Open Space and Dialogue

[Christopher Kloth]

Chris, and others...

Your question appeared on my screen at a good time for me.
It is the first time in a long time I have had enough of a
break in the action to both read, reflect and respond.

My short version answer to your question, as someone who
attempt to implicitly build Bohm's wisdom into all of my
work (which includes, but is not limited to, Open Space), is
that much of what Bohm has to teach us is already reflected
in Open Space.  Harrison, Birgitt, Peggy and Ralph have
heard me suggest in f2f conversations at OSONOS of years
past, I believe Bohm's understanding of "implicate order"
and "wholeness" (which were derived from his work in
theoretical physics... quantum, chaos, etc.) help explain
(for those who need or desire explanations...like me) Open
Space works.

Therefore, my suggestion is that your learn the deeper
meaning of Bohm's work before you try to "structure" it into
an Open Space session.  You may find that during the
invocation of an Open Space session that your remarks begin
to reflect some of the practical principles of Dialogue
without doing "training" about dialogue.

That said, if you are doing work in settings other than Open
Space, I would suggest that, in addition to Bohm's own "On
Dialogue" there are three good sources that, taken together,
provide three practical interpretations of Bohm's work: "The
Fifth Discipline Fieldbook" (edited by people in Senge's
sphere, "On Dialogue" (by two friends: Glenna Gerrard and
Linda Ellinor) and a brand new one "Sustained Dialogue" (by
Harold Saunders, who I am learning with on a project at the
Kettering Foundation).

I would love to know what others think about Bohm's work.

Shalom Aleichem

Chris Kloth
Chris Corrigan wrote:
>
> Has anyone done any work with integrating Open Space with David Bohm
> thoughts on Dialogue?
>
> I'm referring specifically to the idea contained here:
>
> http://www.muc.de/~heuvel/dialogue/dialogue_proposal.html
>
> I'm thinking of finding a way to integrate Dialogue into an Open Space
> I'm doing in January, and would be interested if others had any
> experience here.
>
> Happy holidays,
>
> Chris
>
> --
> CHRIS CORRIGAN
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