Archive for September 18th, 2009

How do we shape the space in #OpenSpace?

How do we shape the space in Open Space? Circles; living questions; invitations; masking latent spaces; posting topics; setting chairs; setting up a board; space-time grid; paths from any seat to paper; paths from center to wall; paths among groups; food paths; paths between anonymity and intimacy; paths between large groups and small: respiration.

Physical geometric spaces; mental spaces; spiritual space; individual space. All these spaces can be shaped.

Who is responsible? The Open Space answer: everyone. You are in charge. What do you want to do? Why don’t you see to it? Yet the inviters have some responsibility to shape the space enough to allow people to ask for what they want. So we set the circle, start the marketplace wall, lay out the markers, paper, tape.

What do we open space into? Other space, the world, hearts, minds, the future, the past, now, meeting!, centers, the third being between and among.

How do we shape the space? How do we garden first? Garden first says Life first: life and sun and warmth and green and breeze and rain on your cheek. We shape the space in Open Space by opening a green space, a rain on your cheek place, where we can smell the humus and the freshening. We shape the space by attending to this freshening in people: always breezes and mist, always green and sun; always opening out to larger vistas. It is most successful when the shaping is not seen, when it most resembles nothingness. And yet it is shaped, pointing us toward wholeness.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on September 18th, 2009 | No Comments »
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