[OSList] Where is Lisa? Here she is.

gerardo de luzenberger xge at loci.it
Tue Jun 16 02:25:24 PDT 2020


Lovely Lisa,

fabulous access queen, thanks so much for your email.
A little gift for you - the dancing queen at Belgrade wosonos in 2014
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAZitrDz_fk>
Jon brought on behalf of you for the Silent Auctions
All the best
ge





<https://www.loci.it/fare-il-facilitatore/iaf/facilita/facilita2019>

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Il giorno sab 13 giu 2020 alle ore 00:02 Lisa Heft via OSList <
oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> ha scritto:

> Hello, OSLIST friends -
>
> I have not written anything here since 2016 - although I am still sitting
> in the circle and listening in.
> Some of you are dear friends from across the years (note my new email, by
> the way). A few of you have mentioned that it might be nice if I wrote to
> the list about how I am doing.
>
> This message is long, because a) I have not visited in awhile, b) I am
> having a conversation with you here in my head over time, and c) in Open
> Space, even a group of 1 can have a rich conversation for an entire session
> or longer - and can then share their documentation of that exploration back
> to the rest of the group in their Book of Proceedings. Of course you have a
> choice to read it or delete it.
>
> Those of you who know me extra-well know that - since you have known me -
> I have while working as a facilitator and educator also been very involved
> in the care of elderly parents. What just a few of you know is that I have
> also been living with a health condition called ME/CFS
> <https://www.cdc.gov/me-cfs/about/index.html>. That condition has
> progressed. I am fortunate that I am still able to care for myself,
> although here is one way to describe this particular invisible-to-others
> disability: I have to rest in-between putting on my right shoe and my left
> shoe. But I can still put on my shoes ;o)    (and hey, who needs shoes in
> COVID quarantine??)  To understand the impact of this health issue (for
> people who have it much much worse than I do), perhaps your country offers
> access to a sobering yet beautiful documentary called Unrest
> <https://www.unrest.film/>.  A few years ago I realized that true,
> radical wellness meant that I must release even those things I love (love
> love love facilitation and teaching about facilitation - love it). I did
> not feel sad releasing my client work - I felt lighter. I still grieve not
> being able to teach and facilitate, and in so many diverse settings,
> countries and cultures. But I knew immediately that it was the right thing
> to do. Last year my amazing father died, this year my amazing mother-in-law
> died, and after two decades of parental care, now my wife and I have more
> time and energy to care for our selves.
>
> Interestingly, I never thought of myself as disabled until recent years,
> because I simply lived my life. However, since my parents raised me in
> a richly-diverse world, I have always had a passion for seeing / imagining
> / designing with a priority of and focus on access and inclusion. So here I
> am in an embodied experience exploring things I always imagined might be
> someone else's experience. Fascinating.
>
> I write this next part simply to share my background, with those of you
> who have not yet met me: I have facilitated for 40-something years. My
> interest area is dialogic methods that scale up (only one facilitator
> needed for a group of 5 or 3000+), that work across country and culture
> (without requiring participants to learn someone else’s vocabulary; without
> working through the facilitators’s own cultural filter), and in which
> participants frame their own experience (rather than the facilitator doing
> so). When I say 'dialogic', I mean those processes which engage
> participants in internal and external dialogue (conversation with self,
> conversation with others). And when I say conversation, I do not mean
> everyone has to speak aloud. Witnessing - fully listening - is
> participation just as much as speaking. I use existing and custom-designed
> processes which engage participants in silent reflection, kinesthetic and
> graphic thinking, improv, role play, poetry creation, movement, and (no
> surprise!) such methods as Open Space, World Cafe and Focused Conversation
> Method. Here is another <http://www.openingspace.net/> way of showing who
> I am (there are so very many different ways of seeing / naming / showing
> one's self).
>
> And now I write this part to share what I feel so proud of - and because
> writing this shows me back to myself, with you as witness to my "prouds". I
> have much more life to live, but this is also a point of my life where I am
> reflecting a bit. I am so proud of having been able to learn so much from
> and with so many of you. I am amazed (but not surprised) about how Open
> Space (I will call it OS) works. I have used it in over 20 countries, and
> within those countries with participants of many mixes of cultures and
> countries of origin. I have used it when only one person showed up, and
> with groups of 3500. I have seen groups use it to figure out how to spend a
> billion dollars of funding over the next several years, in a way that was
> different than they did before, to bring positive impacts to programs,
> outcomes and communities. Survivors of foster care or violence or disaster
> articulating their unique and collective experience, grief and loss, and
> resilience. Communities impacted by institutionalization, marginalization,
> corruption, exclusion or resource elimination changing laws, changing
> narratives, changing other peoples' minds.  People in some countries (mine
> included) noticing how participating in OS has given them their first
> experience of true democracy. I have learned from exploring and
> experimenting with participant-centered documentation design, with ways of
> helping groups think about, understand or respond to the huge amounts of
> data generated at an OS (new thinking, new relationships, potential
> projects or next steps, previously-unseen patterns), from sharing
> differences in how I or others explain the principles and law, when to call
> it OS and when it has been changed to become something slightly different,
> what-to-do-when's (or what not to do), what-ifs, what is helpful and what
> is too "helpy", and what can negatively impact or support the outcomes and
> human dynamics possible with full-form OS. I am proud of learning together
> with so many of you as we "unpack" OS - the doing of it, but also the tasks
> and actions from pre-work to after the event. Exploring what is true,
