outcomes and one-off OSTs and OSLIST

[Peter or Esther]

Dear Harrison and others,

Thanks for your message on stories, paradigms and myths.

Last evening we found ourselves at an Anne Murray concert in Asheville
North Carolina. We had not known that we were especially fans of hers,
we went because friends suggested it. It was a rare and enlightening
experience. WE SAW THE POWER OF MYTH IN ACTION!

The first part of the concert was a number of her and others songs. One,
"Could I Have This Dance" was sung by everyone there. Seventeen hundred
people in their 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's and up were holding hands and
swaying to the music. It was a shared mythic love experience! For a
brief time the terrorists were gone from our radar. We were all one!

The second part of the concert was her Christmas program. Anne sang many
Christmas songs and invited the audience to join her whenever they
wished. It became obvious that this was a mystical/mythological/shared
cultural evening. As a change agent I usually find myself opting out of
traditional acknowledgments of our past. I watched last evening as I
joined with the others in the audience to sing these Christmas songs
from our childhood.

All of a sudden I realized that as change agents we need to encourage
the creation of new, shared myths that touch ALL our souls like these
past songs do and did for some! Of course the Fundamentalists and the
Evangelists are upset when they think their deep mythos is going to be
taken away from them. And of course it would be as equally difficult for
a Christian taught society to enfold the religious/mythical music of
others as the opposite would also be true. I realized that a Muslim
would be probably bevvery uncomfortable singing a Christmas song that
they had no cultural past for.

So, if we want a new and different world, we need to change our myths
and find shared new myths. It is not as difficult as it seems. Those new
myths exist in the Cosmos. As Open Space facilitators all we need do is
to remind folks of the truth that myths and stories bring forth from the
depths of our souls.

Peace be with all of you in this special time in our unfolding earthly
presence. You may wish to turn your sound up and click on the following.

http://www.peacefulearth.com/html/peaceflash.html


With love and appreciation
Peter and Esther Fisher
Asheville, North Carolina.



Harrison Owen wrote:

>  Christ Wrote:
>
>
>
> I think we are in a time when our stories about who we are and where we
>
> have come from are changing and paradigms are coming to rub against each
>
> other in deep ways.  OST is a process predicated on the fact that all of
>
> us can have a hand in creating the new world.  It is nearly the very
>
> extreme example of that, in the world of organizational development.
>
> Other methods rely on facilitators or experts (sometimes called
>
> "management gurus" which isn't far from being gods) to come in and fix
>
> things, banish the bad and tinker with the good.  It's easy to see
>
> results when evil is banished.  That is a tangible step towards the
>
> "better world" demanded by cynics.  It's much harder to see tangible
>
> results from a process where the first step towards making a safe place
>
> for your babies is to smear the back of a turtle with mud.
>
>
>
> At any rate, I hope what I am saying makes sense.  We operate out of
>
> deeply held stories about creation and renewal.  Where we come into
>
> conflict with one another it feels dissonant but we can't put our finger
>
> on why.  I'm suggesting that some of the dissonance we feel from
>
> "results" people is at a fundamental level.  I mean, which story do you
>
> really resonate with?  You know my answer.
>
>
>
> Chris - you have certainly moved the discussion in what I would
> consider to be wonderful new territory. There is no question in my
> mind that we are - to a very large extent - the stories we tell. Not
> the trivial little tales that appear in the morning newspapers, but
> the deep stories that constitute our mythic consciousness.
>
>
> There used to be a day when the power of these deep stories was
> appreciated, but in recent times they are dismissed with the light
> thought that they are "just a story." And of course we all know that
> only the "facts" will do. And when it comes to myths, these are not
> only dismissed, but dissed. Worse than a story, myth now means lie and
> falsehood. How the world changes. And of course, for enlightened
> people such as ourselves, we have long since thrown off the bondage of
> myth. How sad. And we never really do - throw it off, that is. We
> simply develop new ones, and they of course, are understood to be The
> Truth, or better yet Scientific Truth. But it is still a story, now
> dressed up in different clothes. We call them "Theories" - but at the
> end of the day, these Theories are simply likely stories which help us
> interpret our world. So our essential nature hasn't changed - we are
> still story tellers whose life expectations are shaped by the stories
> we tell. Myth by any other name. What is different now is that the
> formative power of these tales is somehow out of our awareness. And
> when the stories are warped, distorted or partial - the world and our
> space in that world is distorted and shrunk. Of course, we could tell
> a different story. . .
>
>
>
> And I think that new story creation is a major part of what happens in
> Open Space. But it is not so much telling a story as being a story.
>
>
>
> I love where we are headed! Go for it!!!
>
>
>
> Harrison
>
>
>
>
>
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