Advanced Butterfly Behavior

Wed Aug 16 07:01:56 PDT 2006

Yes, Justin, we did meet in the Precautionary Principle session.  One of the
leaders of that session, Marc, was my butterfly buddy.  I went to that
session because I love Marc and Kenoli.  It was the only session I sat all
the way through and I only did it for love, not learning.

I heard many people say that their favorite part of the NCDD conference was
the truncated OS.  And I heard many folks express a desire that next year's
conference will be in OS. . .

LIke Peggy, I participated for several years in Spirited Work (I was active
for three years, Peggy for much longer).  For those on the list that don't
know about SW, SW was (and is. . . we aren't meeting regularly but we are
still a community) an ongoing, open space community.  We met for 3-day
weekends, four times a year, aligned with the seasons.  In open space.  We
learned quite a lot about being in open space in an ongoing way.  Many on
this list, of course, "live" in open space -- not just Spirited Work
community members.  But I have come to believe that the most prescious gift
from SW was the repetition of being in deep, open space with other people
who were deeply accustomed to being in open space together.  Truly, I carry
myself in the world as a butterfly in an ongoing way because of my
experience at SW, the repeated living in open space.

One of my favorite lessons from SW was that I learned more deeply what it is
to be a butterfly.  I am not sure if I am being responsive to Peggy's
comments or question. . . and I think what I am about to write may be a bit
inconsistent with what I wrote yesterday (in my open space, I have
permission to be inconsistent!). . .

I don't think there are any right or wrong ways to be in open space.  Since
I deeply believe that I live in open space, this means, I think, that there
are no right or wrong ways to live.  If I want to have a one-on-one
conversation, at an open space event or in my life, I am always free to pull
my friend to the side and say "let's talk".  If I get an idea that it might
be fun to chat with three friends, I like to believe I am always fully free
to do so.  Whenever I am around other people, I am steadily taking note of
where I might find my conversation nooks, where can I pull my buddy aside
for a private one-on-one.  What matters, for me, is the spirit in which I
move from flower to flower, person to person, group to group.  If I am
feeling free, open and loving, then as I flutter from flower to flower, I
am, always, in my right space.  Further, I dare to believe that the more I
am in MY right space, the more I seed "right space" energy into the
atmosphere.  The more I am in MY right space, the more condusive the rest of
the space is for others to be fully free themselves.

So.  What does this have to do with private sessions at an OS event?  I
believe it is perfectly fine for someone, at an OS event or in the rest of
life (which is OS:  all roads lead to OS) to have as many private
conversations as they wish.  Since I spend almost all my time having only
those conversations I wish to have, with only those people I wish to speak
to (being steadily open to the other butterflies that might land on my
flower), who am I to say someone else should not honor their impulse to hold
a private meeting/session at an OS event.

What matters, I think, is the spirit in which the private meeting/session is
born.  If someone has an impulse to have a private session on cultural
maturance, they are free to do so.

My comments yesterday were written more from the perspective of being a
space holder, rather than a being living in OS.  Because I realize, having
thought about this overnight, that the thing I love most about being in OS
is the invitation I assume:  I assume I am welcome at anything that might
unfold.  This is the single thing I most love about OS:  that I can dare to
assume that I am welcome wherever I might wish to land.  This has given me
so much peace, helped me to love myself in new ways.  I am crying as I sit
here and write:  it has meant so much to me to be one of the right people,
to be always in my right place.  I am growing more and more skillful at
being able to discern where I am supposed to be, who I am supposed to talk
to, what I am supposed to do:  and I attribute this learning to my time in
deep open space in the Spirited Work community (also, beyond SW, for, as I
have now repeated many times, I live in OS steadily).

So.  Here is the dissonance I am sitting with:  I love the open embrace of
OS.  I believe learning to live in this open embrace has transformed me.  I
wish for all human beings to feel as open, warm and loving as I feel this
morning.

And then I harken back to how I felt when a private session was held at a
3.5 day OS event three years ago (this is one of the examples Peggy
referenced):  I was deeply hurt to have been excluded.  I had lived with the
woman who convened that private session for the several days of the event.
I was one of the conference organizers.  I thought she had grown to love
me:  but she did not invite me to her private session.  My hurt was also
rooted in what was, for me, a rude awakening:  I thought I was in the room
with many open space masters, I thought I could deeply trust that the space
was truly open.  I cannot stress how important the invitation in open space
means to me personally.

And then I harken back to the cultural maturance session held at the May
salon:  I was hurt, not so much because I was not included, but because I
was deeply holding space this time around and I swear I felt the space
contract as it happened.  The guy convening the cultural maturance had every
right to have a private, butterfly session:  absolutely, positively.  But I
am a great spaceholder:  what he did contracted the space.  Having said
this, I can still say he had every right to do it.  We are all works in
progress.  We all get to be who we are.

