The Nexus For Change conference has just reached a finish at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. This went out as an email to the Association Building Community list of over 6,000 people.
Iris McGinnis
John Abbe
Brandon WilliamsCraig
A certain "Alice down the rabbit Nexus" feeling pervaded our time in Ohio. We lost three hours across time zones, went to bed late and rose early to be a part of the teams dealing with Logistics, Photography, and IT. By turns, Nexus was frightening, exciting, exhausting, invigorating, disappointing, and wonderfully exceeded both our expectations.
Nexusians provided several suppliants with financial help in order to work toward diversity, as well as giving gifts of friendship and collaborative inspiration. We received round trip airfare and a place to stay so that we might participate, and paid for reduced registration costs and related expenses from matching money raised within the ABC community. We feel profoundly grateful, in particular, for Leon Regelson and Marilyn Madsen within ABC, Bill Adams of Maxcomm, Peggy Holman and Steve Cady, Joe Matthews, Cheryl Honey (Nexus Share and Care) of Community Weaving and the Family Support Network, and the M.O.D. students from BGSU who created the morning-after Ancient Wisdom Circle.
The event itself was a fundamental gathering, for the first time on this scale, of whole systems changers, researchers and authors, organizational development professionals, community builders/weavers, academics, human systems innovators, playback theater and graphic artists, and a multitude of other corporate managers, consultants, and facilitators - all apparently desiring open circles to struggle fruitfully with change-work and make a positive difference in the world. Hopefully this kind of gathering will continue and deepen, find its way around the nation to a different area each year, and reach beyond its currently limited scope to consciously support the face-to-face building of communities of understanding in specific locales - beyond the intense days of cross-pollination.
The opening invocation for the Nexus was a "Samoan Circle" in which each of five chairs was labeled with a role: Jean Bartunek ( professor of Organization Studies at Boston College and former president of the Academy of Management) began in the Scholar chair, Henri Lipmanowicz ( retired CEO of Merck subcontinental, and co-founder of the Plexus Institute) began in the Leader chair, and Carolyn Lukensmeyer (creator" of AmericaSpeak's 21st Century Town Meeting) began in the Practitioner chair. Peggy Holman offered the following words to introduce my presence in the Activist's chair: " Brandon WilliamsCraig is of the new breed of activists, who, rather than advocating for or against something, are process activists – bringing people with diverse perspectives together so that wise answers emerge." Most gratifying of all was the briefly empty " Wild Card" chair for the rarely heard voices the future/the artist/the natural world/the unknown/the child, etc. The opening was both hopeful and problematic and, in so being, a fine place to start as a metaphor for the whole endeavor.
Iris met many wonderful people at the various formal and informal conversation 'cafes', attended numerous workshops, and hopes to write about them later on her blog. Brandon convened two Open Space sessions entitled, respectively:
- Process Arts: culture-making, Healing Friction, and guardianship of peace
- Grief Before Beginnings: essential depths without which changes are unsustainable
and was happy to be interviewed about the Process Arts by Michael Gaciri.
We wish we had understood, ahead of time, the full scope of the collaborative and emergent Nexus design process, so we might have sent a clear invitation, so you might have watched the invocation process, since the invocation circle was streamed internationally and now is part of growing archive on the web. Everyone involved would have benefited from your feedback and encouragement and we would like to invite you to review the Nexus material on the web, to consider attending next year, contact us with council, suggestions, issues to raise, etc. Please send any thoughts, desires, inspirations and let's continue our conversations into making the next event sparkle even more brightly than the first.
With Nexus behind and before us, the nationwide walkabout to grieve what is past and build the Guardians of Peace begins soon. Iris may also wander, grieve Aidan, and (if financially manageable) go to conferences to continue connecting with other process artists. The better part of a decade has passed in building our small ABCommunity slowly and our core desire now is to grow in size and depth, share the fruits of our modest learning, and be changed by new people. We'd like to send more regular reports and invitations.
Your creative and financial contributions (see below) will help take this work further into the world and empower more folks participating in this culture shift toward peace (conflict done well). If this interests you and you have the ability please contribute what you can to make it possible to take our work out in the world. While attending conferences can be very rewarding it is also financially and physically exhausting. Although this one was largely covered by gifts of various sizes, the overall cost to others to get us there was about $1,500. In the near future we'd like to offer community building circles, classes for adults and children, and raise funds for even more folks to participate in training and intense gatherings like Nexus For Change. Let us know if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area and are interested in getting together on a regular basis to learn and practice Process Arts. We would love to expand our face-to-face community. Also let us know where you are outside the Bay Area so we can connect when we are in your area, with you and with others with a will to practice and learn from each other. We are profoundly grateful for our time out in larger circles this year and look forward with particular energy toward being together during the Next Us For Change. Particular thanks to Peggy Holman and Steve Cady - to Peggy for revealing herself in the Ancient Wisdom Circle created with students on the morning after as being a "nexustentialist," and to both for their warm welcome and desire to collaborate - making local ripples swell into waves of global change.
We hope to work more with you on the questions this work inspires and the responses and learning we all carry. For us, the core framing question emerged in Peggy's words from the Day-After Circle and we deeply desire to share its unfolding with you and the wisdom you represent. The core question underlying this entire field seems to be: " In Service to Whom?"
Warmly,
Brandon and Iris
from Association Building Community a.k.a. Beamish Process Arts
A list of links mentioned above:
- The largest cache of beautiful photos including people, graphics, charts, etc. http://www.flickr.com/groups
/nexusforchange/pool/ - for Session notes mentioned above go to http://www.nexusforchange.org and select "Conference Central" and then "Session Notes Library"
- for Video go to http://www.nexusforchange.org and select "Conference Central" and then "Media Streams"
- Iris' blog is http://mythinginaction.blogspot
.com/ - John Abbe's blog http://ourpla.net/cgi/pikie
?ObBlog
- Brandon's blog is behind http://bdwc.net. Search the word "Nexus" or click on "Recent Blog"
- Process Arts interview http://www.nexusforchange.org
/index.php3?object_id=GME _Vault&function=download&item =8c1b83db43b595d09ce2082f333a59 cf - Walkabout (the Little Fire Burns) http://abcglobal.net/LFF.html
- Guardians of Peace project http://abcglobal.net/GPx.html
- Please donate via http://www.justgive.org/giving
/donate.jsp?charityId=6530 - If you are having trouble seeing this, it is reproduced with links intact at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id
=dhrh8swg_6fkjmgq or http://abcglobal.blogspot.com/2004/06/potential-ways-of -renamingvisioning.html
As always, all feedback is very welcome – the chewier the better.
The organization name will read "Beamish Process Arts" - which was the founding name of Association Building Community.
Please make your desire clear on the Just Give form
Membership (whatever appropriate offering you would provide to support any vital organism growing these changes)
Program: Guardians Of Peace (Process Arts Community for Training)
Program: Little Fire Burning (walkabout and national outreach and teaching)
Program: Training Scholarships (to help develop process artists)
Administration (to further the survival of our community infrastructure)
If you would prefer to write a check, please write your purpose in the memo line and post it to ABCGlobal, 181 Farrelly Dr., San Leandro CA, 94577.
Toll Free (866) 236-0346
administration at abcglobal dot net
Labels: ABC, Nexus2007, processarts
| posted by Unknown @ 3/28/2007 11:23:00 AM
Violence & The Bible. John Hemer MHM- Mill Hill Missionaries
Is Religion Killing Us?: Violence in the Bible and the Quran
So much violence in the bible By Amba Ewudziwa
What The Bible Says About Violence, Anger, Jealousy, Arguments, And Living In Peace With Each Other
Cruelty and Violence in the 1st Four Books of the Bible
Does The Bible Preach Violence?
Cruelty and Violence in the Bible
What to do "if your brother sins against you" (Luke 17:3-4)
The Bible on Abuse & Violence
Labels: Christianity, community, conflict, monotheism, religion, violence
| posted by Unknown @ 3/24/2007 12:02:00 PM
The ongoing conversation and struggle between two not really discrete voices in the Process Arts
The highly structuring O.D. foundational voice writes books and presents "methods organized around outcomes."
The emergent community building voice invokes the heart and dedicates the hypothetical third edition of the Change Handbook to being about "the deeper patterns" as people work into being together well.
Labels: daily, Nexus2007, processarts
| posted by Unknown @ 3/22/2007 06:00:00 AM
One of the organizers behind the Nexus, Peggy Holman, has also given me the gift of some words that feel wonderful (below). I feel recognized, included, excitied about the conference and the movement toward Process Arts as a field.
Let me know by email if you are interested in hearing my conversation with Peggy Holman. In it we discuss this field that is being shaped, enjoy exploring related ideas together, and I include a fairly good, brief, introduction to my dissertation.
I write this while grabbing a half-second while recording the excellent "Nature and Human Nature" conference at Pacifica.
What follows lays out the plan behind the ritual to begin the Nexus For Change conference, to which Iris and I will be going next week. This conference and ritual are excellent examples of the process-level changes (in working with how we do what we do as human beings) that I love to talk about and help along.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peggy Holman
Date: Mar 17, 2007 12:01 PM
Subject: About the Invocation Circle
Peggy
P.S. We'll have 3 wireless microphones to share among you.
Invocation circle
Purpose: A collective invocation: calling ourselves present from each of our roles to our individual and collective potential for facing the challenges and opportunities of our times.
The process:
Participants gather in two concentric circles -- an inner circle of five chairs, and an outer circle, with ample walking and aisle space.
The four of you will begin in the inner circle, along with one empty chair. The chairs are labeled with the role from which we ask you to speak – leader (Henri), activist (Brandon), scholar (Jean) and practitioner (Carolyn). The fifth chair is labeled "Wild Card or Rarely Heard Voices".
I will explain the context and process and offer an opening question as the focus for the conversation among you. It will be "What is our potential?" or some modification of this question based on what happens in the session that precedes it. I'll give my one-sentence introductions of each of you and then sound a bell for a moment of reflective silence. When the bell sounds again, whoever wishes to start the conversation begins.
From that point, anyone wanting to speak may do so by standing behind the chair labeled with the role from which they wish to speak. This signals the person in the center circle to relinquish her/his chair – when s/he is complete. You then move out of your chair, making room for the person standing behind it. You are always welcome back into the center when/if you have more to say.
Having said that anyone is welcome to speak, know that I will ask that they be mindful about choosing to do so. I will encourage people to listen for a while to the voices of the people currently in the center. And if they decide to come forward…they do it because they are compelled to speak, in a sense called from their own center to speak from their unique voice on behalf of the whole.
As the conversation flows and topics change. each speaker says what has heart and meaning. Speakers are not restricted in what they say, but may speak only when in the inner circle.
We will end when it is over or at 12:30pm at the latest. (We will know it is over because there is no longer anyone standing behind a chair ready to speak. Empty seats are taken away one by one until there are no more chairs.)
Brief bios
Scholar – Jean Bartunek is a professor of Organization Studies at Boston College. She is a former president of the Academy of Management, and has been doing research with practitioners and on practice for many years.
Activist – Brandon WilliamsCraig – is of the new breed of activists, who, rather than advocating for or against something, are process activists – bringing people with diverse perspectives together so that wise answers emerge.
Leader – Henri Lipmanowicz, retired CEO of Merck subcontinental, came to an appreciation of process through the complexity sciences. He is a co-founder of the Plexus Institute, which works with what complexity can teach us about leadership and social systems.
Practitioner – Carolyn Lukensmeyer is the creator of AmericaSpeak's 21st Century Town Meeting, a deliberative practice that has made itself excitingly visible to the mainstream, perhaps opening the door more widely for the power of participative practices to be of service.
Wild card – for the rarely heard voices - the fifth seat is for unheard/rarely heard voices: the future/the artist/the natural world/the unknown/the child.
{I hope Iris McGinnis will accept (should it be required) support to sit in the WildCard seat. I can't think of anybody who belongs there more or might be less likely to claim the spot. - ed.}
Peggy Holman
The Open Circle Company
For the new edition of The Change Handbook, go to:
www.bkconnection.com/ChangeHand
-- Drew Dellinger
The morning of Wednesday, February 28th, before flying to Vermont to spend a week with my brother-in-law, sister, and nephew, at 1:30 am I was awakened by someone trying to spring the lock on the side door. I swung my feet out of bed, took a breath and paused for a moment of thought. Slowly I edged next to the door and said, in a conversational tone, "this is about to suck for you". My friend without then took a turn pausing for a moment of thought and then, I suppose thinking he was hearing things, resumed his work on the door. Not wanting him to enter and find his options (violence or not) severely limited I decided to give him one more brief chance and struck the door as loudly as I could before emerging. He was on his small dirtbike and flying low before my feet hit the asphalt. The lock on the side door cannot be openind from the outside now and I told all the apprentices and neighbors about it before heading for the airport.
I share all this because my sleep in the van last night was a trifle fitful. The price of vigilance, I suppose. Alas. | posted by Unknown @ 3/14/2007 09:02:00 AM
Our (ABC) member site is down (blank, white screen - or extensive error list) despite reassurances from our hosting provider that all is well. This means no access to all the material I've been asking you, and people like you to contribute. Sorry about that. I'm working on finding somebody who can help without charging four times our annual budget. Know anybody who works with MySQL databases, Drupal, and CivicSpace? I need 'em.
In the end, however, the beautiful day won, helped by our (Rosa from New York, Leon from Berkeley, and yours truly) weekly Process Arts Develpment hour and by my getting a ton of stuff done, despite my grogginess from staying up way too late last night preparing for massive influx of unavoidable urgencies steaming down the tracks in my direction.
Today I registered for an Aikido seminar that is required for me to progress to 4th degree black belt, added our new loan for Serenity (the Van) to our WaMu autopay, contacted the SUDC (Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood) project and got us in the proverbial loop, paid San Leandro Hospital the remainder of what we owe them, same with the ambulance company, and ignored Phoenix Physicians, for the time being, because Kaiser will only pay part and tells us the charges are illegitimately high.
Hard to decide how to feel about all this. Money out. Checkmarks on the To-Do list.
Looking forward to going to Nexus For Change with Iris and John Abbe and doing stuff to prep for that.
Guess I'll go to bed. I don't feel as pathetic as this all sounds.
Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and everything will work?
You never know. It' s likely to be another beautiful day ...
and that's seldom shabby.
Labels: daily
| posted by Unknown @ 3/13/2007 01:38:00 AM
Today is the first day I've noticed myself thinking about the wearing of shorts. There are expanses of green grass nearby, a frisbee in the air, a dog writhing (in a satisfied way) on the aforementioned grass, and a cloudless sky above invigorated by the kind of wind that can only blow up from the edge of a vast expanse of ocean.
I must confess to loving this area.
10-Day Forecast | |
 | High / Low (°F) | Precip. % | | ||
| Tonight Mar 11 |  | Clear | 52° | 0 % | |
| Mon Mar 12 |  | Partly Cloudy | 73°/52° | 0 % | |
| Tue Mar 13 | | Partly Cloudy | 71°/52° | 0 % | |
| Wed Mar 14 |  | Sunny | 70°/53° | 10 % | |
| Thu Mar 15 | | Sunny | 72°/51° | 10 % | |
| Fri Mar 16 | | Sunny | 72°/52° | 10 % | |
| Sat Mar 17 | | Sunny | 69°/50° | 0 % | |
| Sun Mar 18 | | Partly Cloudy | 69°/50° | 10 % | |
| Last Updated Mar 11 03:06 p.m. PT | |||||
Labels: season
| posted by Unknown @ 3/11/2007 04:45:00 PM
Labels: bdwc
| posted by Unknown @ 3/09/2007 04:19:00 PM
I was listening to one of the folks going to Nexus For Change during our phone conference this evening bringing together the Logistics Team. She suggested, as many in our field (Process Arts) have, that we are in a crisis of story as the old models fall apart. I heard her a bit differently than she probably meant.
I didn't read enough stories that really matter to Aidan. I often showed to and held unremarkable books for him and said words from them, but was waiting for the good stuff until he could somehow respond with desire for more, or some sign of understanding beyond wanting to turn pages and look at pictures during a very brief attention span. I feel like I failed in Shaherazad's task and, in telling stories to King Shahryar bored him somehow and lost what is most precious. I want to tell everyone stories when I see them now in which the fascinating ending is topped by the sunrise at the point of implying an even grander tale to come. We can build community that is fascinating and full of gifts for everyone, but wait there's more...
I hereby ask for something specific. Please respond to the ideas in the ABC member site. There is a ton of great stuff there. Reply to something on my blog. Don't worry about whether it fits or is appropriate. Free associate if you like. I'm simply noticing an empty and cavernous feel there as I write because I can only feel your presence through your words.
Oh, and, if you like, come to Epworth UMC on the last Sunday of this month (March 2007) at 11:30am to take part in words and demonstration of "Christianity as a Martial Art". I'll be talking and falling down, and so will several other folks in martial costume. If you are interested in social justice, like Aikido, and/or take culture change seriously this is the demonstration for you. | posted by Unknown @ 3/07/2007 10:38:00 PM
