Only "so long" (Long)

[Ralph Copleman]

Hi,

In about two weeks, I'll be heading off for a summer-long trip that will
essentially keep me off the internet.  In an effort to prevent out-of-office
e-mail inbox build-up, I will soon unsubscribe to all listserves, including
this one, and I'll re-subscribe in September.

I've been following the thread here about what people learn from "doing"
open space and a related one one about "process" and its relationships to
self-organization, control, and power-seeking.

And it struck me as I reviewed several of these messages this morning that
what I have gained most from open space events (as facilitator and
participant) is a deep sense of the wonderfully squishy, bounded/unbounded,
unfolding nature of community and the rich, easy way OS both creates and
supports it.  How often do you find something that is simultaneously about
both the purpose and the process of community?!

How, I realize, I crave being near community ­ and in it.  And how I adore
any opportunity to serve it, from time to time, as a consultant, and how I
miss it when I cannot sense it.  Communities of many kinds spring up all the
time and just as often sort of melt away when their object is supplanted in
hearts and minds by other pursuits - or other communities.  This is okay,
another lesson from open space and the practice of peace.

Nothing is forever, with the possible exception of self-organizing
evolution, so it is heartening to know some communities endure and grow.
For example, this one.  I harbor hope that the urge toward community (and
concomitant understanding, tolerance, peace, and justice) is a permanent
human trait.  I hold this hope in a very close embrace and wrap myself in it
nearly every day.  I think it is the chief motivating force in my life as a
consultant, as a member of a family, and in my efforts as a sustainability
advocate.

My summer will be taken up with a bicycle trip from the Pacific ocean in
Oregon (USA), across the continent to the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the
Delaware Bay ­ 5000 kilometers or more.  In the planning stages for nearly
two years, this is my 60th birthday present to myself.  On some level,
though, I think my trip will be about a search for community in America,
this troubled, deeply divided, seductive Gargantua of a country I love, and
which has broken my heart so often of late.  I will pass through mountains,
over plains, along dramatic rivers (North America has SO much beauty),
across Native American lands, through large cities, and more.  Others who
have taken similar trips have said the best part of their ride has been
meeting people in small towns all across the continent.  I'm looking forward
to conversations about this urge we humans have to be with one another in
community.  With a bit of luck (and, one way or another, the emergence of a
little open space), I¹ll have some.

Ralph Copleman



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