Only "so long" (Long)

[Harrison Owen]

Only "so long"  (Long)Bon Voyage -- and you know there are a whole mess of folks out there who will welcome you. And Thank God - no more nasty limericks for the moment!

ho
 
Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Dr.
Potomac, MD  20854
USA
301-365-2093
207-763-3261 (summer)
website www.openspaceworld.com


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Ralph Copleman 
  To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU 
  Sent: Monday, May 30, 2005 9:37 AM
  Subject: Only "so long" (Long)


  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), I'll have some.

  Ralph Copleman

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