<div dir="ltr">Because I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I could not resist attending WOSonOS 08. I am not doing much consulting work these days. I've just got one client and mostly that's a love connection. I am lost in life. Don't fret on my behalf. Yes, I am lost but I am lost in Open Space, where only the right things happen, at only the right moments. All I have to do is pay attention to what has heart and meaning for me. Follow my bliss, as Joseph Campbell once said!<br>
<br>So I followed my bliss to WOSonOS. <br><br>I almost didn't go. A few days before the event, I wrote and told Lisa Heft, the registrar for WOSonOS 08 (and the famous Access Queen) and suggested maybe I wouldn't come.<br>
<br>Throughout the event, I decided to leave. Then I would have a butterfly conversation, which would lead to another butterfly conversation. . . and then another. I was there from beginning to end. . . <br><br>The highlights of my experience:<br>
<br>Chris Corrigan's children, Aine and Finn, and John Engle's children, Daniel and Leila (I may spell her name wrong).<br><br>Watching these children (holding Leila, a six-month old beauty) restored my soul. One evening, Aine and Finn danced while wearing some cheap neon necklaces that I had brought to the party. There were thirty of these necklaces and the children had almost all of them wrapped around their wrists, ankles, neck and waists. I was reminded of fireflies glowing in the dark of the cosmos that evening. During the day time, watching the children bowing and bending through the day, I was reminded of watching wildflowers bending in a meadow under a light summer breeze. <br>
<br>Suddenly, all the participants at WOSonOS began to appear to me like fireflies and wildflowers.<br><br>We met at a very beautiful location, at the Presidio, which used to be a military base. The venue was high on a hill overlooking the very beautiful bay, with the Golden Gate bridge within view, as well as Alcatraz (an island famous for once housing a prison!!) and the jewel of the city of San Francisco. Blustery winds, soft breezes, blue skies and white sailboats dancing on the water.<br>
<br>I didn't go to any sessions but one. I attended the Open Space Institute/USA session, which serves as our annual meeting, which we are required to hold.<br><br>I had a wonderful, fantastic time.<br><br>But there were some rough moments. It is these rough moments that I wish to report.<br>
<br>I kept having a wonderful time, beautiful moments in which I glimpsed the sparkle of love, much like I kept catching glimpses of sunlight dappled on the bay. I would remonstrate myself, telling myself that I "should" go to some sessions, I should act professional, I should do this and I should do that. I would tell myself that since I wasn't going to sessions, I ought to just go home. Each time I came to this turn in my thinking, one of the people I already knew and already loved would appear and talk me 'down' by reminding me that in OS I didn't have to go to any sessions.<br>
<br>It can be tough, scary work to follow what has heart and meaning. It had much heart and meaning for me, over these several days of WOSonOS 08 to be like a firefly in the night and a wildflower in the daytime, bending in the breeze. When I succeeded, when I surrendered to just showing up and just being alive in the space, I was just fine. Bending, bending felt good.<br>
<br>What if, by finding my right place in each moment, what if I really am contributing to the whole of humanity? And what if everyone was able to find their right place in each moment and to then find the next and then the next? Would everything that 'needs' to be done get done? Would someone harvest the fields and maintain the roadways? I think so. I hope so. I don't know, not for sure, but I had these moments. . . these magical moments when I completely knew that self-organization is the central power of the universe and self-organization is love and if everyone extends themselves in love, guided by the quickening that moves us from one room at an OS event to the next, from one moment to another. . . . I have these fine moments when I am sure that all is well. . . or, at least, all will be well soon.<br>
<br>I don't really know what happened at this WOSonOS. I scarcely heard any of the Evening News or the Morning Announcements. There were people making merry, children bobbing in the sunlight and Ms. Lisa Heft making me feel special just because, lucky me, Ms. Lisa Heft glanced at me.<br>
<br>And I glanced back.<br><br>It might have been my imagination but each time anyone looked at me or looked at someone else, it seemed to me like rays of light, like love rays. What does draw people together to accomplish shared goals? What drew the first circle of humans around the first fire? I submit that love draws us together. <br>
<br>I think many of us would edit the 'principles' of OS, rewrite Harrison's initial inspiration. It wouldn't really matter if we did such a rewrite. . . and, of course, people present suggestions all the time, on this list. Me, when I hold space, when I open space for a group, I always want to talk about love and trust, hope and faith.<br>
<br>It is a beautiful, warm-but-not-hot, sunny-and-not-humid perfect day in Mountain View where I live, where I am writing this. I am not sure if the glow I feel is the glow of the sun or the glow of the magic of the space we created at WOSonOS.<br>
<br>I love Open Space.<br><br>WOSonOS 09 will be in Taiwan! WOSonOS 10 is planned for Berlin. Mark you calendars. Show up if you feel called to show up. Open Space. Then open some more.<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Love rays,<br>
Tree Fitzpatrick<br><br><a href="http://thecultureoflove.blogspot.com/">http://thecultureoflove.blogspot.com/</a><br><br>. . . the great and incalculable grace of love, which says, with Augustine, "I want you to be," without being able to give any particular reason for such supreme and unsurpassable affirmation. -- Hannah Arendt<br>
<br>1335 Montecito Ave Apt. 35<br>Mountain View, California 94043<br>(650) 967-9260<br>
</div>
*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist@listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist