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<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000080>Am also enjoying the discussion. The
gems of wisdom that come from experience are greatly appreciated.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000080></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000080>Having facilitated many "diversity"
workshops I noticed a great many facitltators become frustrated when the
outcomes did not meet their expectations. Usually one of the facilitators
says something like ...we were not successful, the participants "didn't go
there"! </FONT><FONT face=Arial color=#000080>My first thought has always
been....go where? My second thought was that the "facilitators trap has
been sprung"...the workshop had become more about the facilitator than
for the participants.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000080></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000080>Guess the great facilitators I remember
most were the ones who knew the delicate art of being "silently
present" .....they gave us lots of space so we could teach ourselves and learn
at the gut level! Learned leadership and
responsibility from them..... as for the content of their courses...we
taught that to each other....while they made the coffee!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000080></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000080>Rich Norris</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000080>Satellite Beach, Florida</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000080></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000080></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000080> </FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000080></FONT> </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=chris@springbranch.net href="mailto:chris@springbranch.net">Chris
Weaver</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
href="mailto:OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU">OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, April 28, 2001 4:08
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: OS and AI</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>I am really enjoying this discussion. Thanks, Peg, for
sharing your soul-searching, particularly the gem about the 4 children at
Passover.<BR><BR>Harrison, your comments are a touch-stone for me. In
The Power of Spirit you talked about being a theory-builder. I honor you
for your theory-building, and I am considering your theory that in OST people
arrive where they would arrive via AI or other processes, but without the fuss
and without being disempowered by the facilitation.<BR><BR>I'm digging through
my own experience to mess-it-around into some theorizing. By far my most
extensive experience as a space-holder has been in my ten years as an
elementary school teacher. This experience can be described as a ten
year search for the minimal appropriate structure for each child and each
community of children to fully engage with...well...themselves, their innate
spirit to grow and thrive and learn and live and love.<BR><BR>Minimal
appropriate structure took many forms - an array of methodologies. With
some students, I used a lot of structure. When I <I>understood</I> them,
and built the structure on this understanding, I discovered over time that I
was holding space for them well.<BR><BR>Being a facilitator for a group of
adults is not identical to being a teacher for a group of children. I
wonder: How is it different, and how is it the same?<BR><BR>In another
vein, I have had wonderful experiences with adults in structures that dictate
spending some time in pairs. Some storytelling circles begin this way,
and AI discovery process works this way. Being in an AI structure that
established that I would spend an hour with another person responding to a
list of open-ended questions, and hearing my partner's responses, elicited a
deep and valuable experience of a particular kind. An hour in an Open
Space meeting yields a different variety of valuable experience. As a
participant, I arrive in a different place in each.<BR><BR>Musing about
structure, I reflect also on a methodology for improvisational movement called
Interplay. Each Sunday afternoon I spend two hours in a "playgroup."
In many ways this is Open Space - the law of two feet is at work, and at
all times, "you are more important than the system." Interplay is
minimal appropriate structure, and invitation-based. But it is the help
of the system, the movement forms, that has opened up for me a profoundly new
level of engagement with my own body and with other people in movement.
Interplay introduced me to the idea of "ecstatic following."
Responding to a diversity of structures provided by a master facilitator
has opened doors I never could have found on my own.<BR><BR>So much for
theorizing...I am only messing around in the mess....<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Chris<BR></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>