Craig

[Craig Gilliam]

Harrison:

I meant to tell you an experience that was sombering for me.  The other day,
I was speaking with a group of professional clergy about donig OS.  I
mentioned the Law of Two Feet.  One minister's eyes became large and he/she
said, "We do not want our people to learn this one.  If they did, what would
it mean for Sunday morning homilies?  Would anybody be left insdie." I
sensed in the air that this was an existential moment for the group.  There
was a deep gasp in the room as if something was deeply threatened, and I
guess it was.  In the collective psyche, I felt the earth shook.

This stuff is quiet frightening to a culture that is permeated with control.
  And we often describe control in words like order, organizing.  As we
talked about the process, someone else mentioned, "You can't be this open.
After all, even the river has to have banks to keep the water in."  In the
conversation and metaphor was the pervasive issue of fear of lossing
control.   We haven't learned, it seems to me, that we never can keep the
river in with all of our levee systems, etc.  It will find its way to where
it needs to go.  And even if we could keep it in, and New Orleans struggles
with this issue regularly, what destruction does that create to the land
around it?

Control, in my experience, is so pervasive in our culture and many of our
institutions.  In some institutions, it seems to have been there for
thousands of years, so their is a lot of multigenerational
energy/reinforcement attached to it.  Still, I came back to open questions
about possibilities.  Of course, in that conversation, I had to be aware of
the parallel process going on within myself that maybe they were mirroring.

I am open to any thoughts or reflections?

Thanks!
Craig

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