> diversity-welcoming invitation (resource generation, seen and unseen
> actions, pre-work, registration design, site design, and ways of seeing /
> listening / naming / honoring / celebrating / embodying). I am proud of how
> my passion for documenting dialogue - both documentation design and also
> participants' own hard work - has given thousands of participants back
> their own amazing words and shown back to them their own system, answers,
> resources, nutrient-rich unanswered questions, voices and discoveries - and
> helped them integrate their experiences after (a big rest and) their
> dialogic events.  I have learned so much about what is action, when to
> separate an event from post-event decision-making, and when the dialogue
> itself *is* the action. *Is* the change. And how change does not have to be
> seen by a facilitator to exist and to have an impact, in ways that many
> participants have told me about long after their events. Proud of being
> able to access such rich learning from some big mistakes or errors in
> understanding. And I am informed by the principles and law and trusting the
> people and the process being also ways of living life.
>
> (No, I might not answer your questions about any of these things above for
> your own learning / comparing / contrasting to. Because I am way too
> @$#@#&!%-ing  fatigued. Writing this email has taken me quite a lot of
> energy and many months to create. But if you have questions or wonderings,
> agreements, disagreements with or diverse experiences about any of the
> above, I invite you to give the gift of your exploration to this big circle
> here by wondering out loud: Post to this list and explore together.)
>
> I am proud of having helped raise and share resources, traditions,
> understanding, and access and inclusion for so many people from so many
> countries and cultures - people of so many seen and unseen diversities -
> who have sought to join our in-person tribal gatherings around the world.
> Proud of being and helping Poets Laureate. Proud of helping and mentoring
> those who courageously asked for help or ideas or ways of stepping in or
> speaking up or being seen. Delighted at repeating explorations of (for
> example) conversations in silence or in graphics or in movement - again and
> again across the years - to see what we think might hold true - or not -
> about some or all individuals or cultures around the world. Proud of
> finally making it to an okay level of ability in Spanish to be able to
> teach and laugh and explore in such a rich language and collection of
> cultures. Proud of engaging in conversation with so many of you on this
> list - those who speak, and also those who witness without speaking - about
> things with which we may or may not agree, do or not do the same,
> understand or do not understand in the same ways. Proud of our (and
> participants in my conferences, client work and workshops) collective
> exploration to struggle to articulate the complex, the unexplainable, the
> unnameable, and the unknowable, in our simple human languages.
>
> I have conversations with so many of you, dear friends in my head - with
> each of us sipping a beverage-of-choice and looking out into the garden and
> talking about life. Or not talking, just sitting in rich nutritious silence
> together. And I love both those conversations and that shared silence.
>
> For anyone worried (as we sometimes do when hearing about another's health
> issue), do not worry: Although I do not feel pleasant and sometimes feel
> worse, I am living a sweet life. I am very lucky, I love silence and have a
> quiet sweet home to live in, a very supportive wife, nobody else's rhythm
> or expectations to fit myself into, and some little creative
> projects-without-deadlines. For example I am sewing my first-ever quilt
> (blanket with patched-together fabrics and softness in-between), which
> began with fabric from my father's softest shirts. I am watching some
> incredible animals - including huge Bald Eagles in their nest
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyOFMZx0dTc> and a great view. (Bald
> Eagles are huge - 1 meter / 6 feet long even before they spread their
> wings, and when any of the eggs make it to hatching, they have cute babies.
> Nocturnal animals such as flying squirrels and great horned owls visit the
> nest when the eagles are away, eagle couples sing and love each other up,
> and chat moderators share their vast knowledge for rich learning. And you
> can move the timeline back to enjoy the sunrise or sunset in your own time,
> complete with the sound of the stream below.)  Molly makes me cocktails
> ;o)  And I simply sit, in silence, doing nothing, for long periods of time.
> I often think about writing about this work that we do - so many stories
> and understandings and learnings and still-unexploreds to share. But I do
> not hold that tightly as it is not something my energy can include at this
> time. Who knows / be prepared to be surprised / whatever happens and all
> that.
>
> I read emails but may never reply - it is often more than I can do. You
> who love me know that I feel your love all the time. You also know that I
> feel loved even by people I have not yet met - people I will never know.
> That is how I am built. I feel lucky to have love and self-love, intuition,
> peace and imagination as my navigational system. I am a big spirit in a
> weak body, however / and I am doing very well. And because I am so amazing
> simply living my life with such a big challenge - and because I have been
> given the gifts of appreciation and being fully in the now - I have given
> myself a superhero name: STREAK (for those of you who do not have English
> as your home language, the meaning for this word I refer to is like a fast
> flash of movement). STRength in the face of wEAKness. (I wonder, dear
> reader, what would be the superhero name you would give *your* self?)
>
> A big abrazo / abraço / (air)hug to you, my friends. I am not going
> anywhere, and yet I am everywhere, and I feel seen and sometimes unseen,
> and I feel engaged and sometimes disengaged. I am prepared to be surprised
> and not attached to outcome, and whatever happens is the only thing that
> could have. Take very good care of yourselves, and each other. I now move
> back to my seat (or to standing behind my seat and swaying, as many of you
> have seen me do), as a witness in this big circle,
> Lisa
>
> As I will be transitioning email addresses, thank you for sending emails
> now to lisaheft at gmail.com and removing openingspace.net from your
> contacts.
>
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