Kidney Stones Merci and BC

[Larry Peterson]

Hi folks
 
I've been absent a bit due to a fun time with Kidney Stones.  I do not
wish them on anyone.  One week of pain emergency room, passing and
vomiting (nice).  Two weeks of slow recovery of energy.  But, recovery
is now mostly complete.
 
I missed Marquis' posting about the OS French Network but was happy to
read about the progress in that group and the Francophone community.  I
was great to see that the group has decided to stay connected to OSI
Canada - and we are working, albeit slowly, to improve the quality of
the supports available.  Living in Canada has convinced me of the value
of the different experience people have when working in their primary
language and of the communication between cultures that enhances all.
 
My recovery journey also included a trip to British Columbia and a two
day Open Space with the College of Nurses.  (I had earlier suggested BC
facilitation, but the sponsor experienced my work in Saskatchewan 5
years ago and had to have me.)  I was not sure I would have enough
energy.  I and Open Space did.  I'm glad I went.  The six months of
telephone preparation session (3 extended calls), initial slide set to
help the conversations and then sending materials and guides for
preparation worked pretty well.  They did not understand the grid, so we
did that together on the day before the event for 130.  I love
Harrison's idea of making squiggly lines on purpose so there is no need
to try to make straight ones - so did they.  They didn't quite get the
second principle and tried to change it.  Got that fixed.  I felt a bit
spacey in the opening, and it was a bit slower than an Ontario pace and
it worked extremely well.  Folks jumping up.  Topics that seemed quite
profound.  Great energy and discussion for 1.5 days.  Evening and
morning news do help to stimulate thinking and attention to dreams.  
 
I want to thank my colleague Diane Gibeault.  When some form of voting
is what the sponsor wants she has improved on an approach that I
initially suggested.  We both put 81/2 x 11 manila folder under the
reports to allow for ticket voting.  She has developed a short process
for combining topics to ease the minds of those who do believe their
topic reports are identical in content.  As people read the topic
reports to begin to develop their own priorities that are also asked to
look for those that are identical.  It is then up to the initiators of
those topic reports to decide if they could be combined.  With good
instructions this happened in a bit less than a half-hour with 3 being
combined.  The voting then went very fast.
 
The closing was special, as it often is.  Most people stayed despite
warnings of impending disaster - snow, rain, floods.  (Seattle got the
worst rain.  But the snow and flooding on Vancouver Island cancelled my
planned visit there.)  One woman got a marvellous inspiration and wrote
a six stanza poem that brought tears to eyes around the room.  Then in a
surprising reversal (maybe not in OS) her name was drawn from the
rotating barrel to get the gift from the Hotel.  She gave a wonderful
gift to the group and by chance the universe (and the hotel) gave her a
gift right back.  It doesn't usually happen that way and was stunning.
 
This was an OST event with the next steps to be taken by the College or
by individuals at home.  I think some ripples will certainly manifest
and given the board's active involvement (they loved it) some will
affect the College.
 
Again, OS was healing for me as well as the group.  What a wonderful
thing Harrison has gotten us into.
 
Larry
 
Larry Peterson
Associates in Transformation
Toronto, ON, Canada
416.653.4829
 
 <mailto:larry at spiritedorg.com> larry at spiritedorg.com  
 <http://www.spiritedorg.com> www.spiritedorg.com 
 

*
*
==========================================================
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/20071206/b6466e3e/attachment-0015.htm>