FootprintsintheWind.com

I read something in Maslow this morning that has advanced my thinking. He speaks of people becoming fully human; it is a scale with a normative end.

This triggers thinking about groups: when are people in groups, or more precisely, groups of people more human and less human? They are more human to the the extent they: encourage creativity; develop the use of all capacities of the individual and the group; engage more of the person; engage more of the inter-dynamics of the persons between and among themselves. For sure there are others.

The point is reflected as we turn it around and compare various alternative scenarios for getting people together and ask of each how good they are at getting people to the fully human end of the scale? For instance, consider lecture, seminar, workshop, The World Café, and Open Space Technology: where is each on this continuum of the fully human group?

Do we want each group to be fully human? Certainly we do if we are trying to develop a movement in society, and if we are trying to get something done in large scale and short time frames. What if we purpose to create a tyranny? What if we want to change a way of thinking from say, prejudice to inclusiveness? When would we want not to have fully human groups?

:- Doug.

Our task in any undertaking, enterprise, movement, can perhaps be expressed as facilitating this group to exercise its full humanness. If we see it this way, we can help discover its needs for air, light, water, food of physical and mental varieties, freedom. Said another way, how does format of the meeting serve the full humanness of the group?

:- Doug.

In story
the mystery
touches us
forms us
hears us
& we it

:- Doug.

The I AM THERE of Buber’s translation is in Rilke’s being-here: we are part of that I am, and therefore this is also exemplar of what and who we are to do/be. We are to be here, not to be here but to make it more real, to hear it into being. Hear Its into being. Hear ourselves into being. Being-hear. This is creativity.

:- Doug.

Not solely a consolation
I am there that I am there
is our task too
to be with place & person
and
to know their lasting essence:
being-here

:- Doug.

Christianity is not about being good—it’s about making a good world.

:- Doug.

On meeting you
I begin myself
wholly new
begun with
what we each are bringing
or didn’t

:- Doug.

Speaking at is good for
survival values
Speaking with is good for
growth values
Do we want to keep
marking time?

:- Doug.

Will a healthy person prefer life and health to death and sickness? Then why expect him or her to prefer anything less than wholeness and life for his or her community, group and country?

:- Doug.

Peers: are produced by a nexus of caring. No hierarchy of authority here. To be sure there is authority, and power, and knowledge, and leadership in the circle—but each arise in situ, from the people there as needed—ad hoc.

Peers: not artificial power or leadership, but real.

Peers: discovering what we used to miss, what we did not hear for the din.

Peers: valuing, valuing each one, valuing the group, valuing diversity.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 911

A major issue with asking people to attend a several-day event to improve their community is the fear that “We cannot ask people to give so much time.” Actually we must ask people to give—themselves, their time. The value they get out is precisely from what they give. So let’s be bold to ask their commitment—as a gift to them. And if only a few come, remember that we want quality foremost.

Please pass it on.

© c 2009, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Doug AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

What is the best thing that ever happened to you?

:- Doug.

When people are heard
there are two effects
More action is taken
Less action is taken

Less because we discover
what we really needed was
to be truly heard

More because effective action jells
out of meeting:
something happens that would not
absent caring people conversing

Caring about what we’re hearing
Caring about whom we’re hearing

:- Doug.

You may
take to the streets
if you wish
I’d rather
take to the seats

:- Doug.

Caring people are key. When you get together people who care—love—follow their heartbreak—then possibility emerges. It is as if one who cares is shot at a nucleus (cor, core, coeur, heart) of others and from this hydrogen explosion unpredicted amounts of energy are released.

So many times in our meetings we are working on things few if any of us care about—it is for responsibility alone—the latrines must be cleaned, the garbage taken out—that we are meeting. If we saw that it affected us all in what we care about, then we would be world-changers.

:- Doug.

What is possible among caring people concerned about environment? Where is our common ground for action?

:- Doug.

Caring people working together in a good environment can produce extraordinary work. That means it is incumbent upon us to ask, What then is a good environment? It must be open—free—enough to allow them to work. Since this is unusual in our culture, the freedom needs to be announced. It needs to facilitate each and every nexus of caring. It must provide safe places to meet and minimal tools for meeting—chairs, perhaps, and paper and drawing instruments. In the caring people themselves we need the widest diversity we can find. What else?

:- Doug.

Of what are we together capable?

:- Doug.

Who wants to have conversations that matter?

:- Doug.

You do not even know whom you are
How then do you expect to put a handle on G*d?

:- Doug.

We humans are a gregarious breed.

:- Doug.

Give G*d time, your time.

:- Doug.

We are forming our divinity as we emerge within the mist. Each step we take our foot forms before it touches earth, each thought our mind forms as it touches that of G*d.

:- Doug.