Space finds facilitator
douglas germann
76066.515 at compuserve.com
Mon Sep 8 18:43:06 PDT 2008
Gerard--
This is easily the most beautiful invitation to open space I have seen!
It will probably bring many people.
I particularly love your last line.
:- Doug.
On Sat, 2008-09-06 at 11:57 +0200, Gerard Muller wrote:
> Dear all,
>
>
> I really enjoy working in beautiful spaces. More often than not however,
> clients have already rented
> one, usually too cramped or sterile, without any spirit. Sometimes
> there is
> a wonderful room I did not yet know.
>
>
> The worst space I ever worked in was when I was opening space for a
> regional
> tax office.
> They had decided to have the meeting in their cellar - to save costs.
> The
> ceiling was low, it was a long and narrow rectangle. It had to hold 195
> participants. I wasn’t happy.
>
>
> To my surprise the problem they had to solve was so bad that it did not
> seem
> to make a difference.
>
>
> Sometimes I find the space I am to work in is unusual, or wonderful, or
> both. I have worked in tents,
> in barns, in police stations, in city council meeting rooms, in museums,
> hospitals, castles, monasteries, churches, and so on. Over the years I
> have
> found some places I really like to be.
>
>
> Sometimes the client has not yet booked something. Especially when it
> is not
> an internal meeting but a system, I find it useful to ask what location
> other than a normal meeting space would symbolise and offer the right
> environment for what they want to achieve. Again this has produced some
> remarkable spots.
>
>
> This time around, however, I could select the space. It concerned a
> rather
> special meeting; the seminar
> on Harrison’s Wave Rider Tour in the Netherlands.
>
>
> Then something strange happened.
>
>
> All locations that I know and like were booked.
>
>
> I wrote to my network and asked for suggestions. Some twenty-five
> suggestions came in, most of which I did not know at all. In good
> spirits I
> started to check. All that I contacted were booked, too.
>
>
> I finally called a suggestion our collegue Gijs, a Dutchman living in
> Shanghai gave me when we met
> at WOSONOS in San Francisco. I called the secretariat of the
> Sufi-organisation and explained them
> I was looking for a special meeting space. Yes, they did have some
> meeting
> facilities, but they were definitely not a commercial conference centre.
> Only meetings with a strong spiritual link could be held.
>
>
> What came to my mind was to say that our meeting was to be about
> creating
> dialogue and enabling deep conversations that matter, but that I was not
> looking for normal facilities, but had heard they had quite a special
> place.
>
>
> There was a pause on the telephone line. “You must be reffering to our
> temple”. I then remembered Gijs actually mentioned a temple.
>
>
> I was then given the name of the guardian of the temple. A few hours
> later I
> was there and had a wonderful conversation with a perfect stranger in an
> amazing building: a Sufi temple, a perfect square with a golden dome
> transparant enough to somehow pas on the light into the space.
>
>
> The story of its foundation is, that Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan,
> sent
> from India to Eaurope to create a link between the East and the West,
> had a
> special experience during the summer school of 1922. He blessed the
> spot and
> gave it the name Murad Hassil, which means "wish for filled".
> He said to his students that anyone who prays with honesty, would
> experience
> this blessing.
>
>
> So, Wave Rider in the Netherlands will take place in the Sufi Temple,
> not
> far from Amsterdam airport.
> And by the way, it lies at on a dune at the seacoast. It comes including
> real waves.
>
>
> If you feel like coming, drop me a line.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Gerard Muller
> gm at openspace.dk
>
> *
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