question on residential OS

Tue Jul 11 06:08:37 PDT 2006

Hi Marty.  Thank you for your question.  It gives me an opportunity to
trill, to tell you the few things I know about residential open spaces.  I
am going to have some fun this morning and I thank you.  I also warn you
that my note might be long but I am a good writer and it will probably be
fun to read.

I belong to Spirited Work, which is a now-eight-year-old experiment in an
ongoing, open space community.  I say 'now-eight-year-old' even though
Spirited Work (SW) has not had a meeting in the past year or so.  It is
certainly just as fully alive as a community as ever and, as a matter of
fact, perhaps we have all integrated the gift of OST so deeply that we are
all whorling in some kind of alignment, always and forever in OS, even
though we have not gathered, thus far, this year.

For seven years, SW met for four, 3.5 day gatherings in open space each
year, meeting once each season.  Here is a simple outline of how we managed
the open space.

On Thursday evening, we had an evening gathering which, in my mind, as a
steward of this community, was when we began to build our collective
intention/theme for the weekend.  The form of the evening varied from season
to season but, in my mind's eye, it was always an evening of storytelling.
The stories would depend on the season, the theme of the season, and, of
course, what was 'up' in the field.

Then, on Friday morning, we had breakfast together and began the morning
circle at 9 a.m.

Evening news was held each day at 4:30.

On the final day, which would end around noon, we still had morning circle
at 9 a.m. and then a closing circle.

In the beginning of SW, there were session times, as is traditional in OST.
Sessions might be from 10:30 to noon, from one to 2:30 and from 3:00 to
4:30.  We did not formally declare evenings to be time for OS sessions.

Gradually, SW dispensed with session times.  We opened space and people were
free to hold sessions at any time they chose, for as long as they wished.
People could post sessions over lunch.  For many seasons, we had a great
astrologer join us and she would present the latest astrological readings
over lunch, even though 'lunch' was not a session.  Wow.   I would so love
to have lunch with Gretchen today and hear her tell me about the stars.

Sometimes SW had evening events.  Sometimes a talent show would emerge.
Sometimes we would turn a regular supper into a banquet.

Now you have to realize, Marty, that our SW community grew and grew in its
practice of open space.  Newcomers would be safely introduced to 3.5 days of
fully open space, with no session times and free, open evenings by returning
community members.

The event you are talking about will not have a pool of returning members,
people who have enjoyed the fine beauty of being in open space for three
whole days.  So you will have to think a little bit about how to reveal to
your event the unlimited possibilities of being in open space even into the
evening, even over breakfast, even, who knows, by walking under the stars.

I recommend that you have a morning circle and and evening news and that you
trust your group to figure out how to spend their evenings and lunchbreaks.

Now I am thinking about another event I co-convened, a Practice of Peace
here in Seattle area.  We had 130 people from 25 countries.  Yes, we had
lots of OS pracitioners but we were a 'new' group in that as a group, none
of us had met before. We had no collective experience of being in
residential open space for 3.5 days.  This PoP event was held by the SW
community so we naturally slid into our habits.  We had a morning circle
each day of this PoP and we had an evening news around 4:30.  Because of the
complex logistics, we did post sessions times.  And we did not indicate, on
the agenda wall, that lunch, dinner and the evenings were open space.  But,
of course, lunch, dinner and the evenings WERE open space.

One evening at this PoP, in this large group of people who did not know each
other before the event began, there was a laughing meditation, a juggling
act, some playback theater and poetry.  On my gosh, it was a wonderful
evening.

At one weekend of SW, Marty, two members of our community hastily arranged a
wedding.   They had gotten word from their immigration attorney that they
should be married as quickly as possible, just a day or two before the SW
weekend.  So on Friday morning, they posted a planning session for the
wedding. Some people spend all day Friday and Satuarday planning the wedding
while other members of the community had their regular sessions and had a
regular weekend together.  Then on Saturday evening, there was a wedding in
open space.  Not everyone attending the weekend attended the wedding but, I
am pretty sure, everyone showed up at the party afterwards.

In May of this year, I was one of the convenors for an evolutionary salon,
which was a 4.5 day residential event.  We followed a similar pattern:  we
began for a brief evening the first day.  We opened space after the first
morning circle, we had evening news around 4:30 each day.  Open Space 24
hours a day for 4 whole days.  Everyone figures out just what to do.

I have come to think of the morning circle and the evening news as an
essential way of holding the rhythm of a gathering.  I often think of it, in
my mind (I don't think I have ever verbalized this 'out loud' before) that
the morning circle and evening news is similar to rocking a baby.  All of
life is held together by a central rhythym  (sp?  I can't spell this
morning), don't you think?  When my daughter was an infant (she is now full
grown and must rock herself without me!), she really needed to go to bed at
the same time each day.  Sometimes she did not fully grasp her own need for
rhythm, sometimes she resisted my wisdom of putting her down at 8:30, every
day, no matter what.  Sometimees she fussed.  But it was up to me, as the
great maternal hearthkeeper of her infant life to hold her to the rhythm she
needed to face each day.  I think of morning circles and evening news as
doing the same kind of thing for groups. And, if you think about it, holding
a group to a commonly-aligned rhythm, especially a group coming together for
a one-time or special event, really, truly, IS the work of the open space
holder.  As a hearthkeeper, open space facilitator, I light the flame to
focus the circle's attention and I work throughout the gathering to keep the
flame lit . . . but once I open the circle, once I light the candle, well,
anything can and should happen and it doesn't matter what time of day or
night it is.

So, I say, Marty.  Have your morning circle, hold your evening news.  Hold
your circle in your heart and in your mind.  And then step back and watch
your group fly rings around anything you could have imagined for them.

On 7/11/06, Marty Boroson <marty at becomingme.com> wrote:
>
>  Hello all
>
>
>
> I am planning an OS for a conference that will involve about 80 people
> staying a beautiful hotel in the country for 3.5 days.  Day 1  will
> probably be lectures and workshops.  Days 2 – 4 will be an Open Space, and
> we will probably opt to have one theme or question for this entire period,
> leading to some kind of action planing on Day 4.
>
>
>
> My question is what to do with the evenings of Day 2 and 3, after supper.
> Should we have "evening news" before supper, suggesting that our day's work
> is over?  Should we schedule social events for these evenings?  Or should we
> keep the space "fully open" and have breakout slots in the evening?   In
> other words, in an ongoing Open Space, when participants are residential,
> when is the day done?
>
>
>
> Many thanks,
>
>
>
> Marty
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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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