET>
> To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.IDBSU.EDU
> Subject: Connectivity
> Date: Saturday, June 20, 1998 1:18 PM
>
> 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.

>From  Sun Jun 21 14:53:35 1998
Message-Id: <SUN.21.JUN.1998.145335.0100.>
Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 14:53:35 +0100
Reply-To: kloth at tmn.com
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.IDBSU.EDU>
From: Chris Kloth <kloth at tmn.com>
Organization: ChangeWorks
Subject: [Fwd: Connectivity]
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Chris Kloth wrote:

> Brian, thank you, I strongly agree with you on forgiveness.  I have been
> actually trying to be more explicit in linking the word to "learning
> from mistakes" to put a little more heart in the interaction. Shalom,
> Chris