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<TITLE>report for Alan from the field</TITLE>
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Dear Alan and List,<BR>
<BR>
Thanks for the worthy peruse! ("The right to treat each other well," october 16). I find your suggestions to be most practical and useful, a delightful little nest of theory-weaving, full of wonderful quotations. You wrote:<BR>
<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#008000">> What if we _demanded_, as the community and caretakers of a tiny, precious,<BR>
> fragile planet, the<BR>
> right to treat each other with respect ..<BR>
><BR>
> A right to make contact, to listen with attention; to act thoughtfully,<BR>
> generously and do someone a good turn.<BR>
><BR>
> I invite you to elaborate the idea to find for yourself how practically<BR>
> useful it can be. (It may be that some<BR>
> of the underpinnings of its posting resonate with you too).<BR>
><BR>
> And to share your observations and findings if you so wish.<BR>
</FONT><BR>
My report from the field is about our Arts & Adventure camp for middle school students. Tomorrow we'll host our final group of 75 or so - we've served the 900-student population of a local public school over the last four weeks. We're receiving some rave reviews from the local educational community, and abundant thank-you letters and art from students...which all makes me smile, because really these young people are simply thanking themselves and each other through us!<BR>
<BR>
What we provide at the camp is delightfully simple in form, and also in philosophy, and it is very much in line with your posting Alan. Because really what we do is to hold the space for these young people to treat each other well - vivaciously, creatively well. We do not demand it of them, but we expect it of them, and indeed we are reminding them that it is their right. Each of them has a right to all the abundance thus released. The right to, as you quote, love being human beings.<BR>
<BR>
Allow me to describe briefly: The students arrive from a 20-minute bus ride, and step out under the big trees at the old camp lodge. They walk around to the stone patio and sit in a circle of 75 folding chairs. Smoke drifts out of the stone chimney, acorns fall, the dogs come down to say hello. It's cold at 9am, and we bring around a tray of warm oatmeal cookies. The teenagers are male and female, black and brown and white, and so are we, the staff. The circle is open and empty, and we haven't said anything yet.<BR>
<BR>
I open the space & walk the circle very much as I have learned from Birgitt and my other mentors on this list, and I include the simple statement that I have heard you speak Alan, that We are here today to treat each other well. It's not OST per se, but of course OST-inspired through and through.<BR>
<BR>
I invite the mentors from our community to step into the circle and to describe what they have to offer. Our usual menu for this camp includes: giant puppet-making by the fireplace in the lodge, clay up at the overnight shelter, aereal arts with a local circus artist, climbing tower, adventure games, archery, plaster mask-making, and drama/storytelling. Our versatile mentors offer whatever they are inspired to offer that day. After each mentor speaks, he/she walks up the stone steps to the flat area. I start the "choosing stick" somewhere in the circle, and the students pass it to the left and then get up, walk up the steps, and join whomever they wish to learn with for the morning.<BR>
<BR>
I love our human agenda wall/marketplace. The teenagers mill around in the dry leaves under the hickory tree and babble and try to decide whether to stay with their best friend or follow their individual intuition. Five minutes later the mentors lead their groups like mother ducks off into the woods.<BR>
<BR>
After 100 minutes or so we ring the big camp bell, and everyone trickles back to a reflection circle. I invite them to recognize someone else, a classmate or a mentor, as a way of telling their story. Each group or person speaks from the center, shows their art, performs a bit. Then we eat lunch and do the whole thing again for an afternoon session, after which the teenagers squeeze their giant puppets and clay butterflies through the doors of the bus to drive back to school. Then we staff members circle up with the talking stick to tell our stories of the day to one another. Same process for four weeks, and each day is enormously unique and bursts forth in the recounting.<BR>
<BR>
These are public middle school students from a pretty rough school. Do they always treat each other well? No. But we spend each day in a rising tide of treating one another very well indeed. And when a student stands up in the circle and puts down a friend, or laughs at someone's expense, they do so in a new nakedness, speaking out of their own pain. No one corrects them with a lecture about respect. The circle holds. The next student to speak always returns us all to the tide of authentic quirky human joy.<BR>
<BR>
I said that we make no demands of our students, and it is so; we do not demand, we invite. But your quote about "demanding the right to treat each other well" rings true: We have done a good deal of strategic demanding to open and sustain the space for our camp and our work in the educational community and its organizations. Skeptical people have heard our demands and agreed to take a chance and lend support. They are happy now to have done so.<BR>
<BR>
I end with a story, as you say of unknown source. This is one you sent me Alan a month ago at the time of Chris Corrigan's Aine story, but not to the list. I'll re-tell it in my own words. Sometimes after lunch with these students, we sense that they will benefit from the settling-down of a good story before they make their afternoon choice. Usually we turn to Becky Stone, our African American elder & storyteller, for her amazing rendering of Braer Possum and Braer Snake. But on occasion I have told this one, which I return to you with gratitude. (I also hope that Glory, our wonderous collector of tales, is listening in!)<BR>
<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000FF">There was a boy<BR>
and at an age when no one should suffer so<BR>
he was witness to a tragedy of violence<BR>
and he lost someone he loved deeply.<BR>
<BR>
And for many weeks he was quiet<BR>
and troubled inside. From a distance,<BR>
his Grandfather watched him,<BR>
and waited.<BR>
<BR>
So one night the boy saw his Grandfather<BR>
sitting outside the ring of the fire<BR>
with the light flickering gently on his face,<BR>
and he went to him, and the boy spoke to him, softly.<BR>
<BR>
"Grandfather," he said. "Each night and each day<BR>
I am torn up to pieces in my heart,<BR>
because there is a fight happening there.<BR>
I have two wolves in my heart<BR>
and they are fighting. One wolf<BR>
has a strong back and the eyes<BR>
of my mother, and he is kind. <BR>
The other wolf is vicious and he wishes<BR>
to kill. And I have waited to see<BR>
which one will win this fight,<BR>
this fight in my heart,<BR>
and I am bleeding,<BR>
and I don't know<BR>
I don't know<BR>
I don't know."<BR>
<BR>
"Yes," said his Grandfather.<BR>
<BR>
"Grandfather, can you tell me<BR>
which wolf will win<BR>
the fight in my heart?<BR>
Do you know?"<BR>
<BR>
The boy's Grandfather was quiet<BR>
for a long time.<BR>
<BR>
"Yes," he said at last. "Yes, I know<BR>
which wolf will win."<BR>
<BR>
"Tell me," said the boy.<BR>
<BR>
"The one you feed."<BR>
<BR>
</FONT>Chris Weaver<BR>
Swannanoa, North Carolina, USA<BR>
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