I have no conclusions.  Except that I wish everyone could spend lots of time
in consciously open space communities, deepening their awareness of what it
means to live in open space.  We need everyone to be trusting themselves,
hearing their inner whispers, showing up at the right place, being one of
the right people.

On 8/15/06, Justin T. Sampson <justin at krasama.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/15/06, Tree Fitzpatrick <therese.fitzpatrick at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I recently attended the National Conference on Dialogue and
> > Deliberation. Today, in my mailbox, I was invited to give
> > feedback about the conference. To my puzzlement, I learned, in
> > the survey questions, that many people reported that this
> > conference, NCDD, was the best conference they had ever been to.
>
> It was my happiest four days in a long time -- but then I haven't
> been to many other conferences!
>
> > For me, it was a draining challenge to endure it: many wonderful
> > people (some of our own dear oslisters like Peggy and Lisa
> > Heft!) offered excellent breakout sessions. The plenary sessions
> > were thoughtfully and skillfully designed and, for the most
> > part, well-executed. The organizers wove art and beauty into our
> > days together. But I could not bring myself to go to any
> > sessions. And when I did force myself to stumble into one or
> > two,
>
> Glad you did! I met you in one. :)
>
> (I think it was the one about the Precautionary Principle. If I
> remember correctly, you started alone at a table and invited me to
> join you.)
>
> > I felt bullied and bruised, although certainly no one was
> > bullying me. Certainly, I was free in every single moment of my
> > experience of this NCDD event to be a butterfly and, most
> > definitely, I knew this.
>
> I didn't feel bullied and bruised, but I did also find them a bit
> draining/constraining. All the workshops I went to were in a
> presentation/classroom kind of structure, with lots of interesting
> information about methods of dialogue, but not much dialogue
> itself, at least not that I was able to jump into. (Sorry Peggy,
> yours too! But the imagery of evolutionary expansion and
> contraction did stick with me and I used it again and again later
> in the conference!) I'm pretty quiet anyway, so I need a lot of
> safety to get my words going, and a presentation format doesn't do
> that for me.
>
> I was pretty drained leading into the "methods showcase" (five
> 15-minutes sessions in rapid succession) and frantically trying to
> figure out which ones to go to, when out of shear luck the first
> one I chose was EXACTLY what I needed at the end of that day, so I
> stayed with it for all 5 sessions! I suppose that counts as a kind
> of butterfly behavior. :) It was the National Playback Theatre,
> which drew me into a completely different mode of connection and
> helped me express with just a few words all my feelings about the
> day, and to experience all the variations of feelings that others
> were having.
>
> > [...]
> >
> > Finally, after what seemed like an eternity to me, on the
> > afternoon of the second day, there was a ninety minute OS. All
> > day on that second day, I could feel the fresh air rising. By
> > the time it finally came to open the space (which was done by a
> > fine OS newbie Matthew Blom), I was feeling downright joyful and
> > oxegenated. I was giddy. I was happy. I felt at home.
>
> Interesting -- that snippet of Open Space doesn't stand out very
> prominently for me in my memory of the conference, since it was so
> abbreviated, and precisely because I had better butterfly
> experiences outside of it -- including especially the Playback
> Theatre session.
>
> The last morning, none of the scheduled workshops in the first
> timeslot was terribly interesting, so I gave myself permission to
> really butterfly -- I peeked in a few sessions; I noticed that the
> Illegal Art graffitti wall had fallen down, and fixed it; and
> interestingly I kept bumping into one person in particular who was
> also butterflying around, who I've been wanting to have some
> one-on-one time with for the past year! We had lunch together, and
> after eating, he started to get up but hesitated a bit, perhaps
> not wanting to seem rude by leaving abruptly -- he said, "I think
> I'll, ummm..." and I said, to let him know it was alright, "Go be
> a butterfly?" and his face lit up and he said "Yeah! I like that,
> 'butterfly'! See you later!" :)
>
> > [...]
> >
> > Did I have a great time at NCDD? Oh yes, yes, indeed. Because I
> > found the butterflies. . . or, perhaps, they found me.
> >
> > I guess there is a place in the world for conferences like NCDD,
> > to bring together 400 process activists who are striving to
> > build both their skill base and their professionalism but if I
> > had been allowed to hang out with those 400 people in OS instead
> > of in boxes, gosh golly, I would have been truly bedazzled
> > instead of just having fun with a few butterflies on the side.
>
> Yay! That's what I said on the feedback form. :)
>
> Cheers,
> Justin
>
> *
> *
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-- 
Love rays,
Tree Fitzpatrick

. . . the great and incalculable grace of love, which says, with Augustine,
"I want you to be," without being able to give any particular reason for
such supreme and unsurpassable affirmation.  -- Hannah Arendt

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