<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Dear Wendy,<div><br></div><div>Beautifully spoken/written. Your post brings to mind the nugget that stuck out for me at the recent Systems Thinking conference. It came from Senge's keynote. Perhaps some will find it useful to reflect on this as way to renew the best of what the OSLIST has been and wishes to become. </div><div><br></div><div>I paraphrase:</div><div><br></div><div>Change begins with me/us. Not someone out there. </div><div>What allows life to continue can be found in what we conserve - that is how life evolves.</div><div>I offer it here as it could be useful to begin a process of healing.</div><div><br></div><div>The question then becomes:</div><div><br></div><div>What do I want to conserv?</div><div>What do I want to let go of?</div><div><br></div><div>I read in your eloquence that which you wish to conserve as your commitments and that which you wish to let go in the form of requests for stopping.</div><div><br></div><div>I will follow your model then by saying that I wish to conserve curiosity in times of difficulty.</div><div>I am relatively new to the list so I still feel apart from this group as community. I'm not sure what I would wish to let go of - perhaps my sense of helplessness as a witness to pain and suffering.</div><div><br></div><div>Lucy Garrick</div><div><br></div><div><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px;"><br></span></font></div></div></span></div></span></div></span> </div><br><div><div>On Nov 20, 2009, at 2:51 AM, Wendy Farmer-O'Neil wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>In my experience, truth is relative. It depends essentially on my perspective. The vaster my perspective, the more many-faceted truth appears. Until the very notion of truth becomes more of a living process than a static fact.<br><br>I have experienced contraction in the resonant field of OSList throughout this conversation. To me that signals the presence of aggression. Aggression can be very subtle or very blatant. Either way, it stimulates hurt, often in those other than its target.<br><br>I am a student of Aikido, so violence, non-violence, aggression, its evocation, its arising, and its transformation are my daily bread. I still have a lifetime’s worth to learn about it. I believe that the purpose of conflict is harmony. What I have learned so far, is that aggression is a destructive, life denying vector in that equation. And that clean heart anger is a generative life affirming vector.<br><br>I have yet to hear clean heart anger in this conversation. I have heard a lot of aggression in a variety of forms and guises. I have also heard hurt, pain, sadness, confusion, frustration, to name a few.<br><br>I will share what my experience has been in service to transparency if it serves no better purpose.<br><br>I feel contraction when I hear OS and NVC spoken of as tools because for me, they have become profound ways of being in the world.<br><br>I feel contraction when I hear pain in Chris Corrigan’s voice when he wonders why this conversation needs to unfold this way between people he cares about.<br><br>I feel contraction when I hear blame, shame and name-calling.<br><br>I feel contraction when I recognize the operation of a poisoned well argument.<br><br>I feel contraction when I hear someone caught in the steel jaws of an old hurt.<br><br>I feel contraction when i hear the pain of someone who has had to fight too damn hard for every inch and breath.<br><br>I feel contraction when I see more unsubscribes in a day than I usually see in a month.<br><br>I feel care, concern, pain, and sadness when I think of all of you in this circle who are listening or speaking. It is you who I most want to speak to right now.<br><br>Here is my hand.<br><br>I offer it in absolute commitment. I will never put you out of my heart. I will hold space with and for you through it all. Even in our most shadowed , unloved and disowned places. I’m game to face the monsters of the deep. I prefer them to the shallows.<br><br>I will name that the use of violence and aggression cloaked as the servant of truth has been the strategy of many who would prefer to silence, persecute, oppress and discredit those whose opinions or choices were in conflict with their own agendas. It has been the root of much human suffering. I can feel suffering present on this list right now. I don’t like it. I won’t support it. I am saddened that people I admire and respect are behaving this way. I am requesting that it stop. I am also requesting that the back-channel story-telling stop. If you do not have the integrity to air your complaints directly, at least have the decency not to perpetrate slander. (And I am speaking about everyone involved not one person in particular, because I’m certain it’s going on in several directions.)<br><br>I guess we have finally grown up. We are apparently big enough, brave enough, and ready enough to face a real dragon. Can’t wait to see what we do with the treasure.<br><br>In deepest respect and with great love for you all,<br><br>Wendy<br><br><br><br><br><br>On 20-Nov-09, at 1:12 AM, Michael Herman wrote:<br><br>Wendy Farmer-O'Neil<br>CEO Prospera Consulting<br><a href="mailto:wendy@xe.net">wendy@xe.net</a><br>1-800-713-2351<br><br>The moment of change is the only poem. -- Adrienne Rich<br><br>*<br>*<br>==========================================================<br>OSLIST@LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU<br>------------------------------<br>To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,<br>view the archives of oslist@listserv.boisestate.edu:<br>http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html<br><br>To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:<br>http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist<br></div></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>*
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