Conflict in community

[Tree Fitzpatrick]

On 3/20/06, Chris Corrigan <chris at chriscorrigan.com> wrote:
>
>
> IN a conversation today, one man said that he wanted to try Open Space
> simply as a way to have all the parts of the system understand each other.
>

Chris, if the man who said this is your client and if this is his genuine
desire, I think this could be a transformational OS event.

How could an OS held with the intention of having 'all the parts of the
system understand each other' not succeed?!  Almost nothing resolves
conflict better than the transformational power of truly listening to one
another.  An invitation to an event held with this intention, wow!  The
invitation could invite people to listen and understand their colleagues,
the school system, the problems from multiple perspectives.  There would be
highs, there would be lows, happiness and sorrow, and transformation.  Such
an event could easily result in some actions and changes wtihin the school
system. . . but part of your job, Chris, would be to help the client see
that having people shift their perceptions of the system is WOW! a great
result all by itself.

My first reaction to your inquiry, chris, was "do a practice of peace".  At
the Seattle PoP event in November 2003, our invitation intentionally invited
people working to resolve conflict and we spent 2.5 days listening.  All
kinds of action plans emerged and some significant projects exist in the
real world now because we sat and listened to each other's experience of
conflict.  Any system would benefit from this kind of event.

Could a local school board hold an OS event with the intention of practicing
peace together?  Sure, why not?!

I have been puzzled for sometime that OS practitioners have not begun to
offer 'practice of peace' events to clients.

Anyway, here are my thoughts, a little jumbled but I'm taking it easy this
morning.



--
Warmly,
Tree Fitzpatrick
Hearthkeeper

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20060320/660446fe/attachment-0016.htm>